Metamatic
| Metamatic | |||||
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| Studio album by John Foxx | |||||
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Publication |
17th January 1980 |
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| Label (s) | Metal Beat, Virgin Records | ||||
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Format (s) |
CD, LP |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
38:29 |
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| occupation |
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John Foxx |
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Studio (s) |
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Metamatic is the debut album by British musician John Foxx after breaking up with Ultravox . It was released on Virgin Records in January 1980 . Commercially it was rather moderately successful. The sound of the album, lyrically influenced by James Graham Ballard , inspired numerous musicians. Metamatic is considered to be one of the first electronic albums by a British artist and an early work of minimal electro . The minimalist sound influenced electro funk and early hip-hop in New York, the development of techno in Detroit and is a stylistic forerunner for music under the collective name electronica .
History of origin
During his time with Ultravox , fragments and finished songs of the titles published on the album were created. In addition to Touch and Go , He's a Liquid and Radio Beach, which was not released on the album, were performed live on a US tour by Ultravox in early 1979. The title Touch and Go and the piece Mr X used by Ultravox for the album Vienna ( Chrysalis 1980) have similarities in the melody line, while the lyrics and the rhythms have experienced clear differences through independent development.
Frustrated by touring and the need for compromises within the band, Foxx separated from Ultravox in March 1979 and worked on compositions for a solo album. Together with the band, for their third album Systems of Romance ( Iceland 1978) with titles like Dislocation or Just For a Moment, he had developed a sound that was felt to be cold and sterile and produced exclusively with synthetically generated sounds. The same synthesizers as the band were used for the sound on the album. In addition to Robert Moog's Minimoog and Alan Robert Perlman's ARP Odyssey , Foxx used a CompuRhythm 78 rhythm machine from the Japanese company Roland.
Since Foxx embodied the role of songwriter and singer at Ultravox rather than that of an accomplished instrumentalist, he was assisted on the keyboards by John Wesley-Barker. Foxx had met Wesley-Barker through Gareth Jones , who worked as a sound engineer at Pathway Studios and was friends with Wesley-Barker. With Jake Durant, another friend of Jones, on the electric bass, the album also contains some electroacoustic sounds.
admission
Foxx chose the small but record label independent Pathway Studio on Grosvenor Avenue in the Islington district of London to record Metamatic . The 8-track studio opened in 1970 by Mike Finesilver and Peter Ker in a garage had several punk and new wave musicians who were under contract with the independent label Stiff Records , such as The Damned ( Damned, Damned, Damned , Stiff 1977) and Elvis Costello ( My Aim is True , Stiff 1977) recorded their debut albums.
After Foxx had learned the necessary skills in studio technology and music production from Brian Eno , Steve Lillywhite and Conny Plank , the co-producers for Ultravox's first three albums, he produced his debut album himself. Like Foxx , Gareth Jones, from Lancashire in the north of England , sat as a freelance sound engineer in the Pathway Studio at the mixer. Jones began his career as a sound engineer and music producer with the album Metamatic after a recording for the Madness single The Prince (Two-Tone Records, 1979) produced by Clive Langer . Jones moved from Pathway to the Foxx-founded recording studio The Garden in Shoreditch in 1981 . In The Garden studio, Jones oversaw the single Love in Itself for Depeche Mode and recorded the album Construction Time Again (Mute 1983), with which he initiated Depeche Mode's industrial phase. Through his relationship with Annette Humpe , he moved from The Garden to the Hansa recording studios in Berlin.
The album was mixed at Eric Stewart's and Graham Gouldman's ( 10cc ) Strawberry Studios in Stockport by Jones.
content
Even before the album was created, Foxx was intensively concerned with the works of the British writer James Graham Ballard , who in novels such as Crash (Jonathan Cape, 1973) and High-Rise (Jonathan Cape, 1975) explored the psychological effects of technological upheavals on people and society is thematized. As with some of Ultravox's lyrics, such as My Sex (1977) or Maximum Acceleration (1978), Foxx's poetry combines this psychological element with Ballard's typical architectural descriptions of urban landscapes to create filmic motifs that deal with anonymity and alienation.
"Across the Plaza / Toward the shadow of the cenotaph / Down escalators, come to the sea-view / Behind the smoked glass no-one sees you"
"Across the square / to the shadow of the memorial / down the escalator, come to the sea view / nobody sees you behind the smoked glass"
For some song texts, Foxx uses the cut-up style used in some works by William S. Burroughs and Ballard (the linguistic fragmentation into snippets and subsequent reassembly).
"Standing in the dark / Watching you glow / Lifting a receiver / Nobody I know"
"Standing in the dark / looking at your glow / lifting the phone / nobody I know"
Ballard influenced numerous British musicians in the late 1970s: music producer Daniel Miller founded the label Mute with the title Warm Leatherette of his project The Normal . The title alludes to Ballard's motif of sexual arousal from car accidents in the novel Crash . Gary Numan used the same motif for the song Cars . Cars appeared on the album The Pleasure Principle ( Beggars Banquet Records , 1979) just months before Metamatic. The song Atrocity Exhibition on the album Closer ( Factory Records , 1980) by Joy Division shares the title with the collection of short stories of the same name by the British author from 1969.
The album title Metamatic does not refer to Ballard, but to a series of generative art published between 1955 and 1959 by the Swiss painter and sculptor Jean Tinguely called Métamatics. Tinguely Métamatics called machine set forth drawn art. Foxx began his artistic career as a painter, who turned more and more to music since the early 1970s. Although the sound of the album was mostly produced synthetically, it was composed by a human. The only generative moment on Metamatic is the use of a sequencer . Brian Eno used the generative art term generative music for system-controlled music . Eno initially worked as a painter himself before turning to music. The co-producer of Ultravox's debut album has been known with Foxx since he was a student at the Royal College of Art in London through their mutual friend and artist Russell Mills .
Publication and chart success
Foxx founded a special music label together with Richard Branson's company Virgin Records for the publication . The company was named after the song of the same name Metal Beat Records and is a sub-label of Virgin Records. Virgin took over the marketing and distribution of the album and released Metamatic on January 17, 1980, a week after the lead single Underpass . The album reached the British charts in February 1980, where it was 18 and lasted seven weeks. It is Foxx's most commercially successful album.
The tracks Underpass and No-One Driving were extracted as singles from the album . Underpass was released on January 4, 1980, reached # 31 in the UK Top 40 in February and lasted 8 weeks. No-One Driving reached 32nd place in March 1980 and lasted four weeks.
The singles Burning Car and Miles Away , which did not appear on the album, also reached the British singles charts in 1980. Burning Car ranked 35th in July and Miles Away 51st in November.
Foxx used the proceeds from the album to set up its own recording studio. Foxx produced three more solo albums in the studio known as The Garden before selling the studio to Matt Johnson of The The in 1985 . The studio has been part of the Miloco Group since the mid-1990s.
reception
John Bush reviewed Metamatic for the music database Allmusic and gave an album pick. The album just missed the maximum rating with four and a half points. Bush thinks Foxx cultivates a strange touch of disinterest on the album, but it never really comes across as boring. Metamatic is still among the best of the fascination for emotionless, Kraftwerk-inspired synth pop that was typical of the early 1980s.
Simon Reynolds notes in his book Rip It Up and Start Again that Foxx got involved with Metamatic from Numanmania (the time in Gary Numan and his project Tubeway Army with the albums Replicas and The Pleasure Principle as well as the smash hits Are Friends Electric? And Cars die Hit parades dominated in Great Britain). He emphasizes the richly pictorial texts, which resemble fragments of an avant-garde script and whose film-like properties have already shimmered through on some of the early Ultravox songs.
Although not commercially successful in America, the album influenced numerous innovative American musicians. The New York DJ Afrika Bambaataa founded with the combination of radio and recourse to the electronic sounds of European artists we Kraftwerk , Gary Numan and John Foxx with Planet Rock ( Tommy Boy Records , 1986) next to George Clinton to Electrofunk . Metamatic later also had an impact on pioneers from the techno environment, such as the Detroit techno co- founder Juan Atkins , the music producer Carl Craig and the British techno DJ Dave Clarke. Pioneers of intelligent dance music such as the electronica artist Aphex Twin and Paul Daley from Leftfield were also influenced by Foxx. Other influences from Metamatic can be heard with the electro-pop band Ladytron , guitarist John Frusciante ( A Sphere in the Heart of Silence , with Josh Klinghoffer , Record Collection 2004) and the indie bands Klaxons and Junior Boys.
Track list
Original publication
All titles were composed and written by John Foxx.
- Plaza - 3:52
- He's a Liquid -2:59
- Underpass - 3:53
- Metal Beat - 2:59
- No-One Driving - 3:45
- A New Kind of Man - 3:38
- Blurred Girl - 4:16
- 030 - 3:14
- Tidal Wave - 4:14
- Touch and Go - 5:38
Remastered Version: Metamatic (Expanded Version)
In November 2007, the Demon-Edsel music label released a digitally remastered new edition consisting of two CDs. The first CD is the original album and the second CD contains ten additional titles, such as the single Burning Car , various single B-sides and three alternative versions:
- Film One - 4:03
- This City - 3:08
- To be With You - 4:24
- Cinemascope - 3:27
- Burning Car - 3:16
- Mica - 3:38
- Mr No - 3:19
- Young Love - 3:10
- 20th Century - 3:09
- My Face - 3:21
- Like a Miracle (Alternative Version) - 3:56
- A New Kind of Man (Alternate Version) - 4:32
- He's a Liquid (Alternative Version) - 3:00
Individual evidence
- ↑ John Wesley-Barker Biography. In: johnwesleybarker.com. Retrieved May 19, 2013 .
- ^ Pathway Studios. (No longer available online.) In: philsbooks.com. Archived from the original on January 8, 2013 ; accessed on May 19, 2013 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Session transcript Madrid 2011. In: redbullmusicacademy.com. Retrieved May 21, 2013 .
- ^ Gareth Jones Discography 1983. In: garethjones.com. Retrieved May 19, 2013 .
- ^ Brian Eno: Generative Music. In: inmotionmagazine.com. June 8, 1996, accessed May 19, 2012 .
- ↑ a b c d UK chart tracking John Foxx. In: chartarchive.org. Retrieved May 19, 2013 .
- ^ History - The Miloco story so far ... In: milocostudios.com. Retrieved May 21, 2013 .
- ^ John Bush: Metamatic - John Foxx: Songs, Credits, Reviews, Awards: Allmusic. In: allmusic.com. Rovi Corp, accessed May 19, 2013 .
- ↑ Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up And Start Again . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2007, ISBN 978-3-85445-270-6 , p. 338 f . (Chapter 17 Electric Dreams: Synthie Pop ).
- ↑ a b JOHN FOXX WEEK: Leftfield's Paul Daley discusses new Foxx collaboration. (No longer available online.) In: artrocker.tv. September 21, 2011, archived from the original on November 5, 2013 ; accessed on May 19, 2013 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b John Foxx. In: theagencygroup.com. Retrieved May 19, 2013 .
