The Pleasures of Electricity
| The Pleasures of Electricity | ||||
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| Studio album by John Foxx | ||||
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Publication |
2001 |
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| Label (s) | Metamatic | |||
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Title (number) |
11 |
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running time |
62:43 |
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John Foxx & Louis Gordon |
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The Pleasures of Electricity is the seventh solo album by former Ultravox singer John Foxx . It was written and recorded by Foxx with British musician Louis Gordon and was released in 2001 on Foxx's own label Metamatic.
Track list
- A Funny Thing (4:18, Foxx / Gordon)
- Nightlife (5:54, Foxx / Gordon)
- Camera (7:47, Foxx / Gordon)
- Invisible Women (5:55, Foxx / McAuley / Rodgers / Rodgers)
- Cities of Light 5 (5:26, Foxx)
- Uptown / Downtown (6:34, Foxx / Gordon)
- When It Rains (4:24, Foxx / Gordon)
- Automobile (5:56, Foxx / Gordon)
- The Falling Room (4:52, Foxx / Gordon)
- Travel (6:57, Foxx / Gordon)
- Quiet City (5:04, Foxx / Gordon)
In 2008 The Pleasures of Electricity was re-released as a double CD on Edsel ( Demon Music Group ). In addition to the original album, it included remixed versions of all songs as well as two new pieces, Twilight Room and Screenplay .
History of origin
The album addresses Foxx's love of big cities and technology. Arrangements and texts are minimalist and repetitive and are reminiscent of Kraftwerk .
The pieces Invisible Women and Cities of Light had Foxx written in the early 1990s for the nation XII, a project of Foxx and Tim Simenon of Bomb the Bass . Both tracks were remixed for The Pleasures of Electricity by Foxx. Three months before the release of The Pleasures of Electricity, Nightlife was part of the compilation album Modern Art , which otherwise only contained pieces that had already been released. As part of the recordings for The Pleasures of Electricity , Foxx and Gordon recorded several pieces that did not match the style of the rest of the material and were only used in 2003 for the album Crash & Burn .
The cover of the album was made by Foxx, who is a trained graphic designer and teaches at London's Royal College of Art , from his own photographs from the late 1970s. The model was the painting Le Principe du Plaisir by René Magritte .
reception
Allmusic stated "dark, atmospheric, energetic and danceable rhythms" as well as "appealing songwriting" and saw clear influences from Kraftwerk. Trouser Press sees the album in the tradition of its predecessor Shifting City , but with heightened nostalgic echoes of Foxx's early work from the early 1980s to the recycling of melodies from that time. The journal describes The Pleasures of Electricity as "retro-futurism" and summarizes that the synthpop revival, which was rampant at the time of the review, "could still learn a lot from Grandpa Foxx".
Web links
- The Pleasures of Electricity on Quiet City
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Review on Quiet City. Retrieved August 29, 2015 .
- ↑ Interview in Barcode Magazine, 2003. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 27, 2011 ; accessed on August 30, 2015 . 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.
- ↑ Liner notes from the 2003 live album The Golden Section Tour / The Omnidelic Exotour
- ^ Review of Allmusic. Retrieved August 27, 2015 .
- ^ Retrospective on Trouser Press. Retrieved August 29, 2015 .
