40 years on: Top 10 albums of 1980

 Top 10 albums of 1980 (in chronological order)

1. John Foxx - Metamatic
2. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
3. Genesis - Duke
4. The Human League - Travelogue
5. Gary Numan - Telekon
6. David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
7. Simple Minds - Empires & Dance
8. Japan - Gentlemen Take Polaroids
9. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - Organisation
10. Mike Oldfield - QE2

Spotted on Spotify: #newmusicfriday : ABC, John Foxx, Belbury Circle

The hanging gardens of Shoreditch

John Foxx has another new album out at the end of this month. London Overgrown is a collection of instrumental tracks under the general theme of the UK's capital city being overrun by trees and bushes and so on.

Foxx had this to say:

Let's practice vertical gardening over buildings everywhere. Create the Hanging Gardens of Shoreditch, The Glades of Soho. Let's have floating overgrown islands moored on the Thames - they can make bridges and movable, modular, floating landscapes. Let's open up the pavements and glass them over so we can see all Londons hundred rivers flowing under our feet. These can be planted with fern mosses and lichen and illuminated at night to make spectacular walkways.

The album is out on March 30th, available from all good music outlets and garden centres. Details here.

Single of the year: OMD - Dresden

"..set the dials to overlaod, my head is ready to explode.."

taken from the recent OMD album English Electric. Remix by John Foxx and the Maths also avilable.

Art on your sleeve

Now here's a thing: a recording artist's biography/discography shown on video through their music and respective record sleeves. This is one for John Foxx done by Ratatouille TV, a non profit Dutch tv programme in Amsterdam with music, art and culture.
A good selection here (although it only covers Foxx's work up to mid-80s before his electro-Renaissance) and I like the way they show front and back of the sleeves at the same time, although I think they aren't using two copies but the same one super-imposed somehow. Clever that.
The commentary's in Dutch so I'm not sure exactly what is being said, but a good idea. Enjoy.

One I made earlier

video: Watching A Bulding On Fire - John Foxx And The Maths
Here's a video I started putting together some time ago and finally got round to finishing off. It's a mixture of footage from Truffaut's film adaption of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and John Foxx's video for He's A Liquid, from 1980.
For those who don't know, Bradbury's novel is a story set in the not too distant future, where books are basically banned off the face of the earth and any that are found have to be burned, and those responsible for reading or keeping them duly punished. The story follows the relationship between 'fireman' Guy Montag (Oskar Werner) and his relationship with Clarisse McClellan, played by the ever gorgeous Julie Christie. 451°F is the temperature at which book paper burns. Enough said.

In making my video, the 'fire' association between the film and the song is obvious, although of course the former is more about books as opposed to buildings. The line "someone is in the room", instantly reminded me of the original Foxx video and, like most of the Maths album, the song has much of the sounds of Metamatic so the Liquid video sequence fitted like a glove, also given the man meets woman scenario as Foxx's voice interchanges with that of Mira Aroyo of Ladytron on Watching, who co-wrote it.
I had considered using the excellent new remix of Watching A Building On Fire, but it's longer and has a slightly different structure so would've meant re-doing the whole thing.

Here's the video - and the song. It's quite long but please stick with it til the end if only to see the scene as sampled below:.

original version of Watching A Building On Fire available here
original video of He's A Liquid here

Advanced Maths - 3

The John Foxx & The Maths tour kicked off last night from the intimate surroundings of the Assembly Rooms in Leamington Spa. The line-up of John Foxx, Benge, Hannah Peel and Serafina Steer suffered a few first-night nerves (according to Brigid Burke's excellent blog posting) but with a track-list which included some of Foxx's electro-classics from Metamatic (No One Driving, Underpass, Plaza, Burning Car, He's a Liquid), others from his Ultravox days (Hiroshima Mon Amour, Dislocation, Just For a Moment) and selected new tracks from the cracking 2011 album Interplay (Summerland, Evergreen, The Good Shadow, Catwalk), they couldn't really go wrong, and indeed they didn't.
The band and entourage are already on their way to Poland to play at the Unsound Festival in Cracow. Chris & Cosey ex of Throbbing Gristle also on the bill. The Maths' UK tour resumes next Thursday in Bristol.

Respected on-line music magazine The Quietus has uploaded a new JF & Maths track Where You End and I Begin feat. Tara Busch, who is the support act on most of the tour. (soundcloud link). The track comes from the new album The Shape of Things, available at gigs only for now.


Here's video footage of He's a Liquid performed at Leamington Spa last night, as filmed by Mateybloke who also took some rather good photos. (wonder what Mr B. Currie makes of the violin playing!)

John Foxx - The Garden / Ultravox - Rage in Eden

I love 1981 pt.19
Hate to have to lump these two albums together but they are of course related in more ways than one, sharing more than just the vicinity of their "birthdays".
Warning: I'm going to say some unfavourable things about the Foxx album. Don't get me wrong, I'm (officially) one of the world's biggest Foxx-fans, but The Garden just didn't do it for me, and thirty years on still doesn't. "There's a difference between creating your own distinctive sound and doing the same thing over and over again. John Foxx falls the wrong side of that line" : Ian Cranna said that in Smash Hits, not me but I couldn't have agreed more.

"I'd grown tired of being a frozen electrician"

After the ground-breaking revolutionary and utterly stupendous Metamatic, issued at the very dawn of 1980, John Foxx had gone to Italy to "thaw out", rubbed shoulders with the likes of film director Antonioni, tasted a bit of la dolce vita and came back to create what was essentially a re-working of his previous sound with Ultravox. Even the title of the the album's second track 'Systems of Romance' is re-cycled from his third album with the group, and who is to say he hadn't already written the track for the band. Tracks like When I Was a Man and You Were a Woman, You Were There and Walk Away may as well have had former band-mates Chris Cross, Warren Cann, Billy Currie as well as Robin Simon, who was in fact brought in on some tracks, playing their respective instruments on them, so close they are to the 1978 Ultravox sound with Foxx on vocals.
The fountains, squares and colonnades of Italy had rubbed off efficiently only in the opening Europe After the Rain and the post-Metamatic walking tours around England reflect in the closing title track, two songs which are essentially the album's saving grace. True, Foxx had already anticipated his move from the Ballardian underpasses and concrete jungle dystopias of Metamatic with the interim single Miles Away (there's a new man at the edge of me..making new plans for the rest of me), but few followers expected such a sharp turn-around in the underpass as they got with The Garden. OK, Ballard was still there with the images of overgrown cities and buildings and churches the like, but the warmer and more organic sounds seemed less suited to Foxx as he had established himself as a solo artist.  "After 1981 everyone and his dog went electro, so I became Max Ernst dressed as Lord Lost, exploring the overgrown and abandoned city of London. To a psychedelic ecclesiastical disco soundtrack." Shame really. Nice booklet though.

 John Foxx & friends perform Systems of Romance live in 1983

The new eighties Ultravox on the other hand  rarely looked back on their Foxxy past and together with Midge Ure, Messrs Cann, Currie and Cross continued their rise to popularity and household name-ness with Rage in Eden, released two weeks before The Garden. Smash Hits, this time under the pen of Johnny Black, was equally scathing in their review stating that the album "was too bland to satisfy", favouring instead Numan's Dance, but this time they were wrong! Ultravox had good songs, Conny Plank at the helm to make one heck of an album. The Thin Wall had already announced it's tougher, edgier feel vis à vis Vienna, yet it was stomping tracks like The Voice, We Stand Alone and I Remember (Death in the Afternoon) (singled out by Black, to his merit) which push Rage along and we our attention is even maintained during the 7 minute long Stranger Within,and the closing, agonising angst of Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again).

At the time I don't think there was no real sense of competition between the two artists and their respective albums, but in retrospect it was Rage in Eden which had the upper hand. True, Ure-vox were pompous and just a tad pretentious in form and style yet they somehow managed to carry it off, at least for now. For the moment they were the ones who were taking electronic music into some sort of mainstream audience, and arguable "merit" in itself but it got them lots of radio play and onto Top of the Pops a lot and we loved that.  RAge in Eden was quality new-music in huge quantities, adequately packaged by Peter Savile, the perfect match to their neo-thirties-cum-futuristic style.
No Ultravox album would be as good as this ever again, proof of that being the amount of tracks from Rage that are played live to this day - Thin Wall, I Remember, We Stand Alone, Rage in Eden and not least The Voice with its spectacular burundi-esque 4-man drum-pad finale.

Ultravox perform The Voice live in 1984

Advanced Maths Pt. 2

More updates on the John Foxx front. News is now out of a new double CD album by the Man and his Maths, a matter of months after the release of the debut Interplay.
The Shape of Things will be on limited release at the upcoming JF&M live shows and via the official website. It's a double disc set with new tracks on the first disc and a series of remixes of Interplay faves on the second. Although coming out so close to its predecessor, it's said that The Shape of Things will be "rougher and more experimental than Interplay". Crumbs!
As a taster, here's Talk also available to download via Artrockertv / soundcloud here- apparently it features Electro Harmonix DRM16 drum machine, and the Moog and Paia modular synths, so there.

Here it is in youtube form, as uploaded by polterter

Advanced Maths Pt. 1

pic.: it's full of stars

Much fervent activity in the John Foxx & The Maths camp these days as the great man and his band prepare for their live performances, and artrocker.tv run a special John Foxx week. Phew! Rock n roll!
But more of that later as the goodies keep rolling in and Lost in Music tries hard to keep a-breast (oo-er missus!).

Meantime, take a few minutes to enjoy a fab new remix of Shatterproof form the Maths' Interplay album, executed by none other than Steven Mallinder, erstwhile Cabaret Voltaire member, electronic music guru and good bloke. Together with Phil from Wrangler they've come up with this rather wonderful remix for your listening pleasure, and The Maths' Benge has even done his own "low-tech" video to suit!

...and while we're at it let's pay homage to the great Cabaret Voltaire themselves with Just Fascination from 1983's excellent The Crackdown album. To quote one youtube commenter : "These guys should have been bigger, i mean they deserved to be bigger." Couldn't agree more.

further reading: Stephen Mallinder's music+art feature (Jan. 2010)

Simple Minds - Love Song / Heaven 17 - Play to Win / Ultravox - The Thin Wall / John Foxx - Europe After the Rain / OMD - Souvenir

I Love 1981 - pt 17
A veritable feast of great new "comeback" singles suddenly all came out around this time of the year in 1981, so many in fact that it's hard to keep up with proper reviews, so we've grouped them together with a few lines for each, for now, in the hope of being able to do them justice at a later date.
Glasgow's Simple Minds were still very much on the fringe of things before this year (their big break would come in 1982), although the new single and parent albums Sons & Fascination / Sister Feelings Call (yes, two albums) placed them firmly in the new dance / electronic pop-rock grouping as already so boldly established by Ultravox and others. Although much played by Kid Jensen in his evening programme, as with earlier 1981 release The American, Love Song failed to make the Top 40 although ensured they got their share of the dance floor-space in the trendier clubs. The albums remain often overlooked masterpices so check 'em out if you haven't done so already.

Emerging from their grim-up-north Sheffield studios, Heaven 17 went all out pop/funk to produce the jaunty Play to Win, a taster of their forthcoming album Penthouse & Pavement. It was a departure from the rather more serious agit-pop/funk predecessors Fascist Groove Thing and I'm Your Money although like them failed to make the charts. There was however a brave and rarely seen TOTP appearance as "bubbling under" or something, with Martyn Ware on guitar. We'll come back to Penthouse & Pavement at a later date. You can well imagine Ware/Gregory/Wright gnashing their collective teeth as fellow Sheffielders and former band mates The Human League were already storming the charts with their second hit Love Action, and causing quite a stir.


No strangers to the charts however were Ultravox, with Midge Ure at the helm, and after practically establishing a whole new genre with Vienna proceeded very nicely with their follow-up The Thin Wall, a jagged and jerky pop tune which, although not one of their best over the years, did its job very well it getting them firmly back on the map as pioneering electro-rockers. In hindsight, perhaps not their most accessible single, but the whole track shows off their competence as musicians, modern composers and techno-aces and Ure's vocal leaves any imitators literally breathless. Still not quite sure what The Thin Wall is all about but you just gotta love the line "they shuffle with a bovine grace and glide in syncopation.." Ridiculously pompous, but brilliant.
Again it was a preview of their upcoming new album Rage in Eden which would enter the charts at no. 4 a few weeks later. More of that meisterwerk anon.


And speaking of Ultravox, founder of said band John Foxx, after practically inventing the pure electro-pop artist genre, inspiring newcomers like Depeche Mode, Soft Cell etc to get up and do their thing with a few synths and a drum machine, promptly turned his back on pure electronics at least, got out his acoustic guitar, frilly shirt and baggy trousers and started to go all Italianate-Byron 'retro-romantic' ( I just invented that). Europe After the Rain is bouncy and tuneful enough to fit in with modern trends but was a long way from the dark and dank Underpass and Ballardian soundscapes of 1970's Metamatic which so many had already loved him for. As with Numan's foray into funk, many were alienated from John-Foxx-as-synth-god and duly abandoned him, although it could be debated that Foxx was merely going back to his Ultravox days of Systems of Romance - full circle. Another memorable TOTP appearance here but, alas, another non-starter chartwise, just scraping the no.40 spot.
Ensuing album The Garden was much of the same (if not worse), save for the title track and Systems of Romance, obviously revived from his Ultravox days. But we'll come back to that.

And lastly, and certainly not leastly, a record that suddenly seemed to sweep them all away during those heady end of summer days was the comeback single by OMD, or Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark to friends. Emerging from their own Gramophone Suite studios, their slow and sloppy Souvenir was pumped out left right and centre by everyone from Peter Powell to Steve Wright on Radio 1 (although eveidently they were no longer loved by their champion John Peel) and is even reported to have been played on Radio 2..God forbid! That was the music your parents listened to! But no matter, the song had the appeal of both a smooch friendly tunes for couples, and dreamy would-be lovers but somewhow retained OMD's appeal of being just a tad different from your average "new wave" pop group, and not just because of their cumbersome name. Although they had been practically absent since the success of Enola Gay several months hence, Messrs Humphreys & McCluskey (the former providing vocals here) took just a couple of weeks to get to no. 3 in the charts and establish one of the best known pop tunes of the 80s.
Like most OMD videos, the one for Souvenir is deadly embarassing, inspired perhaps by the fashionable Brideshead Revisited, so here's a much better TOTP performance with the unique line up which included Martin Cooper (who wrote the song with Humphreys) on sax and Mike Douglas on, er, glockenspiel, who it seems stayed around just for this single.

Belgique: douze points

Yes it's full marks from the Lost in Music jury to the splendid kingdom of Belgium where the good burgers of   Hasselt have organised a rather spiffing 'industrial music' festival called Sinner's Day for 30th October next.
Said fest will feature such greats as Blancmange, John Foxx & the Maths, Karl Bartos, The Psychedelic Furs, The Cult, The Mission and top new romatic band Visage.
Check the Sinner's Day website for all the necessary info on everything from alcohol to, er, toilets...
Furthermore, being towards the Eastern part of Belgium, Hasselt is very close to Germany and Holland and conveniently placed for many Europeans. Uitstekende!

some good burgers of Hasselt (Belgium)  yesterday, getting excited about seeing Visage live in October.

Which one's Pink?

Get ready for a Pink Floyd revival onslaught from now until at least the end of the year, and beyodn, as loads of re-issues of the band's back catalogue are planned in various formats under the Why Pink Floyd? banner, as well as a new compilation CD A Foot in the Door.

UK music monthly MOJO celebrate the band (again) in their October issue (out now?!?!) with big feature and a double CD with cover versions of tracks off Floyd mega-albums Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here all by contemporary artists most of which we've never heard of, save for The Orb and the mighty John Foxx and The Maths.

Read the story about Foxx and Benge's cover of Have a Cigar in an exclusive interview on the Metamatic website. You can listen to the CD track in this youtube clip, although MOJO have since announced that they got the wrong version out (doh) and you can download the correct one free from their site here.

Nighthawks down

The ever prolific John Foxx returns with his 'ambient' hat on and a new album's worth of music recorded with old mate Harold Budd and his mate Ruben Garcia.
Nighthawks is out on June 27th next, although to get it on CD you'll have to cop a remastered version of Foxx 'n' Budd's Transluscence/Drift Music, first issued in August 2003, as well.
The 3 CD set can be pre-ordered for now at Townsend, with instant download of the track 'Now That I've Forgotten You'.

Although we are familiar with the Foxx/Budd output, Ruben Garcia will a newcomer to these ears. Our ignorance is hardly to be forgiven however as, according to Close Tolerance Music, he is "self-taught pianist, engineer, and producer, with six CDs to his credit"..and what's more "Garcia creates simple instrumental music that is poised on the razor's edge between ambient and new age styles. His compositions possess a superior sense of spaciousness and dream-like soundscapes of delight."
Sounds like the right man for the job then.

Here's a picture of Harold Budd, cos we couldn't find one of the right Ruben Garcia and you know what John Foxx looks like.

My sax

Official sources have given news of a new album by prolific electro-maestro John Foxx and sax-virtuoso Theo Travis. The album - Torn Sunset - will be out 'sometime in June' via Edsel/Demon records who also released Foxx's ambient-style collaboration album with Harold Budd Transluscence/Drift Music some time ago.

We don't know much about Theo here at LiM but it says 'ere that he is "of significance to the worlds of jazz, ambient music and progressive rock in the United Kingdom." Blimey!

Not much is known about the music which the new coupling has produced either, as it's all been a pretty safe-guarded secret up to now. But song titles like Skyscraper Starlight and Lost Marilyn Molecule and All The Tides On All The Streets all sound like good Foxxy-like ambient material à la Tiny Colour Movies, but this time with added .....sax appeal?

..oops I did it again...

Not content with having shook the world of John Foxx and the Maths with my attempt at making a music video for their ace album track Destination, I'm having another shot at distorting the world's imagination with a few visuals for top Interplay track Summerland.
This week we are taken into the wonderful world of integrated circuits and new-fangled "micro-chips". We'll see how they're made, what they do, and how they can help us with our....maths.
Wake me up when we arrive..

Ultravox - Slow Motion

I Love 1981 - pt. 8
Bit of a cheat this one as it's not from 1981 at all, but rather a re-issue on the crest of the chart success of the new Ultravox with Vienna and all that. The original 1978 issue had bombed completely, as had the accompanying album Systems of Romance, Foxx-Vox's third LP issue. The Island re-release of the then John Foxx-led band is not completely unjustified however, as back in 1978 the track was so ahead of it's time that it fitted more than snugly into the brand new 80's context amidst the new sounds which had since been emerging.

Although even this time around the single only just scraped into the Top 40, the influence of this music three years hence had already been felt by many, including a young Gary Numan who has oft said that Ultravox and their music were the inspiration for him to get up and do his Tubeway Army synth-rock thang.

The unique style of Slow Motion (and similar tracks such as Dislocation and The Quiet Men also featured on this EP) with it's heavy synth bass, rock steady drums, and screeching keyboards were to all intents and purposes the blueprint for the new shiny new 80's Ultravox and were duly brought forward and developed by Messrs. Currie, Cross and Cann, with Midge Ure easily imitating the innovative scratchy guitar sound pioneered by Robin Simon (with Conny Plank producing then and now). Had John Foxx (pic. right) continued with the band, an ensuing product wouldn't have been to far removed from tracks like All Stood Still and New Europeans. But then again we would never have had Metamatic....

..here's one I made earlier..

Just a little vid I put together to go with one of Foxx n Maths new album tracks. All done quite by coincidence of course, but the two things (Soviet TV ads and Destination) just sort of forged together like a dream.
Apologies to Messrs. Foxx and Benge, the latter quite rightly commenting WTF when he came across it on my dailymotion video channel. (snigger) I'll probably get banned from something for doing this so watch it while you can ...if you will.
My destination (and fate)...is unknown.

Electro-albums ready to go

Some exciting electro-music albums coming up soon with at least four promising albums waiting in the wings:

As already mentioned here godfather-of-electro John Foxx's latest analogue project with Benge (pic. left) takes the form of the first John Foxx & The Maths album Interplay, to be released on 21st March. There's now an official site here and also a remix competition for opening track Shatterproof here. Initial copies ordered from Townsend will be in special deluxe digi-packs. Previewed tracks find Foxx on fine form, still going strong since his Ultravox! days which began way back in 1976.
(Meanwhile we are still waiting for the much needed Metamatic official site makeover).


Sheffield electro-gurus The Human League are also back on the scene. After the long awaited new single Night People, which received mixed opinions and reviews, the new album Credo should be out in March. It's their first since 2001's Secrets and comes some 32 years after The Human League's first long-player Reproduction.
As usual, the band have kept a low internet-profile up to now although an official site has sprung up here and an official Facebook page too.
Live dates continue through Europe and (bizarrely) South America in March and April.


Blackburn duo Blancmange are also re-emerging from the murky depths of the mid-eighties with the brand new Blanc Burn set for release on 7th March. See their myspace page for previews, tour dates and order details. The oddball Lancashire couple released three albums between 1982 and 1985, hitting the singles charts with songs like Living On the Ceiling, Blind Vision and a tongue-in-cheek cover of Abba's The Day Before You Came. It'll be interesting to see what they've come up with this time.


It's not all electro-wrinklies tho as new band Mirrors from Brighton are set to release their debut album Lights & Offerings on February 28th. Check out preview tracks on their myspace page and follow the links to order. It's also worth taking some time to read their excellent blog The World of Mirrors if you can.
I may have posted this before but here's their excellent Look At Me from last year.

PS this post was mostly written just to remind myself of how much stuff I have to order.

Foxx + Benge = album

The long awaited musical joint-venture between electro-pioneer and guru John Foxx and analogue synth collector and overall techno-anorak Benge finally starts to take (geometrical) shape with a new album announced for 21st March.
Interplay is the title of the album by John Foxx and The Maths, which looks and sounds very fresh and exciting indeed.
Last year's Maths' "single" release Destination b/w September Town was a pleasant enough taster, blending pure analogue warmth with Foxx's sturdy vocals, and now Evergreen - downloadable free with album pre-orders from Townsend - has a nice Spring-time feel to it, with a light synth-pop melody over a heavy bass line and Foxxy in fine form at the mike with a vocal sounding much like he did on mid-80s on tracks like Annexe and Young Man.

Like the music, the cover art by Jonathan Barnbrooke also hints at springtime with a colourful geometric flower shape (yes, also a bit like a 'maths' textbook) and is a welcome departure from Foxx's usual monochrome and darker album designs.

Roll on Spring equinox!