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 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.
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