I was just having a moan about how I still need to pre-order the Ultravox “Quartet”ultrabox while it’s there to be had, and the next thing I knew, it’s time for yet more John Foxx material this year! Keeping in mind that I still need to order his last two albums, but time waits for no one and today I got the news from Foxx Central that on July 28th, the 40th anniversary of Foxx’s rich albun, “The Golden Section” is being celebrated with a pair of albums in Jonathan Barnbrook-designed gatefold covers. To which we can only say, “yes, please!”
John Foxx: The Golden Section – UK – LP [2023]
- My Wild Love
- Someone
- Your Dress
- Running Across Thin Ice With Tigers
- Sitting At The Edge Of The World
- Endlessly [version II]
- Ghosts On Water
- Like A Miracle
- The Hidden Man
- Twilight’s Last Gleaming
“The Golden Section” raised eyebrows in 1983 by being the first Foxx album since “Systems Of Romance” that had an outside producer. And like that magnum opus, Foxx turned to Germany and secured the exquisite talents of Zeus B. Held, who picked up where the inconclusive early sessions under Mike Howlett had left off. I’ll imagine that it was the sterling work with his own project Gina X. Performance that led Foxx to consider Held. To which I could only say, “yes, more please!” at the time!
Held certainly knew how to achieve a rich warm technological sound that was second to none. It was one of my favorite 1983 albums, and this new edition will be a gatefold design with the disc in clear [and not golden] vinyl for a really hard time cueing up any given track! There are only 1200 of these awaiting purchase for £21.99/€25.99/$27.99 at the artist’s store at Townsend Records.
THE GOLDEN SECTION LP
But wait…there’s more!
John Foxx: Annexe – UK – LP [2023]
- Endlessly (Single Version)
- Young Man
- Dance With Me
- My Wild Love (Early Version)
- Wings And A Wind
- Annexe
- A Kind Of Wave
- The Lifting Sky
- Shine On Me
- A Woman On A Stairway
Accompanying “The Golden Section” will be a new compilation of non-LP material from the “Golden Section” sessions that figured on 2×7″ and 12″ B-sides and the occasional Foxx deep dive into the archives for now-unhip CDs of the early 21st century. I’m here to say that “The Lifting Sky,” from the UK 2×7″ of “Your Dress,” will always be one of my favorite Foxx deep cuts! “Annexe” will also sport a gatefold sleeve and red vinyl this time. The particulars are identical to “The Golden Section.” 1200 copies pressed for £21.99/€25.99/$27.99 at the artist’s store at Townsend Records.
ANNEXE LP
The Foxx webstore also has a multi-buy package with both albums for a wee bit less. As I’m bitter that I never acted on the RSD 2014 white vinyl gatefold “Metamatic” LP, we should probably act more decisively on these! If you’re like me and collecting those Metamatic numbers then hit that button!
GOLDEN SECTION LP + ANNEXE LP
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Post-Punk Monk 
Although I’m a massive John Foxx fan I’ve been avoiding most of the vinyl reissues. I did get the 2014 RSD gatefold white vinyl ‘Metamatic’ at the time but CD is my preferred format. So I will pass on these albums. There’s nothing new here for me.
I agree ‘The Lifting Sky’ is an excellent deep cut. I also love ‘A Kind Of Wave’. Some of these b-sides I think were as good as the album tracks.
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Andy B – And all of those 2×7” double packs had a generous bounty of material.
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Those 2×7” double packs were full of great material. I loved John’s cover designs too.
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Andy B – I appreciate that Jonathan Barnbrook respects Foxx’s cover art while reframing the cover art. That collage look he was working during the Virgin Years was terrific.
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Tempting though Annexe is,there’s nothing new for me on these albums and I already have the material several times over.
I have not yet bought any of the new recordings from the last couple of years,so need to get onto those first.
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Gavin – I hear you! Foxx is one of a handful of artists where I try to get everything. It helps that he’s no Bill Nelson!
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Actually there is nothing from John Foxx which topped the disappointment of this album, everything was poor imho; production, songwriting, choice of singles. I could well have done without it and it was not astonishing it sank without a trace leading John Foxx to disappear for years.
I gave it many repeated spins to get it but it suffered from the mid-80’s mainstream touches which you might praise as full and rich and organic sound if you are good willed or a child of different tastes but for me it was mediocre and way beyond his abilities. The one song that really got me was ‘Ghosts On Water’ and there was never another version released sadly. The only thing I could care less about then a reissue is a compilation of demos of this one but maybe this would be the real treasure before everything went into a production style which fitted the times but not John Foxx.
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slur – You sound as if you are describing “In Mysterious Ways,” Foxx’s 1985 album which was his attempt to make a Van Morrison album and did result in him disappearing for a dozen years! That was undoubtedly a mainstream album. As produced by Foxx. It’s true that I am a card-carrying member of the Zeus B. Held cult. The only production of his I was less than ga-ga over was the first Dead Or Alive album.
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ouch, you are right – I completely forgot there was a final downfall after that. I do owe it but it is a really dark chapter in my record collection. Basically it is still NM as I just kept it because it has John Foxx written on it.
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slur – The mercy of the human mind to forget painful episodes is an incredible gift!
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Slur, I don’t think it’s as good an album as ‘Metamatic’ or ‘The Garden’ but I do think there are some excellent songs on there. For me it’s a far better album than ‘In Mysterious Way’s’ released two years later. That was an album that really was all over the place. It’s seemed like John was pulling in too many different directions at the same time.
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Andy, I think you got a point – he set the watermark really high with those two and maybe I should give it another try.
I recall I had a soft spot for ‘Twilight’s Last Gleaming’, ‘Sitting At The Edge Of The World’ and even the lyrically blatant ‘Running Across Thin Ice With Tigers’..
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slur – “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” was the only song from the Howlett sessions to make it into the album. I wonder what the issues were since I enjoy Howlett’s work as well.
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slur – I quickly realized that things would dramatically move on from the chromium austerity of “Metamatic” by 1981. I just strapped in and rode the bus until it stopped in 1985. For what it’s worth I felt that Foxx negotiated the horror of the mid-80s better than Ure or Bowie. The B-side “Stairway” revealed that Foxx had been listening to Simple Minds as much as I had!
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Monk, you are spot on about Foxx listening to Simple Minds around this time. I read an interview with John in late 1984. Inspired by ‘Sparkle In The Rain’ John had kept his live band from late ’83 and decided to get back to basics and record rockier, more live sounding tracks with them. I believe ‘Stairway’, ‘This Side Of Paradise’ and a number of other tracks, which ended up on the two disc reissue of ‘In Mysterious Ways’, were recorded during these sessions.
Of course John then recorded some more electronic sounding tracks before going all Van Morrison, as you say. No wonder the album was a real hotch potch of styles.
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Andy B – I’ve read recent interviews from this century when he also talked up Simple Minds, but I was right there with him in 1984! “Sparkle In The Rain” was my most played album of that year.
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I can’t forget the disappointment, shock and ahem…dislocation I felt after first hearing Europe After the Rain. I was almost in tears. My friends skewered it mercilessly, and me along with it, who had gone all grey clothes, second-hand suits, long fringe haircut and was reading Ballard…plus had bought my first synth and a drum machine!
Metamatic just hit the spot for me as a proto-goth who was steeped in all things new wave and synth – and I was expecting The Garden to be something of a progression, rather than a shift, a bit like Kraftwerk had been doing for a decade. But here were acoustic guitars, melancholy piano and brooding romance…I was totally thrown. I felt dudded by The Garden, and not even the limited edition numbered copies with the booklet released in my market could compensate for my loss. Miles Away and Burning Car seemed more like what I imagined was coming, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that The Garden wasn’t Metamatic 2.0.
So imagine my disappointment when The Golden Section dropped. Endlessly grabbed me straight away as the single, nothing like a Simmons kit and bubbling sequence textures coupled with 80’s lushness and non-autotuned harmonies. I think I played The Golden Section once and put it away. Until two weeks ago…I’ve just started playing it on Spotify (my entire collection is in storage between moves at present) and I’m really enjoying it! It’s taken a good 40 years for it to make sense, and suddenly the promo blurb accompanying the release of Metadelic now makes sense:
“…it’s the front cover that tells the greatest story: a close-up portrait of a poetic dandy staring slightly right and into the middle distance; yes, it’s John Foxx in dreamy, romantic mode, appearing like some Shelley or Byron searching to express the ennui of their age in poetry and art. John Foxx as psychedelic romantic poet.”
Maybe it’s just life and maturity that helps it all make sense in a longer cultural context, but I ‘get it’ now. I’ve ordered the two new releases (to be preserved in shrink wrap and admired as objects – yes, I am one of ‘those’ types).
I did run through In Mysterious Ways just yesterday – I’ll need to get back to that maybe one day.
Any fans of the latter work such as The Pleasures of Electricity, Shifting City or From Trash?
Wow.
Now, they ended up being Metamatic 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0. I was longing for.
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G-Man – Wow! 40 years is a long time for a delayed payload, but time and life can eventually shepherd you to a place where you can finally see point of an album. I had similar experiences with David Bowie’s “The Lodger” and Siouxsie + The Banshees “A Kiss In The Dreamhouse.” They never clicked for me at the time of release, but 30+ years later I could see the point of it all much more powerfully. In 1981 I was expecting Metamatic II but when Foxx delivered Systems Of Romance II instead I was still thrilled. And one of the pleasures of modern Foxx was that he returned to dig more deeply into that Metamatic soil to see where it would lead him.
We can forget that things moved fast and furiously in the late 70s/early 80s. As if every artist was in a headlong rush to develop as far and widely as they could. Like Foxx has mentioned, abandoning analog synthesizers for digital ones before we were even “done” exploring what the analog gear could do! One of the few pleasures of the all-retro/all-the-time contemporary scene is that musicians have been re-examining old threads in greater depth and reaching new and exciting conclusions now that the furious forward movement of music and art 40 years ago seemingly had no time for.
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This is how weird I’ve gotten about vinyl these days — I have no interest in these two releases, but the thought of re-collecting any of those double-singles (I’m not sure how many of those I still have) is a bit thrilling, despite the complete lack of any way to play them.
I guess maybe I’m only into vinyl for those wonderful UK double-singles? Even I can’t figure me out!
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chasinvictoria – I remember the first time I ever saw a UK 2×7” single. I was with you at Record Mart at Colonial Mall back when Don Gilliand was managing it. This was in 1979-80 before he ran the Record Mart Warehouse on South orange Blossom Trail! We were there buying records and chatting with Don and I looked at the small box of import 7” singles – maybe 200 in all, and it was Ian Hunter’s “We Gotta Get Out Of Here” UK 7” that was from his otherwise live album “Welcome To The Club!” At the time I had marveled at how you could get two import 7” singles for the price of one!
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Got both of these on Release day from Amazon, works of art.
Annexx is particularly beautiful, the typo is deliberate as will become obvious to those that buy it.
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Nomuff2tuff – Welcome to the comments! You remind me that Instill need to order all four of Fox’s releases this year, so I just did. There’s a typographical pun on “Annexe?” I’ll have to see that.
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