Classic Album: John Foxx – Metamatic

“The musical equivalent of Preston Bus Station mating with Angkor Wat in Times Square.” Try typing that command into ChatGPT, and the result might well resemble John Foxx’s seminal 1980 record, Metamatic. If so, he would probably be delighted. After all, speaking to Classic Pop for the record’s 45th anniversary reissue, that’s how he describes his original vision. “It was clear from the beginning,” he tells us, “it had to be minimal, primitive, strangely romantic, technoid and joyfully brutalist. No mercy.”  We think he succeeded.

Metamatic was a groundbreaking release, among the very first true synth-pop records from a British artist. Whether such a thing can ever be demarcated, it’s certainly among the original innovators – the look, the themes, the accompanying visual imagery. It’s man versus machine; a dystopian vision of a technological world, far closer to reality than anyone could ever have imagined.

Of course, John Foxx first came to our attention as the original frontman of Ultravox!, an altogether more abrasive, arty and awkward outfit than the later Midge Ure incarnation that achieved commercial success. While a more conventional path might have awaited Foxx, he had another calling.

“Even on that very first Ultravox! album, recording My Sex in 1977, I realised something entirely new was happening,” John explains. “You could make more effective music with just a couple of machines – and the studio itself was really the basic instrument.”

A further epiphany occurred while recording Hiroshima Mon Amour, as various tantalising technological advances ushered in “irresistible” possibilities for creative endeavour. “For the very first time, with only a tape recorder, synth and drum machine, you could make an entirely new kind of music. I needed to bail out of the band in order to realise this new vision properly.”

Electronic Adventure

And so began the new electronic adventure. However, adopting novel technology did not mean a sterile, sanitised approach. “At the time, I deeply disliked the dominant big studio pop sound. Too clean, polished and dead. By contrast, I loved the crackly sound of early Chicago Blues recordings. It felt like living organic material. Then I found dub – both blues and dub are unafraid of imperfection in the service of true emotional impact.”

In Foxx’s experience, professional studios were unwieldy beasts, stifled by accepted conventions and not conducive to creativity. “When you finally got the [record] home and listened, you realised you’d been incrementally compromised. Instead of your original bold concept of a new 3D organic shape-shifting presence in the universe, you got a sonic turd.”

The antidote was to adopt a much simpler set-up, which he found in Pathway, a cosy but inspiring space in Islington, North London, which only had eight-track facilities. Far from being a limitation, it served to sharpen the focus. By necessity, each piece would have to be reduced down to its constituent parts. Anything that wasn’t vital was jettisoned.

“The challenge I set myself was to use only eight tracks of sound for any song. It was pleasing when some songs ended up using only six tracks,” Foxx explains. “I also wanted only one or two instruments to be playing at any given moment, so you get maximum impact from each sound.”

To help realise his vision, Foxx enlisted engineer Gareth Jones – soon to make his own name as an in-demand producer. Inspired by the minimalist approach of dub records, the pair incorporated that ethos into their own project. The result is an austere, uncompromising and at times difficult record, but intentionally so. It’s gritty, unvarnished but also unbelievably exciting.

Myths Of The Near Future

The music wasn’t conceived entirely in isolation. By nature, it came with its own set of values, visual cues, literary references and language. Indeed, as Foxx has since acknowledged, such specific sounds necessitated a certain urban aesthetic. Like contemporaries, from Gary Numan to The Creatures, Foxx was heavily inspired by writers including J.G. Ballard, known for futuristic dystopian nightmares.

For all the futuristic leanings, John explains these concepts were grounded in a tangible reality. “They recognised what was actually happening in the world. Under the guise of ‘Science Fiction’ they were actually exploring the unrecognised present, in a way that wasn’t happening elsewhere.”

Indeed, thematically, the album feels as fresh and prescient as ever. Just like Black Mirror, it’s not futurist fiction, but an emerging reality. The record takes its name from the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely’s métamatic concept, in which mechanised robotic contraptions create art – a critique on the automation of ideas. The notion is not so far removed from the uncanny valley musical experiments and deep fakes now regularly generated by machine learning. It’s frightening how relevant these themes remain today. Far from vintage throwback, Metamatic has startling contemporary resonance.

“Well, quite a few of those modern concerns were emerging even then,” Foxx counters. “Also, growing up in the north, as factories were closing and an entire way of life was falling away, sensitises you to change and its effects.”

Web Of Intrigue

John continues: “Incidentally, I titled everything I did ‘Ultra’ and ‘Meta’ because I liked the continuity of using old Latin that sounded like some new electrical product, which is what I thought I was. Interesting how that kind of terminology has now been adopted and incorporated into the web, and the web itself actually became a global extension of thought, rumour, information and tosh. Tinguely was right about self-destructive art and performance machines. In part, that’s what the web also is – and what many rock’n’rollers actually became.”

But the grit and realness of the metropolis is always present. “I also felt the new songs had to manifest a few universal things in indirect ways – these must be implicit, but remain unexplained. In the blues, these might be facing hardship with courage and maintaining the flare of human spirit and humour against the odds. In Metamatic, that equivalent might be tacitly acknowledging the kind of psychic alterations we have to face, so we can survive in a modern city – plus some attempt to maintain dignity, hope and romance in an urban world.”

Foxx was one of several pathfinders venturing into new territory. The similarities in the cover concept with Gary Numan’s The Pleasure Principle (released within four months of each other) are startling. Both sleeves feature a sharp-suited protagonist on a stark chrome background, transfixed by a glowing geometric shape beckoning them forward to summon its power. But while Numan appears to be contemplating it with some suspicion, Foxx is reaching out to grasp it, arm aloft.

Both were recorded in 1979, yet Numan pipped Foxx to the post, getting his release out the other side of 1980. History has chosen Numan as the innovator, even though he has readily acknowledged Foxx’s influence.

Cult Status

Numan enjoyed commercial success, while Foxx’s own classic retains a cult status. “Everyone making electronic music at that time owes [Numan] a great debt for opening the door,” he says. “That led to a sea change in British music and eventually went right around the world. Gary made exceptional records. I also liked him, he was honest and straightforward and had a real vision. He’s a star and perfectly at home in it all, which unfortunately I am not.”

In some ways, Metamatic was too ahead of its time. The fact that it still holds up and sounds so fresh is testament to its enduring influence on much that followed. Recent years have witnessed a huge revival in its austere electro stylings, with genres like synthwave, minimalist techno, and even US Southern-fried hip-hop and trap taking clear cues. The similarities are not lost on Foxx. “I do hear it, and it does feel good,” he says. “It’s a sort of vindication if your music manages to migrate into succeeding generations.”

Reissues in the years since its initial release have unearthed a plethora of additional B-sides and offcuts. However, this year’s 45th anniversary incarnation, reverts to the classic tracklisting. Again, it’s Foxx’s penchant for keeping things simple, trimming it back to its core essence.

“We humans are great distillers, aren’t we?” he muses. “We love to get things down to their essence – a drop of perfume from a thousand flowers, whisky from common grain, steel from melted rocks, and all that. Same with music – when you get to something irreducible. It means you’ve found its most vital elements, and everything unnecessary has been chucked over the shoulder. Tough work, but only through all that will you finally get to the true spirit – and that’s what I was always after.”

The Songs

Plaza

The dystopian onslaught begins with a minimalist beat – processed and filtered like static emitting from some otherworldly transmission, before the dark, foreboding synths come crawling in. Foxx delivers stark, abstract imagery via his staccato speak-singing vocals, the most immediate being the wonderfully evocative but inherently dark lyric: “I recognise your face from some shattered windscreen.”

The overall soundscape is experimental in nature, full of dissonant bleeps and swishes that bubble up out of the ether. Foxx introduces a recurring motif that reappears throughout the album; that of urban spaces and metropolitan infrastructure – in this case, the plaza – providing that unsettling dichotomy of both wide open space and claustrophobia. As with most of the arrangements on the record, it’s sparse and austere. There’s no real song structure, but mainly propelled along on a singular groove, a subtly funky bass and the one-line chanted slogan.

He’s A Liquid

Supposedly influenced by visuals from a Japanese horror film in which an unfortunate character is liquified, this is one of a couple of tracks on Metamatic that Foxx first performed in a different guise with Ultravox. This iteration of the song features a wonderfully lackadaisical vocal delivery – though syncopated and rap-like – atop a slow, shuffly beat, and eerie haunted house synths. It could almost pass for Southern-fried hip-hop or proto-trap (ask your children), if not for the oh-so-English accent that places it firmly in post-War Britain (“Blackpool Neon Tango” is apparently how Foxx would describe his own genre).

Indeed, with its laidback swagger and trappy beats, wouldn’t it be wonderful to imagine a guest verse from Snoop Dogg? Following Foxx’s modus operandi for this record, the arrangement is notably sparse and spindly, as if it could collapse into nothingness at any moment. But that irresistible synth hook ensures it snags in the brain. Why on earth this wasn’t selected as a single is one of the great outrages of our times.

Underpass

If dystopian classics like A Clockwork Orange, 1984 or Crash were to be distilled into a four-minute pop song, this is what it would sound like. Underpass was released as the first single, and it’s easy to see why. It’s one of the most immediately accessible tracks on the record, with its catchy opening synth riff. Again, the chorus is that simple trademark vocal refrain cried out (whilst caked in reverb) over the main riff. It features another trap-style beat, though faster. The Ballardian imagery comes to the fore with the automobile theme, similarly adopted by Numan and others, and – just like Numan – his voice is particularly monotone and robotic in the verses.

Metal Beat

Conversely, it’s clear why this one wasn’t chosen as a single! But that’s not a bad thing; it has that wonderfully spontaneous and experimental feel that could only ever be the product of an album track or B-side (songs that often reveal an artist at their most interesting). It has a slower pace with a four-to-the-floor beat on the kick drum, with another minimalist, slightly squelchy bassline and cold synth motif shining over the top. It’s the sparsest track yet, with a slight musique concrete feel to it in its industrial-sounding vibes. But it is also totally eccentric in that very Northern English way, and actually the first explicit sign of whimsy. While some tracks feel quite heavy and foreboding, Metal Beat is light and playful.

No-One Driving

The second single, released in March 1980. The synth riff is naggingly reminiscent of something else – perhaps Airport by New Wavers, The Motors, if instead performed by Kraftwerk. More so than any other track on the record, this has a more conventional chord structure to it, rather than the synth bass groove-led tracks as is typical elsewhere. Meanwhile, John is more melodic in his vocal phrasing, to dramatic effect.

A New Kind Of Man

The first track of Side Two is characterised by its funky and busy bassline – that was apparently played on a standard bass guitar – with characterful runs and slides, layered over with droning synths that pitch bend and glissando from high to low, like a wailing siren, or digital scream. The whole concoction has a very anxious feeling to it, laced in nervous energy. It’s one of John’s favourite tracks on the record. He says: “I like the lyric and the synth sounds and was excited by the way the end melody repeated perfectly in the sound-on-sound loop of the Space Echo. A good omen – felt like the machines were making the music. This was the second or third song Gareth and I had recorded – by the time we’d got to that point, we were sailing away, the rest of the album was a delight to make.”

Blurred Girl

Apparently one of the first tracks put together in the studio with Jones, which really helped to set the tone of how the album would sound and feel. It features more eerie haunted house effects, with a theremin sound straight out of Scooby Doo, whirling above a cool synth riff. Again, there’s more melodic singing from Foxx. John sounds very distant in places, caked in reverb and set back in the mix – the melodic parts contrasting with the spoken word sections, which are much closer and dryer. One of the longer tracks on the record, the dub influence clearly reveals itself with the low-rumbling bassline and a slightly rambling quality, with its revolving groove that could seemingly go on forever. A genuine highlight.

030

The faster tempo gives 030 a discernible New Wave feel, complete with another skittish beat over flanged synths. Whether it’s intentional or not, Foxx channels a Devo vibe, particularly on the machine gun vocals (which vaguely recall Whip It, released later that year). Compared to other cuts on Metamatic, this feels relatively undeveloped – an idea that doesn’t fully take off like its siblings.

Tidal Wave

This, however, is more like it, opening with a frantic rhythm and faster tempo. It follows the mould of the song title repeated over: “Tidal wave, tidal wave, tidal wave goes by my window”. The vocals are more dronal on this track, with long, drawn out legato phrases. The dirty saw synths invoke an industrial feel; the punkiest track on the record. Indeed, with a heavier, grungy dance beat over the top, this could well pass for The Prodigy – Liam Howlett could surely do an epic remix (in a late-90s rather than early-80s vibe). Indeed, by the final third, it feels a little like it’s waiting for that huge jungle beat to kick in, that never does. But that’s just nitpicking. The outro is enhanced with ghostly vocal refrains that recall medieval monastic chants, an incongruous but inspired element to contrast against the song’s futurist urban leanings.

Touch And Go

Another track with a Devo-esque vibe, both in its jittery backing track and characteristic vocal delivery. The four-to-the-floor beat has an early techno feel, while the chiming synths in the final third recall eight-bit video games from an early 80s arcade. Cool synth flourishes abound throughout. This is another track originally roadtested with Ultravox ahead of Foxx’s departure, which is why you might recognise uncanny similarities to Mr X on the band’s 1980 record, Vienna (an equally pioneering classic).

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