This is my favourite Foxx album ever, so i'll admit from the start that any thoughts on here are completely coloured by that fact.
First the booklet. Well, the revamped booklet takes the limited edition Church book into account wonderfully (thank you Rob, thank you Cerise, thank you Mr Paul Agar wherever you are thankyouthankyouthankyou – why can’t all re-issues get the love you lot give them? Etcetcetc).
It's sad and anorak I know, but if the goldfish weren't there I'd of killed millions...well I'd of complained a lot...maybe just sulked a bit. The goldfish are there! Everything is alright with the world, phew.
You could get a rough idea how the album sounds from Glimmer. Musically thankfully, there’s no surprises - the album is just as it was. I noticed that the fade out to Walk Away now has a slight bass rumble as well as the soaring string line at the very end, but that may have been there all along – just not noticed it before on the original Virgin CD issue or the original vinyl and cassette issues.
I know what Lele means about stereo panning on Dancing Like A Gun* – but I’m really unsure if this is any different to the original vinyl and subsequent CD issue. Some guitar and vocals do appear prominently on the left channel and there was similar stereo panning on other tracks originally (the kick drum on Night Suit for example) that infer that the panning is indeed panning and not drop-out. The audio-savvy among you can fight it out – I’m just going to grab a nice bottle of wine and listen again at sunset.
‘Dress discarded’ in the The Garden, we head over to the bonus disc – and what a bloody wonderful bonus disc it is. So good, that it takes repeated playing, especially of tracks 6 – 10 to really appreciate it.
Fog is a beautiful sleepy piano-like bleep piece with small elements of percussion – it reminds me of the beautiful and haunting piano piece Promenade Sentimentale from the 1981 movie Diva. Clocking in at six minutes it slowly builds, strings coming in so quietly you hardly notice.
If you’ve not heard Swimmer III and Swimmer IV (previously titled The Quiet Man 3 and The Quiet Man 4 and only available on the much sought after Touch Meridans cassettes) before you’re in for a treat. Cleaned up, these two proto- Cathedral Oceans tracks are allowed to fly a little higher than the tape hiss originals. Just listening to Fog, Swimmer III and Swimmer IV is an experience in itself – knowing that these early explorations into the more ambient side of things, was just around the corner. Fog would easily have slipped onto Tiny Colour Movies (yes, it’s that good) and no one would of noticed.
Dance With Me is very similar to the original, just a bit stripped back and some re-shuffling where things come in.
A Woman on a Stairway is beautiful. It’s a more understated recording compared to the original that appeared on The Golden Section cassette. The strings sound slightly filtered giving the impression they’re being communiqué’d from a vintage 1940s radio – well in my head at any rate.
The version of Fusion / Fission is just another take from The Garden sessions and not as some had thought, an earlier Metamatic-era version.
There’s a really haunting quality to the bonus disc; it drifts in on Fog and whispers out again on A Woman on a Stairway.
Right – I’m off to go waltzing through the crowd, while all the skies go tumbling down.
Gazza
*see Glimmer thread
