Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx Questions, questions, questions

I wonder what their new album will be like.... the thought of Timberlake and Timbaland working with them sends shivers down my spine...

Re: the question of what John & Louis are playing live...

At the Brighton gig, I was virtually standing "in the wings" so I could see John's fingers on his MIDI controller keyboard.
It was rather confusing: he definately did appear to be playing some parts in some songs (e.g. in FILM ONE, he seemed to be quite straightforwardly playing the high stringy reverbby synth sound)...
however when he was actually singing, he seemed to be more just using the keyboard as a prop, and busking away on it in time to the music...
For example, when the set reached UNDERPASS, he looked like he was playing the synthreggae bass line, but then when the vocals started, he was more just prodding the keyboard in time to the music...
We wondering if they had an elaborate MIDI thing going on whereby the backing was running on a computer (ie software-based) multitrack, and the destination for John's MIDI notes was dynamically switched in and out to the correct sounds and/or to nothing at appropriate parts of the song ...
then again, perhaps he was sometimes controlling the vocal harmony stuff from his Digitech Vocalist gadget when singing... John also reached over to select some stuff at times on a module to his left.

Louis seemed to be mostly playing lead lines and riffs.

Ah yes, back to topic!

That's an interesting observation. I've often wondered myself what is played live and what bits come from DAT or whatever.

Obviously with a lineup of just two (or now three it seems) musicians, not all the parts could possibly be played live. Although they are indeed triggered live!

Plus many of the sounds, loops etc particularly for Metamatic, are old and may not be replicated on John's current setup, therefore he has to rely on DATS for the authentic, irreplaceable sounds.

With technology-based music such as this, it's never going to be entirely 'live' in that sense.

At the Brighton gig, to my surprise, there was only John and Louis on stage... but the sound was just the same as at the ICA - so "go figure" etc etc...


DAT is just a stereo medium, and rather antiquated these days, I doubt they'd be using that for their backing... Louis seems to have control over levels of all the individual backing parts on his mixer, so their backing track is a "multitrack" kind - could be a software system (eg running on a laptop) or summat like an Alesis' "HD 24" hard-disk multitrack machine...
At the Brighton gig, the DJ booth shared the same space as the main sound desk, and the house sound guy seemed to just have a single stereo pair on the desk labelled "John Fox" so I think maybe Louis submixes the entire thing himself and just sends an idiot-proof final stereo mix to the 'front of house'....?

The Metamatic set's backing track seems to contain a number of original elements from the album (particularly the CR78 drums).... these would be so fiddly to recreate so accurately that I suspect that they did was copy off the entire Metamatic 8-track master multitrack to computer, then Louis kept the tracks they wanted (e.g. CR78 and some synth parts) and laid down some fresh backing bits (e.g. to replace the bass guitar)..... mind you, I am just speculating wildly! Steve Malins does refer to Louis having trouble "programming" up a new backing for "030" on the interview CD...

Much as it would save me making two trips, I doubt if a Numan/Foxx & Gordon show would happen. On the other hand, I would be interested to hear what happens if Gary gave Louis & John a track to produce!

As I've mentioned before,Louis DID do a mix of "Dominion Day", but Numan(or as I gather,Gemma) didn't like it

Yes I remember that, it was intended to be a track on a Numan cd single or part of a new compilation. It was stopped by someone (or Gemma) so quick, that it never even leaked out in digital format. :rolleyes:

"Too many synths" apparently

How on earth can you ever have too many synths?!

lol well do a Google Image Search for Geoff Downes playing with Asia and you'll get some idea ;-)

Mind you, have a look at these pics here
http://www.soundonsound.com/forum/showfl...st530744#528142
(Jean-Michel Jarre rehearsing a live tour for Oxygene...)