Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx The Golden Section 2008 re-master

“Remembering,
How things used to be,
Before everything was changed…”

The Golden Section…

…This is my personal mix that I’ve been playing over the last few days, mostly selected from disc two of the 2008 remaster:


01. My Wild Love (early version, track 2)
02. Annexe
03. A Kind Of Wave
04. A Long Time (alternative version)
05. Sitting At The Edge Of The World (alternative version, track 5)
06. The Lifting Sky
07. Endlessly (alternative version/extended mix, track 16)
08. Ghosts On Water
09. Like A Miracle (early version, metamatic remaster)
10. The Hidden Man (alternative version, track 14)
11. Twilight's Last Gleaming (early version, track 7)+(’83 version)
12. Dance With Me
13. A Woman On A Stairway


Now at last I have a Golden Section that I really do want to listen to, and I can honestly say that I find myself enjoying, and it’s no longer just sitting on my shelf.

Okay, I realise that I’ve done a cut and paste job with an artist’s work, like swapping around the scenes in a film with no regard for the Directors storytelling.
But I just feel that I’ve carefully re-arranged the furniture a bit, it’s still John’s House, I still like visiting it, but now I’m more relaxed and comfortable in it, sitting having a cup of tea while happily absorbing the surroundings, finally I feel at home in here...


The running order is almost the same, and this was not difficult for me to keep, because my gripe with the ’83 TGS has always been about the slick production on the songs, not about the compositions, or ideas, or themes, and I’m able now to even like a few song’s that previously disappointed me.


I have omitted three tracks from the original album, ‘Your Dress’, which I loved very much at the time, but it’s not one I can listen to now, it’s my own fault, I used it back then in a student project, so it’s taken on other meanings since.
‘Someone’, I always liked this, but hearing it now, I’ve become bored with it, and RATIWT, I still can’t warm to it, and the alternative/extended version, track 8, almost had me this time, but not quite!

What I’ve got now are a lot of the blatantly Beatles sounding works, this I can far more easily live with, and I can understand that this alone is a reason in itself to make some people groan at TGS. I’ve never personally been so over-loaded with the Beatles that I can’t warm to John’s pastiche of them, and I’d rather this than the hideous faux rock guitar sounds, and over-compensating drumming, which was laddled over many of the tracks like so much golden syrup on the ’83 album.


Give me the cool beatnik garage band guitars of the early My Wild Love any day, to that of the uncool, bandana wearing, stadium posturing version we have as the original album opener.
I’ve also warmed to the CD2 version of Endlessly, track 16, which lies somewhere between the ’82 (vegetarian version), and the ’83 (meat-eater) versions, and I prefer the sharp raw synth’s of the earlier Like A Miracle, (Metamatic remaster), to that of the ‘candles in the air’ glossy keyboards production of ’83.

The Hidden Man, track 14, at last, a version I can enjoy more, it’s theme is very much classic Foxx, so the blerpy, frothing synth sound throughout is a most welcome diversion to the drum/guitar bashing that I used to have to endure, (now finally I can get rid of that youtube image in my mind of John sash-aying in pastel trousers while singing this on the ’83 concert tour)

Woman On A Stairway, one of John’s most beautiful, powerful, and intriguing tracks, and one of my all time fav’s, his best song post the Garden period, and of ’83, why it was never on the album is a mystery, but I think it’s the album closer for me…


New Golden Section, I salute you, even if this does sound like I’m patting myself on the back for making my own mix tape, well, we are still all teenagers at heart

I find this version so good that ive re-arranged the tracks in itunes and the pod, so that it plays last on 'disc'2. In fact, ive changed quite a lot of tracks on 'discs'2 of all four remasters. Hope this is allowed.

Nice piece of writing - cool!

It's well known that I struggle with TGS, but reading this and everyone's enthusiasm for the re-mastered 2CD I'm looking forward to getting to grips with it and re-awakening it somehow.

I'm reluctant to chop and change things about, but I can see your point and might try it. I'm expecting to prefer disc 2 to disc 1 anyway. I fear the extended mix of 'Tigers' and have yet to be impressed by 'The Hidden Man', but I'm with you on 'A Woman on a Stairway'. You're absolutely right though - maybe it is the shimmering production and contemporary pop polish that has put me off.
I look forward to getting under that and back to the grit.

What a great time this is for us all.

On my CD, 'Endlessly (Extended Mix)' jumps badly, so I haven't been able to play it all the way through!

I was reluctant too originally, til i listened to the official re-ordering of tracks on 'IMW', and found that its much improved. So i started with the second discs only. I would never consider changing the actual albums though. It would be great to know if anyone else has re-arranged the order of some, and to what the results were.

And what of 'Shine On Me'??

Any thoughts/reactions?

Do we know anything of its history? Another one of those (alleged) 'In the Glow' tracks that were scrapped?

aw, they’re just big old (sampled) pussycats really


It’s not that it’s so radically different, and by ‘theme’ I meant the writing rather than it being a classic Foxx sound musically. It does have a more dominant, squelchy sounding synth running through it, and that is much more like John for me, and lift’s it just enough to get me back on board.


Thankfully, :rolleyes: , as far as I’m concerned, unless you happen to like a sing-a-long


Yeah, I didn’t expect to get into TGS as much as I did, or that I would just think 'oh what the heck, make my own selection from it all'. I also regard an album as being a whole thing, or experience, and it either has to all work, or not at all, but now I may as well take this opportunity to be happy with it in a way that works for me, and my little ‘mix’ has been getting played a lot of times over the last few day’s, leaving me reluctant to stop and start listening to the other ‘2’ remasters.


I await your struggle with TGS,

mine began today with IMW…

I'm finding all of this discussion of the cover amusing. I've always assumed that a Virgin exec said to him, "Look John, you're last album was brilliant but no one bought it because you stuck a picture of shrubbery on the cover. The kids don't relate to that. They want to see a picture of you." And so, I imagine, John complied for once and sales were even worse. Fortunately, this ended John's dalliance with pop star marketing techniques and he went back to being the good old mysterious Quiet Man that you don't see too much of.

probably a bit like the 'Orange' phone commercials, with the 'suit' saying to John, "yes, I'm seeing all that musical stuff, great sounds, very like our ringtones, but you've got to get out from behind the bushes"

Rob

I've just been listening to Twilight's Last Gleaming (Early version) on John's mySpace. It's really a very interesting version. It sounds well pre-83 and it's very electronic, almost Metamatic. The more I play it the more I realise that it belongs to the same period as the original version of Endlessly from '82. Does this appear to be correct?

It's perhaps John's most mysterious and unique album, with kind permission of In Mysterious Ways. It's probably John's most elaborate work to date. Perhaps for The Garden John wasn't utilising his new studio to the fullest, even though that album was really impressive. By '82 and '83 he was in full swing with all his new equipment and we were lucky to have listened to John's greatest effort, conceived in his golden space.

I'm sure The Golden Section is the one I'll play first when the remasters arrive.

Chris