Simon Rogers

Simon Rogers is a British musician and composer, notable for his chart success both as a musician and as a producer as well as for his considerable portfolio of television soundtrack work. In 1976, Rogers entered the Royal College of Music, London, later becoming an associate (ARCM) and winning their guitar prize in 1980. Upon leaving. he joined Ballet Rambert’s Mercury Ensemble as their guitarist. During this period he composed several ballet scores, including "Entre Dos Aguas" and "Fabrications" for London Contemporary Dance Theatre. He also made his first commercial hit, joining the South American folk music group Incantation who enjoyed some UK and international chart success in the early 1980s, their best known single being "Cacharpaya". In 1985 Simon left both Rambert and Incantation and joined legendary post-punk group The Fall, initially as bassist, then subsequently on guitar and keyboards. He produced their top 20 album The Frenz Experiment (1988) before parting company with the group. During this period, he also produced two albums for Bauhaus singer Peter Murphy.

He began to compose for television whilst at Rambert and his credits include TV dramas such as "The Old Men at the Zoo" (1982), "Much Ado About Nothing" (1983) and "The Rainbow" (1986) as well as two American TV movies, Daddy (1987) and The Preppy Murder (1989) for ABC.

In the 1990s Rogers continued to work in music production, beginning a long association with The Lightning Seeds, for whom he co-produced the albums Sense, Jollification, Dizzy Heights and Tilt as well as the infamous football anthem Three Lions. He also returned to The Fall to produce the majority of their most successful album to date, The Infotainment Scan. Throughout the ‘90s he was also involved with underground dance music, working on remixes under the names RAMP and Slacker, as well as several successful releases on Boy George's More Protein label, including "Generations of Love" and "Everything Starts with an E". He has also developed solo projects such as "Leuroj" and "T-Era" for the Skint/Loaded labels, and "Steiger" for John Digweed’s Bedrock Records label. Rogers has also signed a further project, "Lautrec", to the Bustin’ Loose label, a project which has featuring vocals from Terry Hall and London MC Cantankerous.

In 2003, he returned to television work, scoring "40" (starring Eddie Izzard and Kerry Fox) for Channel 4. Work on other productions followed very swiftly after the first broadcast of the series. Recent credits include the Tony Grounds-scripted 6-part drama "Family Business" (Tiger Aspect for BBC1), the title music for "Hustle" (Kudos/Spooks Ltd for BBC1), and Carlton’s 6-part drama about life in the navy, "Making Waves".

Most recently, he has scored ITV drama "Beneath the Skin" and completed productioning on an album with Cantankerous.

External links

* [http://www.fabermusic.com/serverside/composers/Details.asp?ID=Rogers,%20Simon&View=credits&Cat=2&Section=media Simon Rogers page at publishers Faber Music]
* [http://www.visi.com/fall Archive site for The Fall, covering all of his work with the band]