Thomas J is an electro house artist. Thomas J. Marchant is born in Maidstone, Kent, in 1986, and spends part of his childhood in Oakton, Virginia. After being diagnosed with asthma, he starts playing a wind instrument and joins his school band on saxophone at the age of nine.

He grows up listening to indie and Brit-pop played in his sister’s bedroom, then develops his own taste in music in the early 2000s. His early listening moves through Southern California pop-punk and ska-punk before he gets into electronica, post-rock and 1980s college rock. As a teenager he plays in a series of unsuccessful bands, then studies Music Technology and becomes interested in production.

His first recording work comes through co-producing a song by his friends’ band The Space Machine, and through semi-improvised material with The Pong Bandits and Black Zarak. He then begins releasing music under the name Station for Imitation, with work centred on squelchy electronica. This project develops into The Antennaheadz while he is at university in Plymouth and becoming heavily involved in dance music.

Albums and EPs

Under The Antennaheadz, he releases Wags, Hags and Gossip Mags, his first LP, which is mainly experimental dance music. He follows it with The Big Collapse, recorded after he gets his first microphone; the album uses vocal, banjo and guitar loops alongside the synths and drum sequencing from earlier work. In The End, We’re All People is a more restrained and wintry record, drawing on folk, post-punk and blues, while Kaleidoscope refines the sound into something brighter and denser.

After this fourth LP, the internet label Chameleon Dish Archives asks him to host an EP on its site. He writes a set of six songs that are notably darker than his earlier material, and the EP is received more favourably than his previous releases. Glorified Failure, issued on IFF Transponder Recordings, is his first physical release. It combines new tracks with remastered older songs and coincides with his debut live performance, an acoustic set at The Portland Arms in Cambridge.