As John Foxx has just hit his 66th birthday he’s not staying still for anyone to catch up with him. With three studio albums and two live ones with The Maths in the  Record Cell since 2010, the time has come for some new collaborations to come to the fore. First up, John Foxx And The Belbury Circle.

Ghost Box | UK | CD | GBX019CD

John Foxx + The Belbury Circle: Empty Avenues UK CD [2013]

1. Empty Avenues
2. Almost There
3. The Right Path
4. Suit
5. The Time Of Your Life
6. Empty Avenues And Dark Corners (Pye Corner Audio Mix)

Ghost Box | UK | 10″ | GBX019EP

John Foxx + The Belbury Circle: Empty Avenues UK 10″ [2013]

1. Empty Avenues
2. Almost There
3. The Right Path
4. Suit
5. The Time Of Your Life
6. Empty Avenues And Dark Corners (Pye Corner Audio Mix)

I’d first read about the Ghost Box collective in the pages of Simon Reynold’s “Retromania” when it was published almost two years ago. Having read that Jim Jupp [Belbury Poly] and Jon Brooks [Advisory Circle] were interested in recreating a past that didn’t necessarily exist, but instead represented nostalgia as experienced through a wormhole; slightly reassuring but familiar in ways re-contextualized into a new whole that was slightly askew. That they proffered a pastoral yet electronic psychedelia stitched together from machines and corrupted memories alone meant that Foxx would inevitably fall into their orbit for a time. That time is now.

The resulting EP is a new [old] wrinkle for Foxx to explore his consistent themes with a new set of collaborators who are dramatically different from the directions that The Maths have been moving in consistently for the last year or so. Songs like “Suit” are inescapable from Foxx. If you cut him, he would bleed such songs. But the new context gives them a less bleak and clinical viewpoint. The gentle music is warmer than the current Maths vibe and casts autumnal shadows down the “empty Avenues” of the EPs title track. The music references library music and early synthesizers and at times references late 60s pre-psychedelic pop with its Crumar electric pianos lending the proceedings a slightly sepia shading. One would have to go back to Foxx’s 1982 production of Antena’s “Boy From Ipanema” to find anything in his oeuvre that sounds remotely like this.

The five track EP format is perfect for giving the experiment a perfect platform on which to conduct it. Martin Jenkins of Pye Corner Audio remixes the title track to bring the EP into a symmetrical life with three cuts per side. The lazily serene late 60s vibe of the original mix was recast as late 70s motorik technopop full of percolating sequencers and synth bass, yet still avoiding any fortissimo moments. Ghost Box were also smart enough to change the cover art, insuring Foxx collectors would be less likely pass up either format. I know, because I have both in my Record Cell!

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