Thomas Ellard (born 1962), is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n electronic musician

Electronic musician

An electronic musician is a musician who composes or plays music from synthetic sounds generated with synthesizers, samplers, drum machines or music sequencers....

 best known as the founding member of the electronic

Electronic music

Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

 and industrial music

Industrial music

Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...

 group Severed Heads

Severed Heads

Severed Heads is an Australian electronic music group based and founded in Sydney in 1979 as Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. The original members were Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright, and were soon joined by Tom Ellard. Fielding and Wright eventually left the group, leaving Ellard as a singular...

.

Early life

Ellard's first music contributions began in the late 1970's as a teenager when he was influenced by groups that emerged from the early United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and Australian punk

Punk rock

Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 movement.

Predating music technology

Music technology

Music technology is a term that refers to all forms of technology involved with the musical arts, particularly the use of electronic devices and computer software to facilitate playback, recording, composition, storage and performance. This subject is taught at many different educational levels,...

 such as MIDI and personal computer

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

s, Ellard's early work was performed with tape machines, tape loop

Tape loop

In music, tape loops are loops of prerecorded magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of sound. Contemporary composers such as Steve Reich and Karlheinz Stockhausen used tape loops to create phase patterns and rhythms...

s and basic analogue equipment. In 1979, Richard Fielding

Richard Fielding

Richard Fielding was a founding member of the Australian electronic dance group Severed Heads in 1979 in Sydney. He has been a member of other experimental, avant garde music groups such as Z-Glutz, The Loop Orchestra and Budgie Woops! He has had a career as a radio presenter on various New South...

 and Andrew Wright formed an electronic dance group, Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign, they were soon joined by Ellard.

Career

Fielding renamed the group as Severed Heads. Through the 1980s Ellard began to take advantage of technological developments such as the music sequencer

Music sequencer

The music sequencer is a device or computer software to record, edit, play back the music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically :...

 in combination with looping sounds before sampling

Sampling (music)

In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...

 arose. Severed Heads were probably most well known in Australia for chart success with a 1994 remix of the track "Dead Eyes Opened" (initially released in the early 1980s) which made the Australian top 40. Ellard is also noted for his early contributions to the electronic and industrial music movements in Australia and overseas.

Awards

In 2005 Ellard received the Australian Record Industry Association's ARIA Music Award

ARIA Music Awards

The Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards is an annual series of awards nights celebrating the Australian music industry, put on by the Australian Recording Industry Association...

 for the best original soundtrack/cast/show for the soundtrack to the Australian film The Illustrated Family Doctor.

Personal life

Ellard resides in Surry Hills, New South Wales

Surry Hills, New South Wales

Surry Hills is an inner-city suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Surry Hills is located immediately south-east of the Sydney central business district in the local government area of the City of Sydney...

and continues to record music and soundtracks. He also lectures at a variety of educational facilities on music production in Australia. He is the creator and director of sevcom.com, a website for alternative methods of music distribution and creation.