Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx Glimmer: The Best Of

ooh er - serves me right. I seldom venture 'over there'...

Least of all to catch up with Midge's career :rolleyes:

Thanks for putting me straight.

But as it happens re: 'morning tea', I'm actually on a three week 'detox' - no tea, coffee or alcohol until next Wednesday!!!

What's this doing in the 'Glimmer' thread??

Having only itunes to fall back on regarding Hi NRG, and not having a musical grammar knowledge either, I can only say that with my laymans ear I think I can see what you mean about track 13, and much as its one of my fav's on Glimmer, I'm glad it didn't become the pattern for John for a more Discofied direction , though he did state that after Metamatic he wanted next to make music people could dance to!

Really?? I see you there quite often! Great site, innit?

But steering away from Midgevox and back toward John Foxx, and specifically "Glimmer: The Best Of" . . .

I've listened to it several times since it arrived Thursday. The sound is quite good and overall pleasingly crisp, although there is still a weird balancing problem with the channels of "Dancing Like a Gun." It sounds okay on a CD player but dreadful on my computer -- the same dropout issue as the version on my old "Garden" CD, which is a shame because I was hoping this version would work on my iPod but it doesn't. Damn iTunes! Any suggestions on how to fix this? I wonder if it will be the same on the remastered "Garden" CD.

I know a lot of consideration probably went into it, but the sequencing strikes me as utterly random, especially on disc 2. It seems very (excuse the word choice) disconnected -- I keep checking to see if I've got some sort of shuffle on. The only consolation for this is that the tracks I don't particularly like don't really stand out as jarringly as I thought they would, because the order of almost everything is kind of jarring! :p Consequently I don't expect I will listen to either disc in sequence very often, and since I think I have everything that I want in some other form, this lovely package may just end up taking up shelf space for me. But if it succeeds in sucking newcomers into the vortex of Foxxmania, I will still give it a thumbs-up.

You may be pleased to know that a copy of Glimmer has found it's way to the Continent and is now a-glimmering and a shimmer-ing on my CD player much to my delight and to that of those in my immediate vicinity.

I guess enough has been said about it already, but suffice it to say I'm pleased with the packaging and photos - sleeve notes perhaps dwell a little too much on the Ultravox! and Metamatic years and the rest is fairly much glossed over (are the rest of the 80s even mentioned?). Some nice pics I've never seen beforeincluding the nth Metamatic cover pose, although this time he really does look like he's holding the thing up with one hand and getting a bit pissed off too... I like the one with him in a tie and glass in hand ... Mr Cool!

I'm still grappling a little with the tracklist -Glimmer as a track in itself finally gets the limelight rather than being 'just' an instrumental B side of yore, and is a worthy opening to the Metamatic standard run-through (Plaza, No-One, Underpass) with Quiet City and Dislocation fitting in fairly seamlessly. 030 is a nice inclusion although I'm not entirley convinced of 'Twilight' coming in straight after, even though it does seem to help in lightening things up a bit.
After which we seem to be sent from pillar to post in terms of Foxxian styles and output. 'Europe' is a bit out of place in my opinion, but then again that's my opinion..Hiroshima and Garden are a nice combination and finish off disc 1 nicely...

..just as the (psycadelic) Beatles influenced pair Sleeping and Endlessly start off disc 2 very well too. I've never felt completely at ease with My Sex (the song I mean) but here it does seem to take on a new strength in its new home and that beefy Foxx/Gordon coda really hit me this time. But after that we're again fast forwarded and backwarded at will - 'Dancing' and 'Miles Away' jarring a little in this rather bumpy Foxxian Tardis-trip.
Stepping Sideways may have made a nice closer but then we have the tagged on collaborations and rarities section which to be honest don't really add to it all.
As a fan and collector of course I'm happy with it but I'm wondering whether Joe Punter / Public will take to it.

..just my opinion..

I’ve finally got around to listening to the whole of Glimmer. I bought this release mainly for the last 4 tracks on CD2, with the artwork, single version of Dislocated, and revised Cities Of Light as the bonuses.

I had not heard Free Robot before. Quite different to the original, it almost feels like a completely separate track. I don’t think it compares to the original, but is certainly a worthwhile addition to the original.

The early version of No One Driving was a bit of a surprise. In many ways it sounds more modern that the Metamatic version. It could easily have been an early 80’s dance floor hit. I like it a lot.

Extended Plaza – I didn’t think this added much to the original.

Burning Car remix – I was already familiar with this one from John’s MySpace page. I’m generally in favour of these remixes, and to my mind, this is one of the best. Gives a whole new dimension to the track.

I’m a big fan of the album version of Dislocated, and the single version does lose some of the gradual build up and middle instrumental work that makes the album track special. Still love it of course!

TPOE has always been one of my favourite albums, so I was wondering how I would react to the revised City Of Light. This is evolution rather than revolution, and I am pleased with the feel of the extra layers. They enhance the original nicely.

Overall, a very good package. CD1 feels like an album in its own right, CD2 perhaps less so. Oh, and what a bargain price!

Great reviews, and with some very different opinions.

I agree, it’s a really good opener for an album, undeniably setting the scene of cinematic vision.


Well put, great statement

Garry/Radiobeach has posted such excellent reviews of other albums recently that I felt inspired to get my nib out...

“You will grow older and then younger...”

Glimmer, by birdsong

Some of them are shining out through everything I see

John Foxx 1978. Thirty years ahead of his time.
Now is his time. 2008. Before and beyond -the past is the new present. The future it seems is perhaps catching up with one of Britain's most enigmatic musical artists, a figure in a smart grey suit, forever materialising just beyond the reach of definition.

Foxx has always managed to perform his sonic assemblage against the current of whatever circumstances flow around him on the tide of fashion. The particles of his art never quite form any definable shape for long, and the sounds he produces define music that is distinctly his own, describing a catalogue of creative genius that now spans 30 years.

Some of them are friends just as they were

The Best of John Foxx drives from the minimalist metal beat of his earliest solo incarnation, through the rich verdancy of The Garden, and shimmers in the glow of the Golden Section. Transcending periods of silence and invisibility, always underground, and finally bursting out into the Shifting City in which so much of his work is set.
John Foxx is not a musician any more than he is an artist, or a writer, or a film-maker. He is all of these, merging fine art with synthesizers, electronic music with industrialised psychedelia, mixing metallic clicks, squelches and drones with rich strings, drifting voices, creating melodies as fragile as spider silk and bass notes so deep they'd rip the wings off a military aircraft.
Glimmer is every shiny, tender one of theses things. As impossible to define as its creator.

Some of them are crowding closer every passing year

Glimmer reflects the thematic, rather than chronological nature of John Foxx’s artistry, and demonstrates a deeper understanding of the Gestalt principle than has been achieved previously in this context. Full credit for this must go to Steve Malins because such a diverse range of material was deemed by fans as nearing ‘impossible’ to condense into just two CDs. But like the John Foxx discography, time is simply not linear. Ideas, sounds, characters and impressions drift in and out of the songs like smoke, bearing little regard for the parameters of sequence, and in such a way that their ordering on the track list exemplifies my favourite kind of irrelevance.
‘Now’ and ‘Then’ become lovers, waltzing hand in hand like Petrucio and Katherine through celluloid and steel. Hiroshima, mon amour. Look at the ideas, not the release dates.

Some of them are gentle, some can flare

From Dislocation to Dislocated, embracing newly-shimmering tracks from his solo albums and presenting a tantalising glimpse of translucent sunlight glancing off the splintered fragments of collaboration, Glimmer has it all. Lavishly and clinicially adorned with rare archive photography from different periods, embellished with previously unseen artwork - rescued no doubt from a dusty suitcase somewhere - credit has to be given to Paul Agar and Rob Harris for the exquisite booklet. Foxx is as much about what he brings out of others as about the music he’s made over the years.

Some of them I've altered slowly as they're changing me

Expect to have no favourite one here, for it is never going to be easy to isolate a single moment that encapsulates what John Foxx is all about. One of the two places you’ll get closest to that ‘golden section’, that divine moment of meaning, lies in the neo-romantic, post-apocalyptic hybrid of machine and organism that is otherwise listed as track 16.
Nowhere among the twisted wreckage of the cyber-cocktail that is the ‘John Foxx/Detroit Mancunian Louis Gordon’ fusion is there a better repurposing of an Ultravox compound than the pair’s regeneration of My Sex. The patterns of rhythm, sound, angst and poetry in the original are captured with breath-taking eloquence, but now, thanks to the alchemy of Dallas Simpson, the aural graffiti of Gordon’s spraycan ejaculate daubs and chirrups away at the slabs of concrete sound constructed by Foxx with more clarity and directionless grace than before.

Some of them are so far gone they're hard to recognise

To demonstrate Glimmer’s grasp of the retrofuture concept further, there are elements in the title track, written in 1980, that would be perfectly at home in the later Cathedral Oceans material. Some of the threads woven into Carcrash Flashback V2 (From Trash) have their roots in Metamatic and its dub-tronic ancestors.
Its no coincidence that the extended version of Plaza (remastered from damaged tapes and now available for the first time) heralds the 21st century explosive remix that closes the album, Dubterror’s Burning Car.
This is the other blistering, iconic moment of oneness on Glimmer - a work of art that encompasses everything and all that will forever be John Foxx.

© Birdsong, October 2008.

'Some of Them'/'...Tigers' lyrics written by John Foxx.
Reproduced entirely without asking...

You liked it then?