John Foxx

**John Foxx** (b. 1948 Chorley, UK ) is a singer, musician and songwriter best known for being the founder member and leader of the band Ultravox! (later Ultravox) and for his solo work mostly in electronic music.

After releasing three albums with Ultravox! on Island records, Foxx left the group while on tour in the US in early 1979 in order to record his debut solo album *Metamatic*, using mostly synthesisers and drum machines with the songs characterised by Foxx's glacial vocals. The album is now considered a seminal work in the development of electronica, and spawned the singles Underpass and No-One Driving both of which featured on Top of the Pops. After releasing a third fully electronic single Burning Car in the summer of 1980, and My Face, a flexi-disc for Smash Hits magazine, Foxx moved away form the UK to travel around Europe, mostly Italy. His second solo album *The Garden* signalled a return to the use of conventional instruments integrated with synthesisers, reminiscent of his final album with Ultravox *Systems of Romance* (1978). After issuing two more less successful albums (*The Golden Section* and *In Mysterious Ways*) Foxx retired from the music scene in order to concentrate on his career as a graphic artist and lecturer under his real name of Dennis Leigh.

It wasn't until 1997 that Foxx made his return to music, releasing two albums of new material that same time year. While *Shifting City* goes back to the pure electronic sounds of *Metamatic*, and would be the first of a series of studio albums issued with Manchester musician and songwriter Louis Gordon, *Cathedral Oceans*, a solo album, mixes piano, electronic instruments and vocal effects in an "ambient" style album, accompanied by Foxx's striking images of classical portrait sculpture merged with natural subjects. A second and third volume of the *Cathedral Oceans* series were released in 2003 and 2005 respectively.

In the meantime Foxx had begun to tour extensively with Gordon, releasing in parallel with a handful of studio albums two live albums *Retro Future* (2007), *Neuro Video* (2008) and  *A New Kind of Man* (2008), the latter a live performance of the 1980 *Metamatic* album and related tracks.

In 2009 Foxx began a new collaborative musical project with synthesiser wizard Benge, under the collective name of John Foxx And the Maths. New tracks were previewed at the Short Circuit electronic music festival, curated by Foxx himself, at The Roundhouse in London on 5 June 2010. Their debut album *Interplay* was released on Metamatic Records in March 2011, closely followed by *The Shape of Things* the same year and *Evidence* in 2012.

After *Cathedral Oceans*, Foxx continued to produce further solo work - most notably *Tiny Colour Movies* (2006), *My Lost City* (2009), *B-Movie (Ballardian Video Neuronica)* (2014) and *London Overgrown* (2015). He has also collaborated with other musicians and composers such as Harold Budd, Jori Hulkonnen, Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins), Steve D'Agostino and Steve Jansen.

In 2017 John Foxx and the Maths released *The Machine*, an album developed form incidental music composed for the theatrical representation of E. M. Forster's short story The Machine Stops.

## Links to The Human League

* Both John Foxx and The Human League were signed to Virgin records.
* Both artists appear on the Machines 1980 compilation album - Foxx with "Underpass and The Human LEague with the *Travelogue* version of Being Boiled.
* Foxx started his solo career with *Metamatic*, and album created almost entirely using electronic instruments, just like The Human League had been doing for some years.
* Phil Oakey has been quoted as saying, "John Foxx’s *Metamatic* is one of the few essential albums of the movement I call the Alienated Synthesists. And I like his newer material a lot."
* John Foxx & Louis Gordon supported The Human League on their tour in December 2003.

## References

1. ↑ VVAA - Machines (1980) - discogs.com
2. ↑ blog.thequietman.co.uk