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 TV and film scoring work. In 1976, Rogers entered the Royal College of Music, London, later becoming an associate (ARCM) and winning the Morrison 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 for Rambert and Fabrications for London Contemporary Dance Theatre. He also made his first commercial hit with South American folk group Incantation who enjoyed UK and international chart success in the early 1980s with their single "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 the albums "Love Hysteria" and "Deep" for Bauhaus singer Peter Murphy. He began to compose for television whilst at Rambert and credits from the 80s 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 hit albums "Sense", "Jollification", "Dizzy Heights" and "Tilt" as well as the No.1 Euro 96 football anthem "Three Lions". He also continued to work with The Fall including production of their most successful album to date "The Infotainment Scam". Throughout the 90s he was also deeply involved with dance music, remixing, writing and producing under the names RAMP and Slacker, two top 40s "Your Face" and "Scared" as well as several successful releases on Boy George's More Protein label, including "Generations of Love" and "Everything Starts with an E". Under the name Nation 12 Simon also provided the music for Bitmap Brothers' "Speedball 2", winning the Golden Joystick for Best Soundtrack in 1991. He also developed solo projects such as Leuroj and T-Era for the Skint/Loaded labels, Steiger for John Digweed's Bedrock label and Lautrec for Planet Funk's Bustin' Loose label featuring vocals from Terry Hall. In 2003, he returned to television work, scoring Company Pictures' "40" (starring Eddie Izzard and Kerry Fox) for Channel 4. Other scoring work followed swiftly after the first broadcast of the series including "Beneath The Skin" and "Making Waves" for ITV and "Family Business" for BBC. Credits include a series of documentary films with Oscar winning director Jon Blair including "Ochberg's Orphans" and "South Africa:Murder Most Foul" , 10 episodes of "Rebus" for SMG/ITV, several "Dalziel and Pascoe" specials and the title music for Kudos's "Hustle" for BBC1,Emmy nominated for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music in 2007. Rogers was also part of Musicotopia who have provided music for three series of Animal Planet's "River Monsters", BBC Natural World documentaries and "The First World War From Above" for BBC One in 2010. Since 2014, he has composed the music for Seasons 2 to 9 of the CBBC children's drama series, The Dumping Ground.