Shifting City
| Shifting City | ||||
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| Studio album by John Foxx & Louis Gordon | ||||
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Publication |
1997 |
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admission |
1995 |
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| Label (s) | Metamatic | |||
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Format (s) |
CD |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
56:16 |
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| occupation | John Foxx (vocals, synthesizers, rhythm machines) Louis Gordon (synthesizer, rhythm machines, backing vocals) |
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John Foxx, Louis Gordon |
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Studio (s) |
MetaMatic Studio, Ledbury; CRom's Studio, Manchester |
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Shifting City is the fifth solo album by former Ultravox singer John Foxx . It was written and recorded by Foxx with British musician Louis Gordon and was released in 1997 on Foxx's own Metamatic label.
Track list
- The Noise (4:17, Foxx)
- Crash (5:24, Foxx / Gordon)
- Here We Go (7:03, Foxx / Gordon)
- Shadow Man (7:26, Foxx)
- Through My Sleeping (5:03, Foxx)
- Forgotten Years (5:43, Foxx / Gordon)
- Everyone (5:58, Foxx / Gordon)
- Shifting City (3:36, Foxx)
- Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible (5:42, Foxx / Gordon / Leven )
- An Ocean We Can Breathe (6:23, Foxx / Gordon)
History of origin
After his 1985 album In Mysterious Ways , Foxx lost interest in the music business and worked primarily as a graphic designer. In the early 1990s he began to deal with music again. Inspired by the booming house and acid scene in Detroit and London, he temporarily focused on electronic dance music, so he founded an acid project called Nation XII with Tim Simenon from Bomb the Bass , which included several singles and the computer game soundtracks for Gods and Speedball , and directed the music video for LFO's debut single . From 1992 to 1995 he stayed away from the music business again (apart from a failed band project) and went on to teach graphic design at Leeds Metropolitan University.
The sudden reappearance of Foxx in 1997 must be seen against this musical background. He had met the multi-instrumentalist Louis Gordon in January 1995 at one of his concerts and three days later persuaded them to record together. Shifting City , an electro-pop album , was released at the same time as the ambient album Cathedral Oceans . Shifting City picks up on the cool, minimalist style of the 1980s Metamatic album, but is more catchy and poppy and uses IDM- based beats for the faster pieces . Bonds to the psychedelic phase of the Beatles are also clearly evident, an aspect with which Foxx already experimented on his 1983 album The Golden Section .
The tracks "Through My Sleeping" and "Concrete, Bulletproof, Invisible" were originally written for Nation XII, the former under the title "Leaving". Both pieces are included in the 2005 Nation XII retrospective "Electrofear", with authors named Foxx, house producer Shem McCauley, Kurt Rogers and former The Fall producer Simon Rogers. The cover photography of Shifting City, which is reproduced several times in the booklet of the CD, excerpts and sometimes alienated, comes from Keith Brofsky.
In October 2009 a special edition of the album was released, which included 2 CDs. In addition to the original album, the first CD included an early version of Shadow Man as well as Quiet Men and Just For A Moment, two tracks played live from the Subterranean Omnidelic Exotour tour. The second CD contained 13 tracks played live from the Omnidelic Exotour tour.
reception
Allmusic's Aaron Badgley rated the album as having "strong melodies" and "frightening, experimental electronic sounds", giving it three out of five stars. Steven Grant and Brad Reno found in a John Foxx retrospective on Trouser Press that Foxx was "obsessed with the contortions of the modern world" and "at heart a nineteenth-century romantic trapped in the computer age" . They compared the music on the album in parts with that of Underworld .
Web links
- Shifting City at Allmusic (English)
- Official website of John Foxx
Individual evidence
- ↑ History of Leeds Metropolitan University ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) 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.
- ↑ Interview with Louis Gordon on QuietCity
- ↑ Review on Allmusic
- ^ Retrospective on Trouser Press
