John Foxx - The Quiet Man

The Garden is the other face of John Foxx, the human one, partly surfacing in Ultravox, and totally obscured in Metamatic. Though lacking the innovative stature and seminal insight of its predecessor, it is once again an extraordinary result, the earthly and emotional confession of its creator and, with hindsight, a kaleidoscope of styles and paths that he himself would go on to explore further in various later works.

Act V – In Search of "Normality"

I can agree with the definition of popular, but God, tell me anything except that it sounds like Ultravox. If anything, it's on ‘Quartet’ that my ideas are still there, the same ones that animated the band's first three records.

The matter of Foxx's humanity is perhaps one of the most complex lines of inquiry when analyzing the man. "We are human, not robots," he stated while presenting The Golden Section, his third studio album. Tangled and often contradictory are, in fact, the various goals he chased throughout his career. If his work with Ultravox can be considered the most "genuine" form of his expression, and Metamatic represents its most experimental and conceptual avenue, already in The Garden a new element emerges, never before revealed: a pursuit aimed, more than ever, at distinctly "human" elements, such as success and fame, seasoned too, as the earlier quotes attest, by a certain desire for vindication against his former bandmates, guilty of having found success largely by exploiting his own ideas.

We find ourselves in 1983, the year in which most of the bands who had been protagonists of the late-'70s new wave reached the fullest depth of their bow to the commercial power of synth-pop, soon to spill over into dance: this is the case, for example, of Soft Cell with "The Art Of Falling Apart", but also of artists coming from different backgrounds, such as Mike Oldfield with the gorgeous "Crises" (carried by the earworm "Moonlight Shadow"), and of the new incarnation of Joy Division, New Order, who would produce one of the finest and most refined chapters of pop itself with "Power, Corruption & Lies".

In this context, the very musician who, swimming against the tide of the moment's trends, had created an album so essential as to be among the most elitist of the period, now presents his most intimate side in full, including this new, quiet desire, which in any case in his second work still stood as a mere hint, a whisper destined to progressively grow louder. And it is precisely from this desire that the two following works would take shape – partly the first, entirely the second – the only ones in which, progressively, the pursuit of commercial success would become one of the musician's most important aims. He himself offers a good summary of this dual nature: "To me it's quite stupid to live a rock'n'roll life, I find it a waste of energy. I'd rather keep making music, staying on my own for a while now and then, and then, when I feel like it, play live."

Two years had to pass before Foxx – fresh from a supposed (and later confirmed by himself) involvement in the soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Identificazione di una donna" – released his fourth work: The Golden Section is John Foxx's most eclectic, varied and influence-rich record, his first true pop album and one of the most sophisticated and colorful results of the genre. The first renewal on display concerns the instrumentation: to the established blend of synths, drum machines and acoustic instruments, vocoder and sampler are now added, with the latter in particular undergoing constant expansion across the music scene of the period (suffice it to mention Jean Michel Jarre and his "Zoolook", released a year later, a veritable "hymn to the sampler").

In terms of musical substance, however, the album marks a partial return to robotic rule, and a substantial, decisive move away from romantic atmospheres: synth-pop once again takes charge, polished here and there by nods to the musical worlds Foxx grew up with in his youth, picking back up the sounds and innovations theorized in his first work and folding them into the mix. Foxx himself confirms: "'The Golden Section' was probably my most varied work: it really has everything in it, it's a collection of my roots: psychedelia and church music, the Beatles and the Shadows, Floyd and the Velvets, Roy Orbison, Kraftwerk and europop." Adding to this already vast recipe the production of kraut guru Zeus B. Held, the album presents itself as a sort of bridge between its two predecessors, and at the same time as Foxx's first genuine attempt to craft songs with commercial potential.

The manifesto of this new mutation is already evident in the opening "My Wild Love", a reconciliation of mechanical rhythm with an immediate, catchy melody. The first true pop-leaning products, however, are "Your Dress", "Running Across Thin Ice With Tigers" and "Sitting At The Edge Of The World": the first rides a sweet, almost romantic melody; the second and third, both clearly indebted to the Beatles ("Sitting At The Edge Of The World" contains a sample of "Strawberry Fields Forever"), are probably the album's true two anthems, with a lavish, driving stride that nonetheless doesn't skimp on a complex sonic layering, where the electronic undercurrent intertwines with the glossy stride of the drum machines, the pure, piercing use of guitar, and a voice forced to navigate the most varied treatments.

The most telling episode of the whole record, and of its mass-appeal ambitions, is however "Endlessly", a lively, vividly colorful pop song with remarkable melodic sensibility, not far removed from the contemporary work of his former Ultravox bandmates, whose primordial version had come out a year earlier as a single. The psychedelic streak is instead the main ingredient of "Someone" and "The Hidden Man", the latter also featuring a synth solo clearly inspired by Billy Currie's style, while episodes closer to the past are "Like A Miracle", a subdued, placid litany dating back to the Metamatic sessions, and "Ghosts On Water", a distorted kaleidoscope with yet another nod to the Beatles (the drum pattern is lifted from "Tomorrow Never Knows"). The closing "Twilight's Last Gleaming" – the only track produced by Mike Howlett, ex-Gong and previously at work with the Police – is perhaps instead the only episode entirely at odds with the rest: a slow, dark, sprawling track with strongly psychedelic echoes, where the lively pop vein seems to die out, leaving room for desolation.

The android-scientist capable of scoring the technological-futurist revolution first, then transformed into a chronicler of European tradition and decadence, becomes a craftsman able to blend his past – both in terms of youthful listening and passions and of musical experiences – with his nascent desire to achieve success, giving rise with this formula to a refined, multifaceted synth-pop. The result of this, his third effort, is once again of excellent quality. Though unable to match his previous two masterpieces, The Golden Section is a deeply considered work: nonetheless, Foxx's hopes of managing to combine quality with commercial success are dashed by the lukewarm reception the public gives the album, which only manages to reach a modest twenty-seventh place on the British charts, matched by the three singles pulled from it, the best performance among them being the sixty-first place of "Your Dress". And it is perhaps precisely the disappointment of yet another critical success devoid of commercial return that pushes Foxx to pour all his energy exclusively into the latter front, abandoning the idea of conquering the market through quality and refinement. And so the next chapter of his saga would take the shape of a clumsy attempt to win over the market by giving up on the artistic side and any form of exploration: what would arrive would not be the hoped-for conquest, but the worst result of his entire career.

From Cyborg of the Future to Common Mortal

Though still close to the glories of its two predecessors and not excessively distant from them in quality, The Golden Section cannot help but sound like a statement of intent on Foxx's part, a thunderous warning bell for the continuation of his career. How, after all, can a futurist take refuge in the past of his own roots? The Garden, in this sense, could already be seen as a partial return to the past, but the origins it clung to were cultural and historical ones: Europe, decadence, religious mysticism. In his third offering, however, he chooses instead to dredge up a more strictly musical past, even reaching back to the very musical forms he grew up with. And such a choice can hardly be seen as an attempt to adapt those forms, too, to the futurist revolution: the contribution of such innovations is in fact present in the album's formula in equal measure to the remaining influences, placed on the same level rather than as a foundation to which the "new course" is adapted. And while such elements could not yet be considered synonymous with crisis on this album, they would become so in every sense on the following record, that In Mysterious Ways which would serve as the epitaph of the first half of his career. In every sense, in the mid-'80s Foxx it is the human spirit that prevails, at the expense of that cold analytical matrix capable of identifying an android in the author of Metamatic.

And the "new" Foxx continues his personal evolution, deciding to embark, after the release of The Golden Section, on his first solo tour, including two Italian dates in Rome and Milan, joined, among others, by Robin Simon, the influential guitarist from the Systems Of Romance-era Ultravox. "I simply felt like playing live again. After recording 'The Golden Section' I realised that the simple process of recording, playing and giving my voice to the songs had drawn me in so much that it made me want to do it live too." With these words, spoken right at the end of the Rome concert, he explains his decision to return to the stage: a choice that is nonetheless a further sign of the inner shift increasingly taking hold of him, driven in particular by disappointment and frustration at the absence of the fame that, a few years earlier, had been achieved and claimed by many of the contemporaries who owed him a debt, from Midge Ure's Ultravox to Gary Numan. A shift that will lead him to let the desire to achieve that success take precedence over everything else, whether it be the pursuit of artificial essence, of his own roots, or of citational balance. And this will be the founding principle of the fourth and, for a long time, final chapter of his saga.

Act VI – The Suicide of Foxx-the-Man

Two more years go by, during which Foxx, besides being busy touring – which lets him regain a certain contact with his audience – starts, as he looks around him, to form the decision to try to "launch himself" fully into the mainstream, thereby completing once and for all the process already partly set in motion on The Golden Section. This is probably the main cause of the shift that characterises In Mysterious Ways, his fourth studio album. If there's one adjective that best describes the album's sound, it is without doubt "disconcerting": there's no trace of futurist angularity, romantic decadence, or the hybrid of roots and sampling. In their place, an interest, stronger than ever, in simple, catchy melodies, the introduction of instruments like acoustic guitar and sax, and, above all, the exclusion of the sampler and vocoder that had been the recent protagonists; all of this put to the service of pure pop compositions, not even especially synthetic, with a British flavour and plenty of female backing vocals.

This is the most complete antithesis, an almost blasphemous repudiation of everything that made up our subject's artistic journey: a musical gaze unable to turn either towards the past (except for yet another tendency towards Beatles-esque melodic inspiration) or towards the present – references to contemporary synth-pop are almost non-existent – or the future.

What emerges from such a background is a collection of pop songs that are, for the most part, predictable and smug, well represented by the opener "Stars On Fire" (almost a rehash of Lou Reed's "Sally Can't Dance"), by the plastic crooning of "Shine On", by the subdued, mournful bow of the title track and, above all, by the blues number "The Side Of Paradise". But the lowest point comes with "Stepping Softly", a saccharine and botched attempt at romantic-emotional songwriting, and perhaps the worst track Foxx has ever written. In this apocalyptic landscape, only partly spared are the nostalgic, bombastic anthem "Lose All Sense Of Time", in which present-day and past Ultravox cross paths with the most predictable Soft Cell without really fusing with any particular originality, and the two halves of "Enter The Angel", truly the only two episodes worth anything, thanks to a finally well-judged blend of rhythm and melody, to the "angelic" female choruses in the first half, and to a return – albeit without the same evocative power – to the nostalgic, pastoral mood of the title track of The Garden in the second.

In Mysterious Ways is the suicidal epitaph of Foxx-the-man, by now the absolute ruler at the expense of his robotic half. An album born with no artistic or musical intent whatsoever, other than the pursuit of success, and which died, moreover, without even achieving its sole goal: commercially, in fact, the album performs even worse than The Golden Section, failing to enter the British charts, despite the (still modest) popularity gained by the single "Stars On Fire". And it's probably this latest failure that leads the musician to decide to abandon – temporarily, with hindsight – the music scene, and try to rebuild his career from scratch.

It's 1985, and on the ashes of In Mysterious Ways, John Foxx seemingly walks away from the world of music, head down. No one yet imagines just how long it will take him to return, let alone how he will manage to pick his story back up exactly where he left it, only to set off again with entirely different goals, ambitions, and an enormous burst of productivity.

Twelve Years In The Shadows

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Not one word more does Foxx use to account for a hiatus lasting a full twelve years, namely the gap between the release of In Mysterious Ways and that of the two albums that will mark his comeback. A silence whose meaning can nonetheless be interpreted along fairly clear lines: a pause for reflection, in the truest sense of the word. A self-imposed stop, during which, in all likelihood, Foxx found himself having to come to terms with the glaring mistake he had made on his last record: sacrificing his art without being able to reap even the smallest reward for it. Indeed, it's hard to imagine any other explanation for what could have led a musician who, up to that point, had been capable of innovating and renewing himself, to curl up on himself and produce a work so distant from those very concepts, and so hard to reconcile with his artistic path, both before and after. Adding to the sting is the album's resounding lack of success, markedly inferior to all its predecessors: the hard sacrifice of setting aside experimentation and research should have guaranteed him, in return, a genuine commercial breakthrough; but with that element missing, the sacrifice turned out to be nothing short of suicide for him – one he would only recover from thanks to his temporary withdrawal from the world of music. A withdrawal that would lead him to devote himself to other long-loved pursuits – first and foremost photography, his second passion, which he poured into the artwork of many of his albums, and even, in 2001, into that of Porcupine Tree's "Lightbulb Sun" – and to reflect on what to do next.

Reflection, then. Foxx-the-man questioning himself and answering, deciding and taking back the reins, seizing hold of Foxx-the-android, taking him apart, reassembling him and gaining control of him. Reflection that brings counsel with it, and allows him to start over almost from scratch, without forgetting the glorious achievements of the past, but without clinging to them either. Reflection that draws him into new territories, never explored before (save for the odd early hint), but also into continuations of research already begun in the past. Reflection that will split his artistic vein into separate particles, each capable of shining with its own light and standing on its own. Reflection, finally: an element whose importance will be revealed to us by the musician himself, quietly and almost indirectly, through the surprising sound of one of the two albums marking his return to the scene, and through the background of its gestation: the cathedral, the quintessential place of spiritual reflection.

Foxx's second artistic life will be marked by a vast output, split, as already mentioned, across several strands pursued in parallel: the same structure will be followed in the rest of this account, which will accordingly deal with one "theme" at a time.

The Comeback

Twelve years have passed since he walked away. A silence broken only by a very brief interlude of two singles released together with DJ Tim Simenon under the moniker Nation 12 in 1989, written in an attempt to ride the acid-house trend – a genre born a little earlier in the States and brought to England thanks to the work of Paul Oakenfold and to certain rhythms on Neneh Cherry's striking debut album, future muse of trip-hop. But the mediocre quality and, once again, the limited success of these early experiments led to the project being shut down early and to the cancellation of the planned debut album, Electrofear, which would only see the light of day in 2008, included in the Cinemascope box set (after appearing three years earlier as a bootleg limited to five hundred copies).

The real comeback thus happens a full eight years later. It's 24 March 1997, and John Foxx returns to the scene. He does so with a move that brings with it, at once, a return to his roots and an unexpected new turn: two albums released simultaneously, on the very same day; one solo, and one in collaboration with Louis Gordon, which will be examined later. Two albums released on a new label, founded by and belonging to Foxx himself, called Metamatic Records – an obvious nod to his first great work – which would go on to become the launchpad for almost all of his projects.

Reflection, we said, is the term that best suits the pure ambient music of Cathedral Oceans. Replica, instead, is a far more fitting description for its counterpart Shifting City, where he once again dons the robes of essentialist android, updating the innovations of Metamatic to a contemporary sound. And these will indeed be two of the new Foxx's incarnations, two of the skins he will wear, alternating them with a further path devoted to exploring the "mystical" side of his music.

Act VII – From the Garden to the Cathedral

The 'Cathedral Oceans' project has been going on for many years, to the point that I had recorded quite a lot of material, for about six albums, I'd say. It all originally began in Milan, in the Duomo di Milano. The first time I walked into the cathedral, I realised I had never been there before, but the acoustics and the architecture were so evocative that they sparked the inspiration to bring to life many ideas I'd been thinking about since I was a kid.

With these words Foxx explains the birth and gestation of Cathedral Oceans, his first ambient offspring and the opening chapter of a saga that would continue with two sequels in the years to come. In the eleven sublime "oceanic cathedrals" we find almost nothing of the sound of his past work (only "Enter The Angel II" – the closing track of In Mysterious Ways and its finest moment – and the title track of The Garden could be said to come close to ambient atmospheres, while for "religious" themes one has to go back to "Pater Noster", from the same album), nor are there any echoes of the musical forms he had explored previously. These are instead soft, ethereal nocturnes, bound together by a steady, constant flow and by numerous references to church music, the true wellspring of inspiration for the entire work.

Foxx's voice is used for the first time as a purely musical instrument, a distant echo added to a layer of reverb, a piece of a uniform and concise puzzle. The primary reference points are undoubtedly the Californian scene of Steve Roach and Michael Stearns – themselves indebted to the cosmic music and ambient of Brian Eno – and the mystical minimalism of Forrest Fang, Robert Rich and, above all, Alio Die, as well as of the "master" Harold Budd.

In the haunted, shadowy whispers of the title track and of "Through Summer Rooms" lie hidden flashes of light and warmth, which first emerge discreetly through the cracks of "Geometry And Coincidence" and "Invisible Architechture", before bursting out with strength and vigour, especially when the voice joins the choir. "If Only…" acts as a bridge between melancholy and mysticism, with the latter taking hold of the musical material in the Gregorian chants of "Shifting Perspective", in the limpid flow of "Floating Islands", in the expanded boundaries of "Infinite In All Directions", before exploding in the choral crescendo of "Sunset Rising". And while "Avenham Collonade" untangles itself amid mechanised drone ups and downs, "City As Memory" acts as a kind of trait d'union with the conceptual past, while still maintaining the same musical distance: that city which in Metamatic was cutting-edge, full of new kinds of humans and sounds from the future, now seems to drift ever further away, succumbing to the passage of time. And the farewell Foxx gives it is languid but never downbeat, melancholy but never sad: it's a goodbye for now, not forever.

Cathedral Oceans is an unexpected yet entirely logical return, in which Foxx once again lays himself bare, as he had already done with The Garden; but while the intimacy he showed on that record could be summed up in the allegory of its title, a journey through the garden of his roots, his passions and his dreams, what this new album offers instead are snapshots tied to pure thought as much as to imagination and reflection, defining traits of his years of silence. And it stands as a description of those very years, the same description he will keep refusing to put into words.

The first piece of a journey, it's an introverted, sincere album: as pared-back as the electronics of its contemporary companion Shifting City, yet evocative and visionary enough to hold its own against the finest work of the masters whose disciple he is.

After the disorienting one-two punch of his comeback, Foxx lets another six years go by before releasing new work. It's 2003, and Cathedral Oceans II arrives: from that point on, the musician would begin flooding the market, churning out an extremely high number of releases between solo projects, collaborations and albums alongside Louis Gordon. Compared to its predecessor, the record is marked by greater restraint in its arrangements: the pulses are scaled back, as are the sonic layers, the paradisiacal visions give way to muted, shadowy glimpses, and the angelic, ethereal choirs become solitary prayers. Even more than in the first chapter, church-music is central to the project: the arcane rosary of "Ad Infinitum", the strained liturgy of "Golden Green" and the melancholy invocations of "Shimmer Symmetry" and "Return To A Place Of Remember Beauty" are direct evidence of this, so much so that they highlight a fusion between the Constance Demby of "Sanctum Sanctuorum" and the most isolationist side of Vidna Obmana. The latter, meanwhile, proceeds alone through the desert-like silences of "Far And Wide 2" and "Visible And Invisible", while the drone cycle of "Stillness And Wonder" veers towards the minimal abstractions of Paul Sauvanet's "Eleusis".

Focusing its magnifying glass on a process of stripping the sonic flow down to the bone and on a "mystical" quest, Cathedral Oceans II is a decidedly more subdued and less immediate work than its predecessor, suffering by comparison from a lower emotional charge, and often ending up putting sonic exploration ahead of the naturalness of the compositions. Even so, the album confirms Foxx's great skill in evoking, through the ambient medium, the mystical suggestions of church music.

But the jewel in the crown of his ambient output arrives almost simultaneously, in collaboration with Harold Budd, in the one-two of Translucence/Drift Music, two albums released together as different faces of the same coin.

Of the two halves, Translucence is certainly the one closer to the "master's" language, drifting through heavenly shores across the twelve gems that make it up. Most of the tracks are the offspring of early Budd, the languid, graceful pianist of the Brian Eno collaborations: the soft "Spoken Roses", the limpid "Adult" and the polished, melancholy "Here And Now" harken straight back to the refined canvases of "The Plateaux Of Mirror", while the elusive "Long Light", the sinister "A Change In The Weather" and the silent symphony of "Implicit" draw more heavily on "The Pearl" and its emotional textures.

Although Budd's dominance is pronounced on this first instalment, Foxx's contribution quietly emerges in the minimal undergrowth of the compositions, before becoming much more evident in the abstract limbo of "Almost Overlooked", in the languid whispers of the lengthy "Raindust" and in the tearful farewell of "You Again".

On Drift Music the roles instead seem to reverse, with Foxx's musical soul taking precedence, and Budd's contribution felt chiefly in the expressive power of the melodies, made up largely of slow, whispered drones. The desert-like rarefaction enveloping most of the tracks marks a direct link to the Michael Stearns of "Encounter" or the Steve Roach of "On This Planet": tracks such as "Stepping Sideways", "Curtains Blowing", "Someone Almost There" and "Avenue Of Trees" leave the cathedrals behind to take flight towards arid, uninhabited territories. And it is precisely this untainted purity that is the record's chief strength: abandoning the cosmos and Eden, the journey leads towards a limbo with no coordinates on the opening "Sunlit Silouhette" and "Coming Into Focus", before plunging into the void of "Linger", "Curtains Blowing" and "Resonant Frequency", and finally closing with "Underwater Flowers", perhaps the finest episode of the whole collection, where the souls of the two musicians finally merge and balance each other out, fading into the hidden sighs of "Arriving".

Both in the romantic side of Translucence and in the desolate side of Drift Music, the two manage to produce one of the finest ambient music works of the entire decade, interpreting with mastery and elegance two faces of the same coin. And while on the first Foxx seems to bow to Budd, following the paths laid out by the master, on the second it is Budd who more readily falls in with the other's intentions, never so perfectly poised between human sensitivity and technological coldness: in the end it's the former that prevails, offering definitive proof – as Foxx himself has in fact stated more than once – that even the android who gave birth to Metamatic was in all likelihood a human being in disguise. The culmination and unsurpassed peak of his ambient output, Translucence/Drift Music stands as one of the high points of the second phase of his career, as well as of Budd's own long and storied path.

In 2011 the album was remastered and reissued with the addition of Nighthawks, a collection of fragments from the same sessions that also featured pianist Ruben Garcia, who had already worked with Budd on numerous projects. The album's ten crystalline gems move between broad openings and abstract fissures, accompanied by Garcia's clear, graceful piano. Picking up the mood of Translucence and the swirling drones of Drift Music, Nighthawks is the ideal bridge between the two works, as well as another creation of the highest calibre.

The first consequence of pouring so much energy and creativity into these early works seems, however, to be a drying-up of Foxx's inspiration, as he would never again reach such heights in his subsequent productions. The first of these, Cathedral Oceans III, arrives in 2005 and marks a decisive turn towards pure church-music: while the orchestral constellations of "Oceanic" and the celestial openings of "Eternity Sunrise" once again stand out for their power to enthrall, the rest of the album moves between arcane liturgies and isolated prayers that aren't always able to move the listener in the same way. Thus, the vocoder choral chants of "Harmonica Mundi" and "Through Garden Overgrown" manage to replicate the effects already achieved in the first two instalments, while elsewhere the formula starts to show signs of strain: such is the case with the plastic, sterile electronic mass of "Spiral Overture", the sinister but predictable progress of "Serene Velocity", the visionary burst of "Eternity Sunrise" and the desolate invocation of "In Rising Light". Rescuing the album, however, are two of the saga's most touching compositions: the closing "Metanym", an ideal farewell to the whole project, and the mechanical "City Of Endless Stairways", where for the first time Foxx winks at an almost gothic sound not far removed from the more ethereal Arcana, paying tribute once again to the theme of the city, his great muse since his debut.

Although ultimately a compact, well-directed work, Cathedral Oceans III fails to match the power of its elder sibling or the conceptual unity of its predecessor, yet still brings an unexpected and exceptionally high-quality saga to a more than worthy close.

In the years that followed, however, Foxx seems to lose his ambient bearings in a far more conspicuous way than before: deeply engaged with his parallel career alongside Louis Gordon and various other collaborations, in 2007 — preceded by the compilation Metal Beat — he releases the half-hearted and predictable Tiny Colour Movies. It's a collection of fragments composed as accompaniment to as many short films, straddling electronic melodies and dreamy atmospheric passages, marked by a compositional coldness never heard before.

Split evenly between attempts at ambient-techno adaptation ("Stray Sinatra Neurone", "Skyskraper", "Points Of Departure", "Thought Experiment"), bland recycling of past atmospheres ("Lost New York", "X-Ray Vision", "Smokescreen", "Underwater Automobilies"), forays into a dull electronic avant-garde ("Looped Los Angeles", "Hand-Held Skies") and glacial vintage-pop sketches ("Kurfurstendamm", "A Peripheral Character"), the album is without doubt one of the weakest episodes produced by the musician since his comeback.

In 2009, after a new tour alongside Louis Gordon, documented on the excellent A New Kind Of Man released the year before, Foxx put out two albums drawn from his "archive": My Lost City, which we'll discuss later, and A Secret Life. The latter, made in collaboration with Steve Jansen — former drummer of Japan and brother of David Sylvian, who for years has moved between elegant memories of times past (his collaborations with fellow former bandmate Richard Barbieri) and forward-looking glances at more accessible avant-garde territory (the beautiful "Slope" from 2007) — gathers improvised sessions dating back to 2001, unearthed and remixed by sound engineer Steve D'Agostino and then released by Foxx himself through his own Metamatic Records. Across the six "parts" that make up the record, the individual musicians' contributions are hard to distinguish: these are excursions into an acoustic, sterile ambient, mixed with pianistic nods to minimal Budd, yet light years away from the metaphysical balance of Translucence. The album has the merit of being unquestionably better than its predecessor — thanks to the absence of the latter's weaker episodes — but the flaw of having nothing new to say compared to what we'd already heard before.

Followed only by the video collection D.N.A. in 2010 — an ambitious project containing the fruits of collaborations with several music-video directors along with a few lacklustre unreleased tracks — A Secret Life is another ambient offering from Foxx, one that crowns, albeit in anything but spectacular fashion, a branch of his career little known to most but capable of yielding at least one masterpiece and a saga of major importance.

Act VIII — Profane Liturgies

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The blend of ambient and church-music was the main ingredient in the formula Foxx applied to Cathedral Oceans. Two worlds that are at once very close — in their evocative power and their capacity to enthrall — and quite distant — in the sci-fi overtones of much late ambient, set against the "divine" power of prayer. And the fusion of these two elements culminated in a hybrid capable of reshuffling the common ground between the two worlds, largely stripping away the direct references to their more divergent traits (the religious "dependency" of church-music as opposed to the centrality of space in ambient music).

And so the subsequent solo works by Foxx descend directly from this ambient path, yet turn the magnifying glass on that mystical, and at the same time profane, side that was already an integral part of the Cathedral Oceans recipe, which indeed became the stylistic focal point of the saga's third instalment. And yet, the first-born of this new path can hardly be considered a child of the trilogy: if anything, it is its silent founding father, since almost all the tracks it contains date back, in both composition and recording, to the early Nineties.

We're still in 2009, one of Foxx's most prolific years: just a few months before the arrival of the aforementioned A Secret Life, itself preceded by Metatronic — an excellent audio-video anthology retracing the finest moments of the musician's career — My Lost City slips out quietly, overlooked by most fans and critics alike. It is, in fact, a collection of experiments dating from the recording hiatus, the period during which Foxx still claims today to have played and composed with even greater consistency than before. Across the album's eleven sensational emotional ups and downs we find, expressed in its purest form, that mystical and arcane root that would go on to characterise almost all of his ambient works. The city is once again the dominant theme: a city light years away from technological dreams, revealed instead in full decay, lost and barely salvageable, no longer a place to live in but one to take refuge from, with contemplation and memory as the only means available: "City Of Disappearing", that is, a city too vast and imperfect that ends up vanishing into itself. Every track has a story to tell, a hidden seal, whether it's a visionary outburst, a celebration or a lament.

The opening of "Imperfect Hymn" presents the same analogue sound of the distant past, which now goes on to form a march that is at once dreamlike and sinister, before giving way to the minimal piano waves of "Magnetic Fields" or the solitary, dark drone of "Just Passing Through". The melancholic nostalgia of "Piranesi Motorcade" is the embryo of "City As A Memory", a touching litany that marks the parting from dream into reality, before "Umbra Sumus" tries to prolong the farewell, by which point, however, the memory has already drifted too far away. But standing out on an already excellent record are three other tracks in particular: the intoxicating electronic mass of "Barbican Brakhage" — sung in several languages including Latin and other ancient tongues, the culmination of Foxx's exploration of non-religious sacredness — the solemn journey of "Hawksmoor Orbital", perhaps the only true vision of hope, and the closing "Scene 27 — Into The Voice Behind The Wallpaper, Trellick Tower 3am", a Latin liturgical chant that sounds more like a distant echo, a whisper capable of resounding.

Released posthumously a full twenty years later, like a memory kept warm in a drawer until the moment came to set it free, My Lost City is one of John Foxx's richest, most personal and original albums, yet at the same time one of his most underrated. It is the swan song of the early Foxx, but also the manifesto of the mystical-ambient soul of the later Foxx, and probably his most "human" and heartfelt work, every track brimming with the power to move the listener.

After My Lost City and A Secret Life, Foxx closes out 2009 with yet another new work, once again in collaboration with a major name: this time it's Robin Guthrie, co-leader of the Cocteau Twins and a guitarist of immense personality, capable of influencing the vast majority of dream-pop bands that emerged in the 90s. And, once again — as already happened with Budd — the symbiosis between the two souls produces another outstanding work: Mirrorball, an authentic treatise capable of blending the guitarist's dream-pop with Foxx's sacred spirit. For Foxx, this is the definitive spiritual "ascension", the final detachment from the concrete already set in motion by the rupture of My Lost City. An ethereal, enveloping song welcomes us, surrounded by heavenly drones and Guthrie's guitar: the title track is already pure abstraction, far removed from styles and comparisons, from themes and reason. The dream then unfolds amid echoes of the Cocteau Twins' most classic sound, as in the daydreaming of "My Life As An Echo", the sublime apparitions of "Estrellita" and the shimmering gallop of "Sunshower".

Elsewhere, instead, a dreamlike landscape takes over, where the sound seems to recede to make room for the descriptive dimension of Foxx's voice: this is the case with the duets "The Perfect Line" and "Ultramarine", in which Guthrie wraps the vocals in languid, extended arpeggios, the Gregorian chants of "Luminous" and "Spectroscope", and the heartfelt farewell of "Empire Skyline", a portrait of the new dimension the man has reached.

With Mirrorball, Foxx closes the circle opened with My Lost City and encompassing the Cathedral Oceans trilogy, bringing to light the latest fruit of his sacred-ambient atmospheres to date. The incredible balance between sacredness and paganism makes the album yet another product of the finest caliber, a fundamental and coherent piece in Guthrie's own path too, as he pursues a solo career built on a languid and visionary instrumental essentialism.

2009, rounded off on record with the live album In The Glow — containing recordings of two performances from The Golden Section tour — is thus a pivotal year for the musician, one in which many of the paths he had begun reach a temporary conclusion.

Two years later, yet another collaboration sees Foxx teaming up with Theo Travis, an all-knowing wind player (switching between flute, clarinet, saxophone and horn) and a longtime collaborator of King Crimson, Gong and, more recently, Porcupine Tree. The result of their work together is the brief but highly intense Torn Sunset, an album of seven electro-acoustic ambient watercolours, evenly split between more optimistic moments — such as the reverberations of "Night Jewels", the calm expanses of "Lost Marylin Molecule" and the smooth, serene closer "All The Tides On All The Streets" — and darker, more subdued ones — the reflective, sinister "From A Brighter Place", the murky "Skyscraper Sunlight", the hushed title track, and the melancholic "Before You Disappear".

Leaving behind mystical tension and acoustic exploration, on Torn Sunset Foxx crafts the purest, most uncontaminated compositions of his career, in what is destined to remain an isolated, one-off episode, yet rich in a very personal charm. It will also be his last album to steer away from electronics: shortly after its release, Foxx would found a new project, which would become his main sonic outlet from 2011 onward, one in which he would return to delving deeply into those stylistic canons, joined by the Midas of analogue synthesizers Ben Edwards, aka Benge, and enlisting a host of prestigious collaborators. Thus John Foxx And The Maths were born.

The Encounter

Let's now rewind the tape, going back to 1997, the year of Foxx's return to the music scene. Alongside the remarkable Cathedral Oceans, in fact, an album co-written by two hands arrives, drawing perhaps even greater attention, with an eloquently nostalgic title: Shifting City. The man who joins Foxx on this adventure is Louis Gordon, a producer active in Manchester's underground techno scene. The two met in 1995, at a party-concert for Gordon's birthday: with little real hope, Gordon tried to get an invitation to Foxx — one of the major sources of inspiration for his music — so he could attend and listen to the performance. Surprisingly, Foxx accepted, and got back in touch with him a few weeks later with an invitation to record a work together. The chance birth of this partnership would go on to produce no fewer than five albums, the first of which was precisely Shifting City.

Act IX — The Android's Return

I think it concerns (the city, ed.) everything: I think everything in my life is experienced from the point of view of man in the city; that's what I describe, and it's what I know best. I've also lived in contact with nature, so I can say I know it, but, like most people, I live in a city.

A new, far from accidental, reference to the city: that's how Foxx greets us, once again wearing the robot's "armour", presenting the second of the two albums from his comeback, also dated 1997. And Shifting City is nothing less than a chase after the past, transposed onto the sound of the late-90s present: techno. Indeed, because that's exactly where much of the nostalgic Foxx's output comes to rest: in the natural evolution of what was once the experimental sound of that era. And the city of Shifting City aligns in parallel with that of Cathedral Oceans: whereas in the latter the musician felt the need to manifest a new emotional universe — detached from that modern, technological city where man and machine coexisted at their best — in the former the attempt instead is to bring back the model of that era and restructure it, not so much to make it workable in the present, but in the hope of a chance granted by the future. We still don't know whether it will arrive, but the musician's commitment will continue.

And for this complex undertaking, Foxx finds he needs a companion for the journey: someone to help him, to give him hope and assist him through the complicated process, someone who believes as much as he does in the possibility of a new techno-city. And this figure mirrors entirely the role of Louis Gordon, the trusty companion-assistant, his Watson, who brings with him his experience in the world of techno.

Shifting City thus sets the fateful starting point for their work together, blending the two men's ambitions in a way that is still rather raw and somewhat superficial. We can therefore find episodes where the results land fully, such as the spectral "The Noise" — the "Plaza" of the new millennium — the long techno odysseys of "Here We Go" and "Shadow Man", and the furious, cathartic anthem of the title track, in which the two seem to urge listeners to join their quest.

In other tracks, however, the machinery still seems to need plenty of oiling: this is the case with the acidic "Crash", which seems to embrace modern trends with too much eagerness, as well as the predictable metallic backwash of "Through My Sleeping" and the sharp acid-house gashes of "Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible" — both, not coincidentally, outtakes from the dismal sessions recorded under the name Nation 12.

Shifting City is the first step on a journey, unable to astonish and strike home the way the contemporaneous Cathedral Oceans did, but the product of an initial break-in period necessary to refine a complex and still-evolving contraption.

The first variation on the theme took a full six years to arrive, materializing in 2003 (once again in parallel with the second chapter of Cathedral Oceans) as The Pleasure Of Electricity. The formula is reaffirmed, but the remedy devised by Foxx and Gordon to make up for the missteps of its predecessor is to scale down the material at hand, keeping ambitions in check while awaiting fuller development: the record thus temporarily sets techno aside and begins restoring the analog sound of old.

Not unlike the contemporaneous “Tour De France Soundtracks” by Kraftwerk in both results and ambitions, the album oscillates between driving, rhythmic synth-pop – in the danceable jabs of “Nightlife” and “Automobile” – and a deep homage to early-80s sonorities, both in the measured marches of “The Falling Room” and “Camera” and in the decadence laid bare in “Uptown/Downtown” and “When It Rains”. In “Invisible Woman”, another outtake from the Nation 12 project, things even tip into self-quotation, with a melodic line echoing “Underpass” in both notes and sound.

Showing a first, genuine sign of maturity are the ouverture-conclusion of “A Funny Thing” and the macabre tableau of “Quiet City”, where the pair seem to become conceptually aware of just where their journey stands, which once again seems slow to take off.

The choice apparently made by Foxx and Gordon to pare down the musical material in order to focus on a more “sober” development of their project's themes doesn't pay off as hoped, yielding an album that is unquestionably more concise and focused than its predecessor, but still unable to leave a mark and move things forward: the time machine still needs some fine-tuning.

But the long-awaited growth is not long in coming: less than a year passes before the two return in force with Crash And Burn, by far their finest achievement. The album resets course along the path charted by Shifting City, but this time finally manages to inject freshness and vitality into the duo's time machine. Almost unexpectedly, gems of retro-modernity arrive, such as the title track, “Sidewalking” and “We Robot”, where sophisticated, properly “modern” architectures are executed with the same sonic outlook that gave birth to Metamatic. “Broken Furniture” and “Dust And Light”, meanwhile, are driven by techno jolts and fresh, pronounced nods to the futurism so dear to our man.

There's also room for the humanoid's earthly song, in the long nursery-rhyme of “Smoke”, and for concessions to direct excursions into the world of technology (the computerized spoken word of “Sex Video”). Rounding out the kaleidoscope, standing apart from the rest, is the hazy vintage-pop of the opening “Drive”, far removed from the robotic alienation of the rest of the record.

Crash And Burn is the first real triumph of two alchemists disguised as robots, who, after some uncertain early steps, finally seem to have found the right path toward their goal – a goal that has meanwhile shifted from reviving the never-realized technological project of the past to a more measured restoration of the sound that defined that era. And the ingredient behind this leap in quality seems to be precisely this: having temporarily set aside conceptual exploration in favor of fully developing the musical side.

Having finally gotten the project off the ground, Foxx and Gordon decide to take a step back and enrich it further, taking a three-year break – interrupted only by a collaboration on the debut album of promising Finnish producer Jori Hukkonen the year before – to prepare for their fourth offering. From Trash arrives only in 2006, and stands as the ideal culmination of their journey.

Largely abandoning the techno flirtations of its predecessors, the album fully embraces the restoration of the sharpest-edged strand of 80s synth-pop: its structures come straight from that era, as do its entirely analog-rooted sounds, while the compositions are steeped in reverb and noise. The themes of the machine and the city also come back into focus: the breakthrough of Crash And Burn seems to have borne fruit, allowing the duo to pick up, more modestly and meticulously, the thread begun with Shifting City and gradually abandoned in subsequent releases. From the technopolitan pop of the title track, of “Another You” and of “Friendly Fire”, the scenarios of that avant-garde metropolis narrated and described twenty years earlier re-emerge; but even more eloquent in this regard are the pulsing traffic of “A Million Cars”, the thunderous construction of “Freeze Frame” and the human scrutiny of “The One Who Walks Through You”, true snapshots taken in that future the two seem to believe in once again. Already in these tracks the connection between temporal dimensions seems finally to work, and the two peaks of the record reveal the full backstory of the mission: in the scientific march of “A Room As Big As A City” one can almost watch the stages of the work unfold before one's eyes, with the room, at first empty and silent, gradually filling with elements until it becomes as vast as the city it's trying to reproduce. The mission is accomplished, the project rebuilt and updated: but “Impossible”, amid distorted guitars and hammering beats, confirms that this model is destined to remain just that, at least for now.

On their fourth attempt, Foxx and Gordon complete their mission, updating the ideas and innovations the former proposed in the early phase of his career, making them at once current and nostalgic. While it can't quite match the sonic freshness of its predecessor Crash And Burn – precisely because of its nature as a work wholly devoted to restoration – From Trash is the album the two had been after since the very start of their partnership, and one that ideally brings their quest full circle.

Even so, the same year still had room for a fifth chapter in the saga: Sideways, a collection of tracks drawn from the From Trash sessions, though more simply thought of as its twin, distinguished from the latter by a greater melodic spontaneity, achieved at the partial expense of exploration. Standing out among the tracks are the artificial, robotic “Neuro Video”, the mechanical breathing of “Underwater”, the sprawling melodicism of “In A Silent Way” and the futurist flow of “X-Ray Vision”.

There's also room for a few genuine “luxury rejects” – like the icy “Car Crash Feedback V2” and the bouncy “Use My Voice”, fully in line with the sound of From Trash – as well as departures from that very style, as in the two tracks that open and close the album: on one hand, the sublime, gentle pace of “And The World Sides Sideways”, on the other, the intangible procession of distorted drones in “Phone Tap”.

The true spontaneous counterpart to From Trash, Sideways – while not adding much to what the duo had already achieved – ultimately proves to be an album of uncommon elegance, one that reveals the compositional purity of Foxx and Gordon, elsewhere pushed into the background in favor of greater attention to sonic exploration. It's also, to date, the album that ideally brings their studio partnership to a close: it would be followed by three live albums (the excellent Live From A Room (As Big As A City), Retro Future and Neuro Video – each named after a track – released in 2006, 2007 and 2008 respectively) and Impossible, a collection of lackluster techno-trance remixes.

Across five albums together, Foxx and Gordon managed to dig up the fossilized branches of 80s electronic innovation and, like two archaeologists, breathe new life into them within the musical landscape of the new millennium, polishing them up and injecting their veins with a surrogate of modern sounds and trends. But Foxx's journey doesn't end here: the latest, most recent step in his career finds him engaged – alongside a new partner in crime – in a further evolution of his formula: from the cyborg of Metamatic to the humanoid of From Trash, he will transform into the robotic singer-songwriter fronting his own band.

Act X – From “Metamatic” to Mathematics

And so we arrive at the latest evolution, the most recent incarnation of a musician still capable of astonishing and shedding his skin more than thirty years after the release of his revolutionary masterpiece. If Metamatic played with the idea of crossing the boundaries of empiricism, this new skin seems instead to want to engage with it and seek, more than ever before, contact between man and machine, whereas previously Foxx had always worked to keep these two sides of his soul well apart. To achieve this, he relies first and foremost on a figure able to bridge present and past: Ben Edwards, better known as Benge, a musician active since the mid-Nineties and best known for his incredible, vast collection of analogue synthesizers, his great passion. A relatively recent name, then, characterised by his ability to combine a modern approach with a firmly analogue grounding.

Their first meeting, which took place back in 2009 when Foxx invited Edwards to take part in one of his concerts, was followed by a series of studio sessions and, a year later, by the official birth of their new joint project: "John Foxx And The Maths", a name that already suggests the bond described above. The Foxx at the centre of the project will thus, ultimately, once again be a humanoid: human in soul but android in body. The themes of technology and the city now seem to have been set aside: what appears before our eyes is a singer-songwriter examining, with the cold eye of a cyborg, the sensations and emotions of the human spirit.

And, after producing a dreamy remix for the debut single "Changeling" by Gazelle Twin, the "Maths" too, following what now seems to have become a tradition, debut with a one-two punch released in quick succession: two similar albums, one an evolution of the other, exactly as happened with Ultravox! and Ha!-Ha!-Ha!.

The first of the two works was released in March 2011, titled Interplay, and is defined by its nature as a transitional record: on one hand still deeply tied to the sonic stylings of the work with Gordon, on the other ready to take flight towards a new path. Tied to the recent past are episodes like the opening robotic fury of "Shatterproof", the nostalgic anthem "Catwalk" and the sinister synth-pop of "Destination": these are genuine connecting links, functioning as tunnels between past experiences and new inspiration. The latter emerges in those tracks where a new tendency begins to surface: a more direct, more sincere "human" approach to composition. In the technological pop song "Evergreen" one can almost hear echoes of The Golden Section, thanks to its marked leaning towards a simple but effective melody, while in the synthetic lullaby "A Falling Star" and in the Kraftwerk homage of the closing "The Good Shadow", serenity takes the place of resignation.

It's the album's two best tracks, however, the title track and "Summerland", that fully reveal Foxx's new nature: melancholy and joy, in a scenario where the machines step aside and merely observe, coexisting peacefully with human beings. Futurism instead returns to the fore on "The Running Man", but here it's presented in a wholly original interpretation, one that places feelings ahead of concepts. This new priority is confirmed in the chilling narrative of "Watching A Building On Fire", featuring vocals from Mira Aroyo of Ladytron: emotion is the subject matter, while its treatment is the mechanical part.

Interplay is the bright, shining portal connecting the alchemist android to the singer-songwriter disguised as a robot: not yet aimed at perfecting and fully welding together the tenets of the new project, but strong in its absolute cohesion, it functions instead as a stylistic and temporal testing ground, an unmatched treatise synthesising the most inspired personalities of the old and the new Foxx.

But it's with the Maths' second offspring, arriving little more than six months after their debut, that the pair settle and consolidate their ambitions. The Shape Of Things keeps the formula unchanged, built around synthesizers and drum machines, with Foxx at the forefront in terms of writing and vocals, and Benge mostly busy operating his beloved gear. But the evolution of this new work lies in its ability to delve even deeper into its human side, almost as if wanting to interface research and tradition, technology and music.

The tracks, without giving up their intimate analogue essence, are thus stripped of the layer of sound that had previously concealed part of their features: now, before anyone who dares to listen even to a single track, there emerges that intimacy which allows us to clearly and confidently define the sonic nature of this new project: techno-writer. Foxx has completed his transmutation and is now the author of lyrics and melodies that are frank and profound, unable to hide their human soul despite retaining an electronic skeleton directly related to past experiences.

What emerges, then, are genuine songs, such as "September Town", a hypnotic little march propelled by a drum machine on top form, the alienating "Rear-View Mirror", genuine, decadent synth-pop able to bring to mind the days of The Golden Section, but also "Tides", a pop-rock number not too far removed from "Pater Noster", and then "Vapour Trails", in which the most Kraftwerk-indebted side of Ultravox returns in extremely close form.

Other episodes follow a similar stylistic path, but become more isolated, venturing beyond the song form, such as the dark, minimal progress of "Unrecognized", one of the album's best episodes, the unhealthy glitch of "Falling Away", the ambient "Invisible Ray" for filtered voice and broad synthetic openings, and the slow, hypnotic "The Shadow Of His Former Self".

Rounding off the record is a series of short instrumentals under Benge's sole command, among which stand out the oblique symmetries of the opening "Spirus", the unshakeable calm of the curious "Modereno" and the electronic Hammond-organ mass of "Buddwing".

The Shape Of Things confirms Foxx's genius more than thirty-five years after his first steps in the world of music, coming remarkably close to proposing a new sound whose fulcrum lies in the symbiosis between singer-songwriter craft and electronic skeleton.

Almost as a surprise, at the close of a superlative tour centred on the tracklists of Metamatic and Interplay, which saw them deliver memorable shows — including those at London's Cargo and at the Roundhouse, the latter documented by the Analogue Circuit box set — John Foxx and his Maths arrive, at the end of 2012, to produce their third album. Initially conceived as a mini-CD containing remixes and a handful of collaborations, Evidence evolved until it took the shape of a full album, thereby taking on an extremely difficult mission: not making listeners miss its two stunning predecessors. The new record not only manages to match that level but even to surpass it further, standing as yet another hugely inspired proof of a band growing ever more in sync and cohesive. The album revives the song-plus-instrumental-interludes structure of The Shape Of Things, but alters its sonic content, carrying it even further away from the world of machines than its predecessor already had. Incredible as it may seem, we are faced with yet another change of skin from this chameleonic musician, who, now nearly seventy, appears to be living through by far the best moment of his entire career.

Goodbye synth-pop, no more techno impulses: replacing them is a sumptuous, dark electronic sound, the fruit also of contributions from numerous high-profile guests. It's the natural conclusion of a surprising process: from rhythmic freshness to atmospheric alienation, passing through electronic intimism. Emblematic in this sense is the wonderful title track, a martial claustrophobia expressed through layers of synths and a liberating vocal, adorned with the apocalyptic touch of Soft Moon: this is the Maths' expressive peak, as well as a thoroughly credible contender for the title of their masterpiece. Pushing things even further are the duets with Gazelle Twin: the self-cover of "A Falling Star" blends ambient and psychedelia, while "Changelings" channels one of this histrionic musician's finest moments into an astral trip among stars and meteors. The same kind of journey is revisited with even more verve on "That Sudden Switch", this time alongside Xeno & Oaklander, perfect in reciting their glacial mantra. Rounding out the roster of guests are Matthew Dear and Tara Busch, both involved in new versions of the unsettling robotic march "Talk", already released on the previous record: the former transliterates it into a smooth trip-hop universe, while the latter heightens its horror quotient, thickening the chill with howls and spectral loops. Left to their own devices, the Maths confirm their worth, drawing once again from the recent past in the technopolitan march of "Walk" and even from the mystical-ambient mood of "My Lost City" in the wonderful "Only Lovers Left Alive". Benge's instrumentals also evolve towards more complex and refined worlds, such as the spatial esotericism of "Neon Vertigo", the sublunar explorations of "Cloud Coreography" and the synthetic desolation of "Shadow Memory" and the opening "Personal Magnetism". In a record that borders on perfection, there's room for only one lesser episode: the electro-freak cover of "Have A Cigar" by Pink Floyd, far-sighted in intent but inconclusive in its final result.

A single slightly off note is certainly not enough to undermine the value of a superb record, one that brings an intensely focused search to its conclusion. Evidence marks, for the Foxx of the new millennium, the achievement of a personal, modern dimension, by now related to his past only through the sound of analogue synthesizers, yet able to hold its own on equal terms with some of the finest musicians on the contemporary scene. It's the boldest, most daring record of the Maths trilogy, decidedly the most fragmented and imperfect, but the most emblematic of their desire to keep moving forward in pursuit of pure artistic taste.

Act XI – European Splendour

In the months that followed, Foxx and Benge continued down a path of gradually widening sonic horizons, keen to keep their blend in close contact with contemporary trends. So, while the synth wizard pressed on in parallel with his solo career through a thematic series of works devoted to dissecting the sounds of vintage analogue synths, the Metamatic imprint also began stamping its mark on the world of remixers. Among those who entrusted the duo with revamps of their own material were two of the foremost representatives of sonic generations that owe much to Metamatic: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and Adult. For the former, Foxx & co. would also open several dates of the European tour that followed their return to the stage, once again joined by their trusty collaborators Hannah Peel and Serafina Steer.

A few months earlier, Rhapsody had also seen the light of day, a document of a fine 2011 studio live session released alongside Exponentialism, an extended play featuring Tara Busch and Gazelle Twin remixes of four classics from the musician's catalogue ("My Sex", "I Want To Be A Machine", "He's A Liquid" and "Never Let Me Go").

In 2012, then, came B-Movie (Ballardian Video Neuronica), a solo tribute to the art of JG Ballard, long one of the crucial influences on Foxx.

It's a collection conceived as a double sequence of identical tracks: in the first ("B-Movie") the pieces are interspersed with ambient noise and flow into one another without interruption; in the second ("Ballardian Video Neuronica"), the individual tracks are instead kept separate, with the addition of "Dashboard Melt".

The record alternates rarefied ambient atmospheres with more rhythmic, epic pieces. Analogue synths dominate the solemn "Velocity Logic" and the livelier "Crash Course", close in spirit to New Order, while "Disaster Series" seduces with its dark, dystopian sound. In the end, mankind destroys itself and nature reclaims the planet on "The Other Side", with birdsong, ambient piano and voices drifting from empty houses, as buildings and cars are swallowed up by vegetation and vanish.

While Benge kept churning out solo work at a furious pace, towards the end of 2013 Foxx reappeared with an EP made in collaboration with Jori Hulkkonen, who had already hosted him on his "Dislocated" eight years earlier, and which also featured David Lynch as a remixer.

European Splendour might only seem, on the surface, like a dispassionate tribute to the Europe already celebrated in its decadence on The Garden, and musically it picks up right where Evidence had left off the previous year, from a hybrid of electro-writer songcraft and languid ambient nebulae, this time entrusted to the warm house-music veins of the Finnish producer. "Evangeline", the standout track offered in no fewer than four different versions, is a gorgeous nocturne for a continent now at dusk, where the now-classic analogue sounds run headlong into muted currents, as the rays of an increasingly dim, weary sun slowly fade from the tips of skyscrapers. The master of cinematic surrealism finds in this picturesque, evocative music fertile ground for setting his images in a possible future: tense and anguished on the "Remix", deserted and now abandoned to the triumph of artifice on the "Instrumental". The ode to solitude of the darker "Strictly" tempers the tension experienced alongside Matthew Dear, before "Something Is Coming Down The Avenues" reaches the record's psycho-dramatic peak, in an emotional catharsis that lines up directly with Soft Moon. The intricate farewell of "Can't See You Anymore" marks a departure from the duo's usual soundworld, with electric piano guiding a seven-minute trail of nostalgia that for once pulls away from city and technology, surrendering to pure feeling.

European Splendour is a deliciously tantalising taste of a probable future full-length collaboration between the "master" and the artist who makes the strongest case for being his favourite disciple, for the day when the late Dennis Leigh eventually stops churning out wonders every couple of years. But, "unfortunately" for Hulkkonen and for the good fortune of music, that moment looks to be a long, long way off.

Tireless and insatiable, the genius from Chorley continued exploring beyond his own world, putting his name to yet another EP less than a month later. Empty Avenues (2013) came about as the debut outing of Belburry Circle, an impromptu duo formed by Jim Jupp (aka Belbury Poly) and Jon Brooks (aka The Advisory Circle), respectively the founder and one of the mainstays of Ghost Box Records, a label active in the field of library music. The sonic reference point running through the record actually strays quite far from the label's usual aesthetic, drawing closer instead to Foxx's collaborations with Louis Gordon: it returns to an amorphous, lush form of synth-pop, though the electro-writer strand of Maths resurfaces on the title track, a potential outtake from The Shape Of Things, and the only piece here that can be attributed without a shadow of doubt to Foxx's singular mind (albeit co-credited with Jupp). The same pairing also signs off on the closing, multicoloured little march of "Time Of Your Life", whose pop soul is shared with the buzzing, delightful "Almost There". A relaxed mood, an organic approach and a love of gentle rhythms and drum machines prove to be the defining traits of the Belburry Circle sound, replacing the technopolitan psychodramas of Foxx the electro-singer-songwriter, who on "The Right Path" stays off the credits altogether, limiting himself to a dreamlike liturgy that, for the first time in years, recalls the isolated visions of Mirrorball. Closing the account is "Suit", another delicate, sweet watercolour built on swells of synth, with a romantic aftertaste laced with electronics that had long been missing from the roll call.

And although Empty Avenues perhaps lacks that extra spark, that atmosphere with which it is now inevitable to identify the figure of Dennis Leigh, that variety of sonic solutions united by an unmistakable style, it's nevertheless a pleasant, nostalgic and highly distinctive episode, one that probably benefits more than a little from its brief running time.

Next came the collaboration with Steve D'Agostino on Evidence Of Time Travel (2014). An exercise in retrofuturist, claustrophobic analogue electronics, the ideal soundtrack for crumbling metropolises, between industrial clangs and driving drum machines, steeped in minimal wave atmospheres. The standout is above all the opening "The Forbidden Experiment", the record's manifesto, alongside the disorienting title ballad and the stellar "Rhapsody In Flames".

A year later came London Overgrown (2015). Not a conventional pop album, but rather a composition that unfolds as a single musical work in ten movements. The project imagines London transformed into a city overrun by nature, with each track representing a piece of this apocalyptic scenario.

The opening track, "Oceanic II", sets the tone with slow, sumptuous movements; "The Beautiful Ghost" plays with low and high registers, staging a reflection with two distinct voices, while the title track introduces new instrumental shadings. On "A Small Revolving World", those voices are reduced to just one, offering a simpler contrast.

As the album progresses, the music grows darker and more intense, culminating in "City Of Mirage", a heavy, sinister track that distorts the listener's perception of sound, while the closing "Imaginary Music" turns towards more optimistic, contemplative tones.

London Overgrown is an immersive, hypnotic soundtrack to an imagined apocalypse, marked by an unsettling beauty and an oppressive depth.

Then comes the return to The Maths project, which materializes two years later with the album The Machine (2017). Originally conceived as the soundtrack for a stage production based on E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops", the record picks up the story's unsettling atmosphere, portraying a world in which humanity has lost the ability to live in open spaces, with everyone holed up in a kind of isolation beneath the Earth's surface. The dark spell is eventually broken by Vashti and her son Kuno, the story's protagonists.

Accompanying Forster's dystopian tale are ambient textures and minimal, musique concrète-indebted compositions of considerable emotional impact, enriched by the atmospheric vocals of Elizabeth Bernholz (Gazelle Twin) and Foxx himself.

Was there ever any doubt that, sooner or later, John Foxx would end up looking back? Yes. And indeed, even when the moment for nostalgia arrives, Foxx tackles it his own way. By shuffling the deck. And yet the basic idea behind Howl (2020) can't have been too far removed from a return to that golden era in which Foxx was a pioneer. Reclaiming the "song form", brining Robin Simon back on board on guitars, for what is the closest thing to an Ultravox reunion ever to happen within The Maths project. The desire to feel that thrill again, that pull toward something distant, something far away - this time even frozen within his own past. Perhaps the time was finally right for The Maths to bring a particular journey to completion. And so, off we go with eight tracks that vibrate with that futurist, romantic era at every turn.

But, true to form, Foxx isn't one for revivalism for its own sake, and he coats the whole sound in a swaying, mechanical haze. A distant, processed sound. An echo scattered through deep space, like a signal received from a spacecraft communicating near a Black Hole. And from deep space, Major Tom himself seems to wave hello, joining the party: the guitars on Howl sound as if they'd stepped straight out of "Scary Monsters". Foxx himself often sings in registers remarkably close to David Bowie. Particularly striking is his performance on "Strange Beauty", which closes the album, almost as if he were finally dropping the mask.

There are synthetic ballads: the heroic "Everything Is Happening At The Same Time", and the crepuscular "The Dance". There's even a moment that brushes up against gothic intent in "Tarzan And Jane Regained", carried throughout by Robin Simon's "sick", swirling guitar, almost indebted to Sisters Of Mercy. Here Foxx even edges toward an unforgettable figure of American goth like Rozz Williams. The disturbed futurism of "My Ghost" and the shadowy stride of "New York Times" round out a surprising record.

The contributions of trusted collaborators Benge and Hannah Peel are once again present, and Benge is probably the main force behind the album's signature sound, one that will end up pushing listeners toward a firm stance one way or the other. But it's equally worth pointing out that, besides Benge, the tracks are credited to Foxx himself and to Simon, who was also fully involved in the writing.

This is Mister Foxx's way of looking back, his way of coming to terms with nostalgia. Reclaiming that futurist spirit without betraying it, projecting it into a record that genuinely seems to arrive from the past, yet resurfaces in 2020 like a "howl" filtered through some strange time portal opening up somewhere out there, deep in space.

Two years later, on The Marvellous Notebook (2022), the British artist tries his hand at spoken word, reading from his 2020 book "The Quiet Man", a collection of stories written over forty years exploring the parallel world of the enigmatic Quiet Man figure.

Piano-led and inspired by Walter Benjamin's philosophical works, with reference to the arcades of Paris, The Arcades Project (2023) transcends mere listening experience, venturing into the realm of deeper emotional exploration. Foxx makes minimal yet touching use of ambient electronics that accompany the piano without overwhelming it. The careful attention to pacing, including the silences between notes, amplifies the emotional depth. Tracks like "Last Golden Light" and "Lovers And Strangers" offer the finest evidence of this, turning space itself into a feature of the music.

If The Howl, the 2020 album with The Maths, had a more aggressive, analogue style, The Arcades Project marks a shift toward a softer, more ambient tone, highlighting a desire to explore different sonic landscapes. A meditative refuge from the chaos of the world, through a reflective, timeless experience.

On the heels of the previous piano-based project, the same year also brings Avenham (2023), which transports us to one of Foxx's favourite places from his childhood and adolescence: the city-centre district of Preston, which includes landmarks such as the Harris Museum and the Harris Institute. The latter is depicted on the album cover, its trees merging with the majestic entrance staircase.

The record is a solo project in every sense, with all instruments played by Foxx, starting with the enveloping synthesizers that, in a magnificent orchestral style, permeate the entire tracklist.

From the opening "On Waking" all the way to the refined title track, the album flows like a perpetual spell, wrapping the listener in the electronic enchantment that runs through it. "Dream Through Trees" does almost exactly what its title promises, while "A Murmuration" is a sublime, ambient-leaning celestial score.

"Avenham is a real place," Foxx explains, "which is also mythical, like the gates of Eden. So the music is likewise hazy and impressionistic: a vision of a moment that occurs in almost everyone's life, when the world becomes a radiant place of infinite mystery and promise and everything seems possible."

Outro – The adventure continues…

Over the course of his long career, the genius from Chorley has been able to anticipate the new wave trend and launch its romantic side, inspiring countless bands and artists, both contemporaries and those who came after him. He has known how to let himself be eroded by the desire for fame, glory and success, but also how to stop, reflect and start over again. And then again, to chart with real personality musical territories far removed from those he'd explored in the past, to skillfully revisit outdated trends and bring them back into fashion, almost without feeling the years that separated them. Those years, now sixty-three, whose weight he seems not to feel in the slightest, to the point of still being able to produce work today that looks forward, that aspires and探ores, experiments and theorizes. But above all, in these thirty-five years Foxx has been able to win hearts and stir emotion. And this is perhaps the greatest achievement of an adventure that still promises to astonish: mixing raw punk and glam, dressing up as a robot, suddenly stripping bare or donning the robes of a pagan priest, his aim has always been to strike the heart rather than the mind, to have every single note of his songs spring from emotion rather than concept. A formula with few precedents, one that has almost always worked to the fullest. The formula of a humanoid with a noble heart.

Content supervision by Marco Bercella.

Thanks to Marco for the work done and the help given to me; to Federica Martini, Massimo Ferraroni, Luca Borioni, Massimiliano Stazi, Mark Davis, Roger Marchi and all the friends from the Italian fan page for the information, suggestions and "vintage" materials.

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