Glimmering Through All These Years

One of my all time heroes, the amazing John Foxx is going to release "Glimmer" a "Best of" double CD in late september.

After leaving Ultravox in 1979, Foxx recorded "Metamatic" one of the most amazing and era defining albums of 1980.

Fed on an a healthy diet of J.G. Ballard and "dressed in european grey", Foxx wanted "to make a kind of music which might have happened if America had never existed. A sort of minimalist European urban electronic folk music. I had a picture of a future jukebox in some lost European motorway service station. I just listened to it play what became 'Metamatic.'"


His sparse electronic arrangements paired with his passionate but equally detached voice are a perfect backing for Foxx´ fantastic lyrical talents. He was the herald of a new romantic world view, which embraced the all surrounding brutal architecture and found new meanings and equations in human interaction with machines.

Technically "Metamatic" is certainly not a quantum-leap in electronic music. Only one year later Kraftwerk would set new standards with "Computerwelt" and The Human League`s "Dare" re-defined electronic pop. By this time the Foxx debut sounded like it came from another era.

During his next three albums, Foxx would move towards a more conventional take on romanticism. He was asked by Michelangelo Antonioni to provide the soundtrack for "Identificazion di una donna" and went into musical hiatus after his Beatle-esque "In Mysterious Ways" in 1985.


Foxx returned to music with lots of collaborations and different projects in 1990 and is currently busier than ever.

The Best-of compilation "Glimmer" tries to give a vast overview over his influential oevre. Included are some of his collaborations (i am missing the amazing "Remember" from his Nation 12 period)

CD1:
Glimmer
Plaza
No-One Driving
Underpass
Quiet City
Dislocation
030
Twilight's Last Gleaming
Sunset Rising
Cities Of Light 5
Europe After The Rain
Hiroshima Mon Amour
The Garden

CD2:
Through My Sleeping
Endlessly
My Sex
He's A Liquid
Carcrash Flashback V2
Dancing Like A Gun
Just For A Moment
Dislocated (with Jori Hulkkonen)
Burning Car
Miles Away
Stepping Sideways (with Harold Budd)
Free Robot (with Metamatics)
No-One Driving (early version)
Plaza (extended version)
Burning Car (Dub Terror/Karborn 2008 mix)

More on John Foxx on the official Metamatic and the fansite
Quiet City