Bio and image taken from the website History of Australian Music from 1960 to 2000

Thomas Temple (Tom) Ellard is an Australian electronic musician best known as the founding member of the electronic and industrial music group Severed Heads. Ellard’s first music contributions began in the late 1970s as a teenager when he was influenced by groups that emerged from the early United Kingdom and Australian punk movement. Predating music technology such as MIDI and personal computers, Ellard’s early work was performed with tape machines, tape loops and basic analogue equipment. In 1979, Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright formed an electronic dance group, Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign, they were soon joined by Ellard.

Fielding renamed the group as Severed Heads. Through the 1980s Ellard began to take advantage of technological developments such as the music sequencer in combination with looping sounds before sampling 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. As a solo artist he has released a number of albums – ‘Snappy Carrion’ (1982), ’80’s Cheesecake’ (1982), ‘Return To Barbara Island’ (2010), ‘Meteosat 2004’, (2013) ‘Barbara Channel 3’ (2014), ‘Rhine’ (2015), ‘Publicist’ (2018) and ‘Barbara rUFO’ (2018). In 2005 Ellard received the Australian Record Industry Association’s ARIA Music Award for the best original soundtrack/cast/show for the soundtrack to the Australian film The Illustrated Family Doctor. As of 2006, Ellard resides in Surry Hills, New South Wales and continues to record music and soundtracks. He also lectures at a variety of educational facilities on music production in Australia.

In 2013, he created the interactive game Hautology House. He’s expressed his interest in the computer gaming platform many times in interviews. He is the creator and director of sevcom.com, a website for alternative methods of music distribution and creation. He has expressed interest in the computer-gaming platform many times in interviews.

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