WOEBOT

John Foxx through a faulty Microscope.

There’s been a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between k-punk and me about Ultravox and John Foxx. Mark rates them very highly. He’s got Foxx figured tightly into the now clearly identifiable k-punk aesthetic. Me, I giggled. Ultravox! I know Conny Plank produced Systems of Romance and a couple of post-Foxx records they did, clearly marking them as HIP (weary of this) but struggled to get Midge Ure’s ugly mug out of my mind. Band-aid! Vienna! I also sniggered because Mark seemed upset/adamant/furious that Foxx “never got his dues”. Actually I have a similar lack of respect for Gary Numan. I don’t care that both have probably got the whole Detroit crew bigging them up. I’m tough like that…..

I thought I’d do my research. It’s not enough to just mock from the sidelines (ever), also you never know what you’re missing. Over the last month I’ve managed to find the Systems of Romance LP and the Foxx Metamatic solo LP. Very cheap!

What greets you immediately is the overwhelming similarity this stuff bears to Station to Station/Low/Heroes-era Bowie. Foxx is very much a Bowie clone and the sound is way indebted to the production Eno did on those records. It is possible that poor Foxx had a handle on the same influences which Bowie did (Anthony Newley, Neu75, etc) and that as an Englishman just ended up sounding the same without the pipes to give it an operatic twist like Billy McKenzie did. I’m not sure I believe that. Bowie was such an awesomely inescapable influence in those days. Even Scott Walker did a Bowie record* With this LP I have a suspicion that someone at Island said: “C’mon lets really escape Bowie’s shadow, return-to-the-source if you like, and go record with Conny Plank in Germany.”

Not that there’s anything wrong with more-of-the-same. If innovation was the only important thing we’d be lumped with 4,000,000,000,000,000 avant-garde records which all sounded the same (except to closely trained ears). Systems of Romance, particularly Quiet Men, Dislocation and Slow Motion (Mark’s fave tracks incidentally) are great electric-blue leather-clad piston-pump steam funk micro-masterpieces. Sometimes I wish they stretch out a bit, certain passages are dying to be fed into an AKAI.

If I’m left with one opinion about the record, however, it’s that it’s a bit stodgy. I can quite see why John Foxx decided to sugar off and make this:

Which is quite stunning in parts, particularly “Plaza”. “Plaza” is great. You want to hear it’s off-kilter slabby analogue textures amplified very loudly. Big like an equestrian statue in Milan. Bowie is still here, but he’s been transcended. Nearly. Possibly Numan too, though no desire is evident to fill every nook and cranny of the sound-space like Gary's. Strangely the tonalities are tres Star Trek/Forbidden Planet. “He’s a liquid” also excellent. And “Underpass”.

One final thing about Foxx. I find there’s this aura about him, constructed by fans, very like that around Peter Gabriel. Interesting to see Peter Gabriel’s III in Reynolds’ list. Thing is Gabriel (like Foxx) is in denial of his historic loci. Gabriel’s III featured all kinds of very “then” figures, like Fripp engaged in a making very “then” music (arty proggy post-punk), but somehow the lead artist, perhaps by being so self-obsessed, cut the work off from the rest of culture. I find this quite off-putting. The other way of regarding this is that in some way these people are SO BRILLIANT they’re refashioning culture in their image, or that they’re leading the pack in some way. You don’t turn such comments on The Beatles for instance. Actually a similar cult exists around another closely concurrent “auteur” David Sylvian, mainly at the hands of Goldie and David Toop, and this (for some reason) I don’t find so creepy.

Actually it’s nice to focus on this era a bit. Critics have failed to get a handle on Electro-clash (I’d recommend Linda Lamb’s Hot Room and Solvent’s My Radio). Maybe that’s because it’s happened outside the existing hegemony of the critical canon (Ha! Ha! Are my night classes paying off?). Of course that’s what makes it both preposterous and fresh at once. It’s always nice in these situations to join-the-dots. After 1987 I spent 6 years joining dots. It can take you to nice places, both in the real and unreal worlds. You meet interesting people and spirits too.

Posted by Woebot at June 6, 2003 11:13 AM