Richard James Burgess

Richard James Burgess Ph.D. has produced, recorded and performed on many gold, platinum, and multi-platinum albums. Burgess has been a major label recording artist and composer with hit records in his own right; was a studio musician of note and has worked internationally for most major labels as a producer, engineer, re-mixer and manager of artists and producers. He is known for his pioneering work with synthesizers, computers and sampling in popular music and as an inventor of the SDSV drum synthesizer.

Burgess was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to music.

He was previously CEO of A2IM, the American Association of Independent Music. He was also the head of business at Smithsonian Folkways Recordings where he produced "Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology," chronicling nearly one hundred years of recorded jazz. His career path includes: studio musician, recording artist, producer, manager, and label owner. He is known for his pioneering work with synthesizers, computers, sampling, EDM, New Romantics, early house music, as the inventor of the SDSV drum synthesizer and for coining the music genre terms EDM and New Romantic.

Burgess's music career spans more than 40 years. He came to prominence in the early 1980s as co-founder and co-lead singer of the synthpop band, Landscape, which released a top 10 hit in 1981 with the single Einstein a Go-Go. Burgess is one of the main composers of Landscape's music and made major lyrical contributions to the band's songs. After the band's break-up, he pursued a brief, moderately successful solo career releasing one mini-album, Richard James Burgess in 1984.

He launched his career as a producer with Spandau Ballet's debut the UK hit "To Cut a Long Story Short," the first commercial success for the hitherto underground New Romantic movement.

Burgess has received awards as a producer and musician from Music Week, the British Arts Council, the Greater London Arts Association and the Park Lane Group. He authored “The Art of Record Production” in 1997 and the second, third and fourth editions now entitled “The Art of Music Production: The Theory and Practice,” published by Oxford University Press. In July 2014 Oxford published his book “The History of Music Production.”