This Is the Thread In Which We Praise John Foxx's Metamatic

Quite great. Got the reissue last year (or earlier this year or whenever it was).

Underpants!

It's a bit shocking to me that this isn't held in higher esteem than it is. You'd at least think that it would be mentioned in context of Human League's first few records and the like...

Since I know only "Europe After The Rain" post-Ultravox, how is Foxx's sound different from Numan's?

It should be noted that "Europe After the Rain" is a great song — particularly the section with the wordless singing and the stomping post-punk bass riffing underneath.

A few phased string ensemble synths notwithstanding, this record sounds almost nothing like Numan. Around the time of The Pleasure Principle, Gary's sound was heavily Polymoog ("Vox Humana"), more lush and stately than anything, underpinned by a really solid and meaty rhythm section.

Metamatic, OTOH, is really skeletal and, barring a Clavinet part here and there, almost completely electronic — the CR-78 drums are mid-ranging and metallic and the ARP is often very bleepy and piercing. But even with Foxx's Coldwave/singspiel routine, the tunes are there in abundance, as are lots of catchy synth riffs.

By "this record sounds almost nothing like Numan" I mean Metamatic, btw...

It's a bit shocking to me that this isn't held in higher esteem than it is

i always thought it was held in very, very high esteem. it certainly is amongst people i know.

Man, the description sounds sexy, Matthew.

Someone burned me this a few years back and it didn't do much for me. I'll have to dig it out and try again.

click, click, drone.

Man, the description sounds sexy, Matthew.

Do I detect a Foxx-esque note of ironic detachment, Al?

the tunes are there in abundance

Foxx had been travelling around Europe and had been inspired by folk tunes. Anyone who says this sounds like Numan either hasn't heard it or is deliberately saying that to be "provocative". I don't know why, but Foxx's work, and especially this album a) don't get anywhere near the recognition they should, and b) seem to be a target for people who want to come off as knowledgeable by claiming that something is passé.

Awesome /great /classic

it glimmers / shimmers / and glimmers

Back in the day, Metamatic was compared most often to Krafwerk's 'The Robots' (by the man himself, too). And the Foxx/Numan thing, if I recall correctly, consisted of the critics (wrongly) accusing Numan of ripping off Foxx, not the other way around. I think, however, that 'Systems of Romance' may have had a big influence on our Gaz, along with those Eno/Bowie albums of course, but, to my ears, Numan and Foxx always sounded quite different. John Foxx project a cool, detached, European, cultured persona, while Gaz was more 'metal', more 'mental' and very into into the sensate physicality of the synth sound. He was always going for thicker, warmer wedges of moogness. He was alientated, but certainly not detached - he seemed very involved in the worlds he was conjuring, very caught up in the drama compared to John Foxx. He was also much more of a showman (in the best sense) in my view. John Foxx is visibly uncomfortable with the spotlight even today.

One thing they did have in commmon was a love of that curious quasi-Indian musical scale - always used by Gary around the time 1979-1981, and used often by John. I don't know the name for that scale, but if you use it in your own music, you run the risk of people describing your sound as 'Numanesque'.

Metal Beat is one of the best songs in the universe

i almost named my website metalbeat.com, but my friend said it sounded like a d'n'b name

030 is one of my favourite songs and lyrics from the album. It's sung totally autistically, and yet is paradoxically very emotional somehow. It also floats the idea of visual remixing! And it was only 1980!

Male caucasian
Pattern scarring
Domestic gestures
just like mine
Kennedy hairline
Remix features
Someone pushing
through my outline
Chorus:
Voices merging
Faces blurring
Voices blurring
Faces merging
Lieutenant 030
Lieutenant 030
X-rays match up
Sunlit concrete
Missing since 1963
File a decaying car
Buried in the sand
Empty clothing
blows across a
beach

The bonus material on the Special Edition released last year is as good if not better than the LP proper.

...and you can get it new for just a fiver on Amazon, I've just noticed. Bargain.

yeah "burning car" is one of the bonus tracks i think, an absolute stone cold classic. there is a wild video on youtube of john foxx performing this on some kids tv program, dancing in grey business suit between two giant silver cheese graters. damn the 80s were weird.

i think my favourite songs are the slow, lurching groove based ones like "metal beat" and "blurred girl" (i wanted to name my band after this song). there's something really sexy about those two songs that i don't get from gary numan or any other synth pop from that period (maybe japan if they count)

...and you can get it new for just a fiver on Amazon, I've just noticed. Bargain.

Curses. This has forced me onto Amazon where I have found other stuff to buy as well. Just to get free postage, obviously.

A friend who was a big fan made me a CDR with all the singles, flexi 7", etc., and did a little of his own remastering several years back. I kept it after getting the reissue because there's a couple things on it that don't show up on the new one.

Reading the Strange Fascination Bowie bio earlier this year, it seems that Numan suffered quite a bit from accusations of Bowie-biting. Doesn't seem fair, as in retrospect he seems to have more in common with Kraftwerk, Foxx, Eno, etc. Bowie even had a hissyfit and had Numan kicked off a TV show that would have helped his career a lot at the time.

Yeah, the anecdote struck me as fairly sour, considering how Bowie's notoriously generous towards fellow musicians.

Well, unless you're Bryan Ferry.

didn't Gary Numan get crap for stealing Ultravox's career to begin with?

Anyway, I think they're all different enough.

What's Bowie got against Ferry? New Thread? Email me offlist? Link?

Bowie and Ferry have been polite over the years.

Not sure I'd say "polite." There was an article in Spin in 1985 when Boys and Girls came out in which they were talking about how Bowie had basically shadowed and mocked Ferry for years -- putting out Pin-Ups right after These Foolish Things, among other supposed indignities.

The piece sort of crested with a discussion of Bowie mocking Ferry in the (then-recent) "Jazzin' for Blue Jean" video in which Bowie plays this hyper-superficial smoothie Lothario. Having watched the video since, it does seem kind of intentional.

As with anything by SPIN from its classic years, I'd love to read the article.

Well, "polite" covers most of the PR bases, doesn't it? In most interviews Bowie has mentioned Roxy Music approvingly; in the Buckley biography, Ferry said he admired Bowie's stamina and self-confidence.

True enough -- at any rate, I think the way it played out for Foxx was that Numan stole Billy Currie for The Pleasure Principle and the tour. By the time Metamatic came out and Numan had become an international star, reversing the official line to imply that it was now Foxx who was aping Numan.

I loved Metamatic in high school. More severe than the Numan records, closer to the four Asmus Tietchens pop records on Sky (same CR-78). I found it right after getting into J.G. Ballard so I loved all the steals from 'Atrocity Exhibition' and 'Crash'.

The Garden was a pastoral, gentle followup with nice acoustic textures but the songs didn't stand out as much. The Golden Section is a great fully produced synth-pop record, side 1 has five of his best songs all lined up in a row

I suppose I'm one of the few people who likes The Garden better than Metamatic or any other of his releases. I'm kicking myself for not picking up an extended 12" version of You Were There when it popped up briefly in a local record store. Recently I saw John Foxx at a Sydney gig and it was a bit disappointing. He was hiding behind a big keyboard stack and had two many effects on his voice to hear his tone clearly. He played a whole lot of Metamatic era material, and some rather forgettably romantic new stuff - but sadly nothing off The Garden.

there is a wild video on youtube of john foxx performing this on some kids tv program, dancing in grey business suit between two giant silver cheese graters. damn the 80s were weird.

i think that this is the video:

RIDICULOUSLY amazing album...

I'm pretty sure this is the greatest synthpop album

I was about to say "BOLD STATEMENT"... But then I started trying to think of others as top-to-bottom brilliant... It's tough!

yeah, the overall atmosphere, the lyrical content, the cover art... it's pretty much THE perfect synth pop album IMO. There were of course loads better singles and lots of better synth POP albums, and a bunch of Kraftwerk albums I would place above this but which somehow aren't as quintessentially "synthpop" as Metamatic.

Fuck yeah, so good. Deluxe edition is a must. "burning car"! Wish it had "miles away", though

it's funny, the wiki page says "Regarding the album's air of clinical artiness, Foxx later confessed to "reading too much J.G. Ballard" and "imagining I was the Marcel Duchamp of electropop". which to me perfectly describes what's great about it!

His latest work with The Maths (aka Benge, the guy who has one of every synth ever made or something) is fantastic and the closest he's ever come to revisiting the Metamatic vibe.

This album is hitting the spot so much right now. I have the 2001 reissue with the seven bonus tracks and not one of these songs is less than fantastic.

I'm trying to think of which synth pop albums I actually rate higher than this, Dare is probably the only one I can think of right now.

Indeed, this album completely passed me by in the 80s but discovering it a few years back was an absolute joy.

The following album is excellent as well, then subsequent drop-off with each album. . Pick up one of the singles comps for the best stuff.

Yeah I have The Garden which I like but it's just not in the same league. It's hard to pick a highlight from this album, Underpass is the obvious choice but the two instrumentals blow me away every time.

calling this the greatest synthpop record was pretty silly, but I think it's miles away the best synthpop record that I never heard in the '80s and didn't have any big hits, so it was nice to discover something new.

New EP with the Belbury Circle (incl. Ghost Box dude) is pretty great.

He's been on a great run since "Interplay"!

I'd argue even further back to "Tiny Colour Movies." But yes, the new EP is excellent.

Yes – been digging into the Maths stuff today with Benge and I've been liking it quite a bit:

http://open.spotify.com/user/124420673/playlist/0LWfD1NCEv6O1GQOx2XTa6