John Foxx And The Maths

Ancona is a peculiar city and, in some ways, a strange one. One of Italy's most important seaports, it's split evenly between a historic centre that's rather out of the way, almost "peripheral", and its true beating heart: a maze of docks from which dozens of ships of every kind set sail daily, from ferries to oil tankers, from cargo ships to cruise liners. And there, nestled among the canals and cranes of the shipyards, stands an ancient building with centuries of history behind it, perhaps the most famous structure in the whole city: the Mole Vanvitelliana.

This is, without a doubt, an atypical location, chosen by the members of the city's Arci club to host Acusmatiq 7.0, a festival now in its seventh edition and capable of drawing in musicians of international standing. Last year it was the turn of Oval and Alva Noto, and before that Robin Guthrie and Murcof; this year the organisers have opted for two of the most representative figures from two landmark eras - glitch and new wave - who surely need no introduction: Christian Fennesz and John Foxx.

And it's the long-lived genius from Chorley himself who delivers a stunning performance, in front of a rather modest audience that barely reaches five hundred people.

We were talking about Foxx. Well into his sixties, and with no intention of stepping aside, of abandoning or wrapping up a career that has been and continues to be stratospheric, or of giving up on musical research and experimentation. No indeed: Foxx is, and wants to remain, a great musician, through records churned out with enviable prolificacy, projects, concerts, autographs and chats with fans. He doesn't seem to want to shy away even from the latter — a nightmare for many artists — carrying himself with that English gentlemanly manner that is never narcissistic or haughty. Nor is he lacking in grit: he flatly refuses to talk about Ultravox, happier instead to tell anecdotes about how he met Benge, the other half of the "Maths" — with whom last year he produced two of the most interesting and successful chapters of his career — who accompany him on stage here in the Marche region.

After a long and extremely meticulous soundcheck — free admission for fans, and after which Foxx makes himself available for the first time for autographs and photos — the musicians retreat around 6pm: the concert is due to start at 9pm, but after the now customary half-hour delay, the one who appears on stage, armed with just two laptops, is a little-known Italian artist. It's Fabio Perletta aka Øe, a sound designer mixing essential glitch with placid ambient flows and a pulsing drone heart: a formula that's not exactly "new", blending Alva Noto, Vladislav Delay and Pan American. His performance, musically interesting, is unfortunately marred by a flat, empty visual backdrop and by two technical glitches: the first causes a ten-minute pause and some amusement in the crowd, while at the second the artist gives up, gloomily leaving the stage amid jokes from the audience (someone suggests it's a tribute to John Cage's 4'33").

A good half hour more must pass, enlivened by a few excerpts from Wendy Carlos's "Switched-On Bach", before the band takes the stage: the first to come on are Benge (electronic percussion and laptop), Hannah Peel (keyboards and violin) and Serafina Steer (bass and synthesizers), while Foxx makes everyone wait a few minutes longer. Greeted with huge applause, he leaves the stage just minutes after coming on, only to return fully dressed in black. Absent-mindedness, or English humour? It hardly matters, once the fury of "Shatterproof" kicks off proceedings with five minutes of techno-rock convulsions. The man is on fire, and the crowd follows suit, greeting with fervour the powerful beats drilling into their ears, aided by top-quality acoustics. There's barely time to catch a breath before the first classic arrives: "He's A Liquid" is played exactly as we remembered it, languid and restless, amid martial surges and analogue wounds that feel almost more oblique than the original, and are heightened by the entrance of the violin. His voice already proves to be in dazzling form, and does even better on the following "Evergreen" — altered and doubled through the usual vocoder — which advances, sticking clingingly to its electro-pop groove, rounding off a stunning opening trio.

What the live setting gives to the music is a more direct, honest, "human" approach: formality set aside in favour of emotional conquest, of pure engagement. The formula pays off, acting as a time machine and breathing new life into compositions that sound utterly current even nearly thirty years after their conception. In the pairing of "No-One Driving" and "The Running Man", the epigone becomes explosive and overpowering, with a spectacular showing from the metronomic Benge on percussion, in a crossing of present and past: the first track skips along almost held back, itself extremely "modern", while the second lets its full shock-force pour out, rocketing off amid discharges and futurism. And Foxx seems almost torn: on one hand he tries not to let himself go, staying true to the man-machine retro-futurist line; on the other he throws himself into the interpretation, as if wanting to let his feelings show through the performance rather than by moving around the stage.

The first "reflective" moment arrives with the abstraction of "The Shadow Of His Former-Self", the only track drawn from the wonderful "The Shape Of Things", which grips in its mentalist hold between dissonance and lament, channelled into an incredible pathos before, greeted fervently by the audience, "Hiroshima Mon Amour" arrives: the sax is missing, but the romantic-decadent character remains intact, thanks to Foxx's stellar vocal performance and the band's sonic perfection. Serenity and emotion are unaffected by the thirty years behind this timeless song, whose charm is impossible to resist even for the ex-frontman, generally reluctant to reminisce about his past with the band but unable to pass up a track marked by such extraordinary expressive power: he too seems to want to stop, to dissolve that barrier separating him from the past. The audience finds itself in front of one of the masterpieces of the entire new wave, and seems well aware of it, falling into reverent silence throughout the performance. It's a parade of memories and present-day relevance, as shown by the main protagonists of the setlist: the masterpiece "Metamatic", Foxx's first great solo album, and the recent "Interplay", the founding chapter of the Maths saga.

After the "pause", along comes a stark, spine-chilling triptych: "A New Kind Of Man"-"Plaza"-"Watching A Building On Fire". The sequence seems almost deliberate: the energetic wounds of the new, technological man, who finds himself in the surreal hypnosis of a faded, unsettling square, before being moved by its very decay. Once again, the live sound takes shape, blazing red-hot in the first, chilling in the second, and emotionally overwhelming in the third. And to close things off, as if that weren't enough, along comes "Dislocation" too: vocally understated, it's perhaps the worst-performed track and the only one open to criticism, the only one that falls short. Mechanical yet moving, on the other hand, is the title track of "Interplay", the desperate song of an alchemist: the voice, framed only by whispers, can express itself freely in all its purity, and the effect is grandiose.

The rhythm comes back into play with "Catwalk", buried beneath the vocoder, before sinking romantically into the splendid "Summerland" and into the surprise of the evening: "Just For A Moment", the sweet, quiet closing track of the masterpiece "Systems Of Romance", meaning once again just Foxx and his voice amid the tinkling of Benge's drums. The closer is certainly no less unexpected: icy, thunderous and explosive, "Burning Car" is also dusted off, an outtake from "Metamatic" featured on the EP of the same name, after which the band leaves the stage, before returning for the "customary" encore.

This opens with the Kraftwerk-esque tribute of "The Good Shadow", before fading into the epic, eagerly awaited farewell of the masterpiece "Underpass": greeted with huge applause by the crowd, Foxx lets loose his last remaining energy, recreating the movements and poses shown to us in the video, with highways and neon lights in black and white alternating in the background. Within this thirty-year-old vision of postmodernity, faithfully mirrored in today's technology-and-information-driven society, lies the very cream of his music, instilled and indelible in the energy unleashed by the synths, blasted "full throttle" in unison with the formidable melody of the chorus. And that's how it ends.

It ends with the music, but it carries on beneath the stage: just enough time to change, and here he is again for autographs and photos, ready to spend a good hour or so chatting with that small but loyal audience that keeps following him even here in Italy. The same audience lucky enough to witness a stunning concert, whose memory will remain indelible for every spectator.

Photos courtesy of jumbled-factory.com

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