John Foxx

John Foxx (2008)

John Foxx (* 26. September 1947 in Chorley as Dennis Leigh ) is an English musician and graphic designer .

Early years

John Foxx was born Dennis Leigh in 1947 in Chorley , North West England. His father worked as a miner and boxer, his mother as a mill worker. He attended St. Mary's Elementary School and St. Augustine's High School for Boys in Chorley, followed by Art College in Preston. He then began studying at the Royal College of Art in London, where he moved permanently in 1975. In 1976 he completed his studies.

Career

He began his career in 1973, still as an art and graphic design student, in the glam rock band Tiger Lily. Influenced by the emergence of punk , Tiger Lily changed her style in 1976, away from glam rock and towards a fusion of punk and new wave, and from then on called herself Ultravox ! Leigh was the creative head of the group and brought his interest in science fiction and a European perspective on music to the band. He took the stage name "John Foxx". For Leigh this was not just a name, but an alternative identity that should help him to counteract the overwhelming demands of being a musician.

"I needed someone more intelligent, better looking, better lit and more capable of dealing with mayhem."

"I needed someone who was smarter than me, better looking, more inspired, and better able to deal with all the chaos."

- John Foxx

Between 1977 and 1978 Ultravox released three LPs (initially with and later without exclamation marks in the band name), produced by Steve Lillywhite , Brian Eno and Conny Plank , among others , and in the course of time reduced punk in favor of electronic elements. Systems of Romance , published in 1978, is considered to be the first synth-pop album.

In 1979 Foxx left Ultravox after completing a self-financed US tour to pursue a solo career. He signed a recording deal with Virgin Records and released his first solo album Metamatic in 1980 , which reached number 18 on the UK album charts. The label was called "Metal Beat Records" - all Foxx albums were released under this label during the Virgin era. Three more albums followed by 1985. During this time Foxx set up his own studio called The Garden , in which he a. a. Siouxsie and the Banshees , The Cure and Depeche Mode produced. In 1983 he wrote parts of the film music for Michelangelo Antonioni's identification of a woman . This year he did a few more live appearances, which he then stopped for 14 years.

In 1985 Foxx lost interest in music, sold his studio to Matt Johnson of The The and focused on his career as a graphic designer. Among other things, he designed the book covers of Des Mauren's Last Sigh ( Salman Rushdie ) and A Dead Man in Deptford ( Anthony Burgess ).

Around 1990 he started working again in the field of music, influenced by the acid house scene that had emerged in London. Together with u. a. Tim Simenon from Bomb The Bass founded the Nation 12 (also: Nation XII) project, created the music for two computer games by Bitmap Brothers (Speedball 2 (1990) and Gods (1991)) under this label and released two acid house- EPs. For the techno duo LFO he worked as a director for the music video for the play of the same name. At the same time, he was teaching graphic design at Leeds Metropolitan University.

In 1997 Foxx released two new albums after a long break and performed live again after a break of 14 years. Since then he has been continuously active and sometimes released several albums a year. In addition to solo albums, she has released collaborative albums with Louis Gordon, Steve D'Agostino, Steve Jansen, Robin Guthrie, Harold Budd and Theo Travis .

Foxx has been working with London-based musician and producer Benge since 2009 . The musical output of the two operates under the label John Foxx and the Maths . In 2015 he was involved in the soundtrack of the documentary Blue Velvet Revisited by German director Peter Braatz .

Private

Foxx has a son, John (* 1985), who works as a multimedia artist under the pseudonym Karborn . In July 2014, John Foxx was awarded an honorary doctorate from Edge Hill University in the UK. He lives in Bath .

plant

Metamatic marks a development step because it has now done without all non-electronic instruments with the exception of a few bass sequences. Pieces with emphasis on rhythm dominate ( Blurred Girl ); the fragmentary melodies serve more as an atmospheric background ( The Plaza ). In general, the album is regarded as a prime example of “cold” pop, which reflects the contrast between the warm inside and the cold (technical) outside world. The release Underpass is still considered the best known solo piece by Foxx to this day.

The Garden (1981), on the other hand, already proclaims the romantic tendency of the following two albums, but also takes up motifs from the final phase of his time at Ultravox ( Systems of Romance ). For the first time, some editions also included Foxx's graphic works of art.

The Golden Section (1983) marks the continuation of this development. In addition to meditative-melancholic pieces in the style of The Garden ( Ghosts on Water , Twilight's Last Gleaming ), there are also catchy pop hymns ( Your Dress , Endlessly ).

This development finds its climax in the album In Mysterious Ways (1985), which features lavishly produced pop songs ( Enter the Angel 1 , Stars on Fire ) as well as lovely, romantic musical epics ( Morning Glory , Enter the Angel 2 ). shines.

In 1985 and 1987, Foxx produced and composed pieces for Anne Clark's LPs Pressure Points and Hopeless Cases , although some songs ( Alarm Call ) are musically reminiscent of the In-Mysterious Ways phase.

Shifting City (1997, in cooperation with Louis Gordon) takes up motifs from Metamatic , but mixes them with influences from the nineties, while Cathedral Oceans is more of an experiment in terms of ambient . This was followed by The Pleasures of Electricity (2001), Cathedral Oceans II (2003), Crash and Burn (2003) and Translucence / Drift Music (2003) , which was again very much reduced to the rhythm .

In 2005 there were four releases: Cathedral Oceans III (August 8th), Mr. No , reissued by New Religion and only available as vinyl, as well as the 12 "maxi-single Free Robot on Hydrogen D in cooperation with the Metamatics (September 5th) The album Electrofear from his project Nation 12 was released, which he had already produced in 1989/90 with Tim Simenon from Bomb the Bass and which was previously unreleased.

The instrumental album Tiny Color Movies was released in mid-2006, and another co-production with Louis Gordon called From Trash at the end of the year . In mid-2009, in collaboration with a founding member of the Cocteau Twins , Robin Guthrie, the album Mirrorball , characterized by extremely gentle melodic vocal lines, followed , which has a clear musical relationship with earlier works by the Cocteau Twins.

Discography

→ Main article : John Foxx / Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChartsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)	Remarks
		UK
1980	Metamatic	UK18 (7 weeks) UK
1981	The Garden	UK24 (6 weeks) UK
1983	The Golden Section	UK27 (3 weeks) UK
1985	In Mysterious Ways	UK85 (1 week) UK
2020	Howl	UK80 (... weeks) UK	with The Maths

Web links

• The Quiet Man Blog (current official website)
• Metamatic (older official site with forum)
• John Foxx at Allmusic (English)
• John Foxx at Discogs (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Allmusic.com: John Foxx: Biography. Retrieved September 29, 2019 . 
2. ^ John Foxx: systems of romance , factmag.com
3. ^ History of Ultravox
4. ^ John Foxx Q&A
5. ↑ Jonathan Wright: Future Rock . In: Classic Pop . October 2019, p. 39.
6. ↑ Interview with Warren Cann
7. ↑ Nation 12 at Discogs
8. ^ Della Vallance: Art & Music: Making It . In: Momentum . , P. 15.
9. ↑ LATimes.com: Review: Experimental doc 'Blue Velvet Revisited' digs deep on David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece. Retrieved August 10, 2020 . 
10. ↑ John Leigh on Designboom.com
11. ^ Announcement from Edge Hill University
12. ^ CompaniesHouse.gov.uk: Metamatic LLP. Retrieved September 5, 2017 . 
13. ↑ Chart sources: UK