Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx My Lost City

Maybe I missed the thread, but anyone else received an email from Townsend Records?

"As a previous customer we are pleased to announce details of the new CD by John Foxx entitled 'My lost City'.My Lost City is an collection of 11 instrumental music which John has been quietly assembling for the last few years.
For further information and to pre-order click :"

http://www.townsend-records.co.uk/artist.php?artist=John+Foxx

Hi Donald,

It was in the announcements section last week along with the other 2 upcoming albums:-

http://www.metamatic.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000022;p=4#000055

Brian

Thanks Brian - knew I must have missed something!

Does anyone know what musical styles these instrumentals are in? Are they like CO or like the Harold Budd collaboration? Or perhaps like his older instrumentals or perhaps even a mix?

John Foxx myspace says:

"In terms of style, the album includes early experiments with ideas that would eventually become Cathedral Oceans such as the filmic, synthesizer-driven Imperfect Hymn; one beautiful track is built around piano but also features electronics; others are more tonal, though melody features very strongly throughout My Lost City. Everything is recognisable in other John Foxx projects, yet also unique."

I've only just noticed that My Lost City is now listed as a 'Townsend Records Exclusive' - has this just been added? I didn't notice it this morning. Does this mean that My Lost City is now a Limited Edition album?

Hate to be pedantic but aren't all of John's albums "limited editions" these days in so far as only around 1000 copies are pressed and very few of them make their way into high street music retailers?

Or it means you have to buy it from Townsend as nobody else will have it?

Many thanks to Don (quietrumrunnerman) for pointing out that My Lost City takes its name from an essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The essay was written in 1932, so I assume it is now out of copyright(?) - and is freely available on various websites such as this one;

http://www.uhb.fr/faulkner/ny/fitzgerald.htm if anyone wants to read it.

"...they blurred into one lovely entity, the girl..."

I am not fond of CO myself so if its like that then I think I will give it a pass.

Just looking into Foxx’ repurposing of F.Scott Fitzgerald a little further – do any of these sound familiar?

This Side of Paradise – 1920
The Beautiful and the Damned – 1922


Another anorak fact - the title Umbra Sumus very probably comes from the Latin quote “Pulvis et umbra sumus”, which translates as “We are but dust and shadow”. This is taken from Odes by the Latin poet Horace (c. 23 BC and 13 BC) (Book IV, ode vii, line 16) although Foxx could of repurposed it from Ernest Hemmingway, who repuposed it himself for his novel The Sun Also Rises.

You can tell I'm busy at work today eh?

Gazza

This is EXACTLY what I love about John Foxx and the delights of being a fan.

For me, the very essence of his work is the way the references and ideas cross-pollinate each other, the way the writing becomes music becomes artwork, the way different periods of time merge into one another in an ethereal non-linear way, the way this style of music is closer than first appears to that style of music.

It's great to see everything coming together at last and different profiles emerging.

Go Gazza GO!

Heartened to see thoughtful discourse around the
Parish,gentlemen.

For me, JF is the kind of artist who,upon encountering their first synth will think:' I could get away with pressing the demo button and alternate the pre-sets? No,perhaps I can explore some avenues less travelled.'

That is how you become influential-the cyphers inevitably follow.

The Swimmers - 1929 (anorak with fake-fur?)

Cheers Martin! Lody!

I love it when artists do this sort of thing – leaving clues.

David Sylvian does something similar, mind you it’s not as deftly camouflaged as Foxx. Brilliant Trees as an example, is riddled with it. The lyrics – “Nature feeds this nausea” (Pulling Punches), “The blood of a poet, the ink in the well, It’s all written down in this Age of Reason” (Ink in the Well), “It’s the devil in the flesh, it’s the Iron in my Soul” (Red Guitar). I had no idea until a few months after purchasing the album that what he was leaving was clues about the works of Jean-Paul Sartre; Nausea and the Roads to Freedom trilogy – The Age of Reason, The Reprieve and Iron in the Soul.

You can probably imagine what a journey of discovery this was as a teenager. Ink in the Well also mentions Picasso – and the covers to my battered second-hand Penguin editions of the Roads to Freedom trilogy all used artworks by Picasso for the cover art, and so Brilliant Trees became so much more than just an album, in the same way as Ballard does for Metamatic and Burroughs and Philip K. Dick do for Replicas – it became an education.

Sadly – it’s struck again. I’m already head over heels in love with My Lost City and I’ve yet to hear a single note!

The Swimmers as in The Garden Disc 2 :p

TSOParadise. There is a first solo album by Cars
Frontman, Ric Ocasek with same title and track.
Worth hearing.Good use of ye olde synths thruout.

repurposing I bought a packet of 'Chorley' cakes in Sainsbury's yesterday...

Also Jean Cocteau was an influence on 'Brilliant Trees', as you probably know, Garry.

Oh yeah! I forgot about that! I had that postcard set that came with Pulling Punches.

PS - Will write to you soon (honest! ) It's just like Piccadilly Circus round 'ere at the moment!

A lovely sample of "Holywell Lane" is up on John's MySpace player...

Sounds very nice but a little bit hissy.....

ooh, I love Holywell Lane

(and Secret Life Part 5 is also there...)

Intentionally so if you read the blurb :

And an excerpt from "Imperfect Hymn," sounding very much like the missing link between "The Garden" and Cathedral Oceans.

I'm liking all of this.

Are those John's vocals? He must have found out his tightest pants!

Imperfect Hymn sounds lovely though - absolutely lovely. Steve, you're spot on with your comments there about it linking The garden and CO.

I'm really looking forward to this album. It would be very interesting to know when and where the various tracks were recorded or originated - maybe there will be more info like this in the sleeve notes...

I'm still not sold on A Secret Life though...

Great stuff for me!!
But then again, who am I?

Cheers D

All is now clear.

That was posted after the track was put up

So we'll have no moaning about hiss, click, snap, crackle and pop when the album comes out!

I'd like to thank Steve Malins and John for putting two tracks of the forthcoming album up on Myspace. WOW I'm bowled over and can't wait to get my grubby hands on My Lost City and hearing the full versions.

Imperfect Hymn as a nice CO feel to it.

Holywell Lane as a similar feel to Beethovens' piano sonata. Beauiful.

I have reservations about A Secret Life. My thoughts only.

Peter

I'm forming an impression that this could be the best John Foxx album for a long time.

I don't remember the last one I looked forward to quite this much

(Except perhaps for 'A Secret Life'...)

Imperfect Hymn - beautiful. Just goes to show what a milestone Lumen de Lumine was :p

You're fully entitled to your thoughts Peter, as we all are.

I'm not keen on it from what I've heard so far - nothing beyond the album cover to grab my attention or imagination.

I think (or hope) it'll be one of those albums that you need to hear as a whole before any possible judgement can be made. I'm sure it'll make sense in its entirety.

I wasn't bothered about Translucence + Drift Music when I first got it; I was quite disappointed. Than one day it grabbed me by the bollards and swung me round! It was only then I realised what a beautiful album it really is.

Despite being instrumental, it is starting to feel like this could be the album that John has been working towards since he first started writing about his fixation with cities.

He's clearly been saving the cover artwork for it! Maybe Urban Motets was a "false start".

But yes, I'm also really excited about this one...

Interesting thought. But perhaps its because it's instrumental?

John's lyrics are great of course, but they do 'define' our interpretation of the songs and (to an extent) lead us in a particular direction. This kind of music is more like an imagined map - there is no predetermined route through it or conclusion to draw - our understanding of it is given the freedom to find itself...

...well, having just listened to Imperfect Hymn its a triple 'ooh' from me for this track

I've listened to all three edits & they are all superb pieces of music. I prefer this side of John's music to the electronic stuff with Louis.

Spiritual, emotive, deeply moving and gorgeous.

and for the listener to be happily lost within it.

Let's hope so! Actually, I tend to religiously steer away from hearing previews of things. I doubt I will hear anything of MLC or ASL until one or both CDs is in my hands. It is just my way ...

Imperfect Hymn? Well it sure whoops the asses of those dirges we used to be forced to sing in morning assemblies.

If this is representative of the quality of the Lost City it seems the streets are paved with gold.

Gosh!

I do like both of the Lost City tracks.

I'll agree with that, but go one step further and say that recently I've come to like ALL of John's work as a whole, rather more than I like any single piece or side of it. I feel I'm begining to grasp the Gestalt psychology of it now.
Everything he records seems to come from one central idea, a vastly different manifestation of the same fundamental vision. Each subsequent release (including the emergent artwork/writing) adds something to my understanding of the whole, and explores the relationship between all the parts.

Inspirational.

I think I first really began to 'see' this when I heard Metanym on Cathedral Oceans III, which is exactly that - a piece of music that encompasses everything that has gone before it, and captures the essence of what it all means.
Just played it again now, and it works so perfectly.

These two new albums really define something for me - and I've only heard the samples!!!

Martin, I totally agree with your analysis. I was about to post my thoughts before I'd read your last comments. I thought exactly the same when I first heard 'Metanym' - a good close to the CO collection as well.
I would further like to add that what is of interest to me is if some of the ideas that were coming up around the time of the original CO stuff - that up til now only survived on the bootlet from the Shrewsbury gig in 87 - are explored on MLC. There were some very different directions on some of those tracks, even a Japanese/theme from David Lloyd George (was it called Chia Mi?)/Forbidden Colours type piece. When it was posted that John has been working on some of the instrumentals for a while, I did hope that this is the case. However, what is great about his continuous output is that you'll hope a certain thread emerges on an album, then it doesn't appear and then you'll hear it 'repurposed' into someting else. In a word 'Magnificent'. Quiet Man narrative played to 'My Lost City' in Leeds this year anyone?
Role on the 23rd Feb.
Cheers

Birdsong, could this quote from Camus (which I spotted inside the booklet to Scott 4, earlier today ) sum up what’s going on:

“A man’s work is nothing but his slow trek to rediscover through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”

As John continues to successfully realize the different avenues of his creativity the fundamental 'image/message' of his work over these last 30 years will possibly emerge as a revealing statement to whatever unconscious motivation has generated this lifelong output.

Excellent. Sounds about right to me

Thanks

The both tracks are brilliant!

Looking forward listening to the hole CD....!

I don't think you'll get much sound out of the CD's hole.

There's always one, isn't there?

Why yes, they have to have one or you wouldn't be able to play them

Ah, think there is more chance to listen to the whole than the hole of the CD...

I thought perhaps you were outing yourself as a Courtney Love fan and meant "Live Through This" -- easily the best Hole CD, just not sure what it had to do with John Foxx!

Just checked Townsend and my copy of My Lost City was posted today, so fingers crossed it'll be with me tomorrow. YIPPEE.

Peter

Having read your post Peter, I just logged in and checked my order status - and it said "SENT ON 25/02/09"... They've managed to post it in the future!

'Sent from the future'? Have you identified yourself to them as a Doctor Who fan, then?

My Lost hole ? Sorry,been looking in the future for it.Hitched a Moebius Strip back...

Just received my copy in this morning's post, which is pretty impressive considering I only ordered it online yesterday lunchtime.

I was actually undecided about this one as I've found some of John's instrumental work (particularly TCM) doesn't work so well without visuals and tends to be a bit too much like background music. However, I had a listen to the tracks on Myspace and was persuaded - looking forward to a pleasant evening with the headphones and the phone off the hook!

That was fast! Then again I don't see the point in pre-ordering. Anyway I'm hoping mine will have arrived this morning...

I'm still undecided about My Lost City. I will look forward to reading the reviews in the coming days.

It do like the two tracks on MySpace, especially Imperfect Hymn.

My Lost City

Think Of Cathedral Oceans Mixed with Tiny Colour Movies, then muliply that thought by 10.

In the words of my friend over at AFE, simply stunning.

This has got to be Foxx's best instrumental (I use that word cautiously, as we have the heavenly Latinesque vocals of CO) album.

"Hawksmoor Orbital" and "Scene 27-Intro to The Voice Behind the Wallpaper, Trellick Tower 3am" (this track is just so beautiful) are standouts for me on first listen.

Anyone doubting this album, dispel those doubts right now, Foxx has delivered a winner (yet again).

I appreciate the sentiment,
but you're being somewhat anachronistic - the sorts of synths John Foxx first encountered (miniMoog, Arp Odyssey, EMS AKS/VCS3) didn't even have memories to let you store the sounds, never mind presets or 'demo' buttons.
And if you listen to a certain album called "Metamatic", you'll here what John Foxx did with the preset rhythms of the Roland CR78 drum machine! He didn't bother faffing around trying to program his own!

I got the album today,
have listened to it through and thought it was lovely

I can see why he didn't want to release this stuff at the time, when he was trying to have a career as a pop star who appeared on Top of the Pops and had his photo in 'Smash Hits',
but who cares about that sort of rubbish in 2009!

I am now mostly reading on the Interweb about Plague Pits!

It really is fun searching the song titles on Google image search...

Are they all real places then...?

Funny how he should end up playing @ Cargo so often which is just off Shoreditch which inspired so much of this.

I walked past the end of Holywell Lane last October on my way to meet at the pub.

I just double-checked and the address of The Garden studio is indeed Holywell Lane. But I guess most of you already knew that!

Hawksmoor church seems to have been restored http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2004/sep/06/architecture.regeneration

And Trellick Tower is utterly horrid!

I have to admit, contrary to my expectations, the artwork and music don't quite go together for me - which is a first.

I probably need to stare at it for longer.

Only ref I can find to Piranesi is:-

"Giovanni Battista Piranesi's series of etchings of imaginary prisons, Le Carceri, in the British Museum

Anyway back to the album.Love it.

Stand outs for me are Imperfect Hymn & Barbican Brakhage

It's all much more Cathedral Oceans than I was expecting, but it has some really lovely pieces.

I think the epic "Imperfect Hymn" steals the show for me, followed by "Holywell Lane" - I can see why these were put up on the MySpace playlist.

I also really like "Hidden Asssembly" and "Just Passing Through" - if only it were longer than 45 seconds!

The opening notes of "Barbican Brakhage" are lovely... very "Garden"!

Wow... listening to My Lost City again... and for me the stand-out tracks are Unbra Sumus and Barbican Brakhage, the latter being (in my opinion) John's most emotionally charged piece since Hand-Held Skies.

I'm sad to say I'm slightly frustrated with My Lost City. There's something about it that just doesn't 'work' for me. It feels a bit like "Cathedral Oceans 4" in disguise, which is not what I was expecting.

I guess musically I was hoping for something in between Translucence and Tiny Colour Movies (although I'm not sure why, since I'd already heard "Imprefect Hymn" on MySpace...), whereas what we have is mostly church-organ like pieces and CO-style chanting vocals.

For me, the music doesn't match the imagery, which is a first for a John Foxx album.

I think, in my head, that album cover had been 'reserved' for Urban Motets, so for me personally, that beautiful and stunning city image works so perfectly with the idea of instrumentals similar in style to "Glimmer" (as I seem to recall the description of 'Motets), that there's just a big mismatch with the album artwork and the music of My Lost City.

What I'm seeing in my mind, is a semi flooded studio gradually becoming overgrown with vines; huge, gothic cathedrals, and churchyards. Not shimmering, glimmering city lights and tall buildings.

Since John's lovely sleevenotes denote that all the music here was recorded in The Garden, in the early 80s, this would indicate that the songs here are the early incarnations of Cathedral Oceans - and certainly some of these pieces are very similar to what you can hear on the Shrewsbury 1988 bootleg.

There is a lot of emotion in the music, and it's all a lot darker than Cathedral Oceans, some of it sounding quite funerary and saddening. Maybe that's the mood of these poor little pieces of song, having been locked away in John's musical vaults for all these years!

It's perhaps a lot more varied than any of the CO albums and certainly very moving; with "Imperfect Hymn" and "Holywell Lane" probably being the most diverse and for me, the best. I find it all slightly samey after "Magnetic Fields".

This is really John's "Church" and choral album.. Maybe it should have been called "The Church" and repurposed the booklet of the same name for it - I think it would have been a lot more fitting.

Yesterday evening the first couple of listens excited me. Playing it this morning I found to be quite a disappointing experience.

Then again, I'm sure I said the same thing about Translucence + Drift Music previously...

Aren't they sort of the same thing, just years removed from each other?

I haven't heard MLC myself yet, saving that for tonight.

Nice to read your thoughts Alex.

Hmm, good point, I suppose they are the same thing - just at different points in time.

As you can probably tell from the above, I'm currently a bit undecided about MLC, at least from a first impressions point of view. One thing is for sure though, there isn't a bad track on the CD.

But like I said, I really didn't like Translucence when I first got it and now, I absolutely love it, so I certainly think MLC will be a 'grower'.

Hang on a minute, a few posts ago you said...

And now you say that there isn't a bad track on the CD?

There's a full version of Barbican Brakhage online at http://www.myspace.com/foxxmetamatic now

I am currently enjoying the 'first play', and as I haven't got the album its a rather lovely experience.

"Pater Noster" meets "Cinema"

I can see I'm going to have to revisit my Latin mass.

Super stuff

The album would certainly sound grand in your church

It most certainly will. Thanks for the reminder

Once I get my copy through I have a treat in store

Nights are (slowly) warming up too, so I won't have to freeze for the duration. It will be the perfect accompaniment to an evening replacing some of the floor tiles...

I was thinking that too, Alex.

That would be because I never said there was a bad track on it!

Initially, it just hasn't grabbed me in the way I was expecting it would. But that doesn't mean to say it's not good - far from it; it's beautiful. Just not what I was hoping for.

Townsend appear to have got all the UK orders to arrive on the same day, as my copy was also waiting for me when I got home last night. I’m looking forward to hearing it, though it’ll have to wait a few days, but all the posts here enthusiastically discussing its merits have certainly got me fired up, and hopefully I’ll be out walking around the town when I experience it.

Have to agree that the booklet is lovely and the text is a very interesting read, from John's personal descriptions, and his inspirational connections: “Victorian psychic experiments that eventually arrived at electricity…”

One thing for me though, the story behind the work just does not conjure up that city image on the CD front. John’s musical vision of the ghosts and the past existences that live all around us in cities makes me think more of his Garden photographs, or his cover illustrations for novels, with the dissolving figures from the past, and the fragments of ancient and modern detritus all floating together to the surface. Its this kind of atmosphere rather than that interesting, but wholly futuristic looking city on the cover that I think of when reading about the background to the My Lost City music,

but perhaps I’ll change my mind after listening to it!

or maybe not!

I often used to go past it. a great landmark and a classic 60’s building, built by the council and designed by the great Emo Goldfinger, google wikipedia and see what you’d have to pay to live there now, (oh and can John call one of his next instrumentals ‘Anniesland Court’, a similar looking 60’s building I know quite well from my home town! )

interesting review Alex S.

Thank you everyone for your comments about My Lost City. The music is magnificent. Imperfect Hymn an ideal opener and it's nice to hear the full version. Holywell Lane just flows along at a nice pace and takes me along with it. Scene 27 intro... Just finishes off this album nicely. Although it's been suggested this could be CO4 I find this album deeper,raw and moodier with a lot more purpose and emotion.

I'm surprised it has taken John so long to decide to release these tracks but I'm glad he has. Some tracks John performed live back in 1988 at the Shrewsbury CO concert. Barbican Blakhage, Hawkmoor Orbital, Umbra Sumus. Scene 27 It's nice to be able to hear these in their original form (without the coughing on the boot) composed in a studio. I've alway loved the CO live bootleg warts 'n' all because when I hear it I get a certain sense of fulfillment from John's performance as he must put a lot of time and effort into that one performance and for me it reflected it.

I wonder what John had in his mind when he first recorded these. The thought that crosses my mind when I play MLC, is the images in "The Church" booklet that came with the The Garden. I can't feel cities in the music but I sense wide open spaces.

If I was to see the Artwork in a shop not knowing the music of John Foxx it would conjure up a total different vision of what I'd expected musically inside. So the Art work doesn't work in my opinion.

I enjoyed John's notes. Very easy to read and to the point, unlike the notes in Glimmer.

If anyone is in any doubt about purchasing this CD, then musically I thoroughly recommend it.

Now the age old question, what other little gems does John have hidden away? CO live bootleg had more tracks.

Martin, If John performed this in your church I'd be down to Southampton straight away.

Peter

The track is John's version of Tantum Ergo from Benediction. You can read more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benediction_of_the_Blessed_Sacrament

It looks like the long lost gems from the Shrewsbury Cathedral concert (in their original studio recordings) are finally in the hands of John's most faithful.

My Lost City seems more like a twilight zone...twilight's last gleaming perhaps...

Chris

Hope to receive it today but like Alex I'm going to struggle to link the imagery of the city with the music :rolleyes: . Although I'm very intrigued and enthusiastic as ever.

Perhaps John's referring to my lost tape (he could find more of these ). The CO pieces here could have been the CO album he was working on back in 1981 at the time of The Garden.

Was the concert at St Chad's Cathedral, Shrewsbury (Thursday the 17th of March 1988 at 8:00pm) the showing of the original CO?

The first CO was published and released in 1995 and 1997 respectively. Somehow through the years it appears that John decided to record new tracks so that they would flow to match the moving graphics that would appear on the first DVD.

Looking back at what I wrote at the time of listening to the CDR of the Shrewsbury concert. The first instrumental 6 tracks I don't recognize and are probably new but interesting tracks. The second half of the concert he performs 3 tracks from Cathedral Oceans I/II and 3 from Latin Mass.

...
7) A Quiet Splendour
8) Ad Infinitum
9) Sunset Rising
10)Sanctus Sanctus
11)Tantum Ergo
12)?


It appears that from the concert three tracks are from the official Cathedral Oceans albums ie Sunset Rising and early versions of Ad Infinitum and Quiet Splendour.

Track 11) is Barbican Brackhage, I'm pretty sure that tracks 10) and 12) are also on My Lost City. Now for the six instrumentals, I will soon find out.

Why didn't John give these tracks "Cathedral Oceans" type titles? Why has he disguised them with Urban titles? :rolleyes:

Anyhow, thanks for releasing them!!!

Chris

But a fair few of the tracks in the Cathedral Oceans series have urban titles - Fog Structures, Spiral Overture, Serene Velocity - while a number of others aren't overtly 'religious', instead they have titles which are very Foxxian - Through Summer Rooms, Shimmer Symmetry, Invisible Architecture.

Maybe John felt that he'd said everything he wanted to say as far as Cathedral Oceans was concerned.

I don't suppose it really matters - the main thing is that we now have another album of material to listen to, and (going by the comments made so far) everyone's enjoying it.

Rob

You're absolutely right there - a new JF album of new (kind of) songs.

I agree with you Peter and as I had previously said, this feels more like an album to accompany "The Church".

So I stand by my opinion of the imagery not matching the album - it doesn't work from that point of view, but musically it is magnificent. And it's certainly better than if it had been "Cathedral Oceans 4" or some kind of "Cathedral Oceans demos". It's a lot darker than the CO albums though, bearing the closest similarity in parts to COIII - but to be honest, I think I might like this album more than COII or III.

It has been repurposed in a way that makes it a new album of previously unreleased material from the vaults. Like you say Peter, I wonder what else resides in there! Maybe one day we'll get Urban Motets with new artwork!

Although I've been up and down with this album since I got it, it is fair to say that a lot of the music has really made an impression on me - most of all "Imperfect Hymn", "Holywell Lane" and "Barbican Brakhage". Simply beautiful. Very moving.

I really loved the sound of those early CO pieces on the grubby old Shrewsbury recording, so I'm thrilled to bits to have them in properly recorded studio quality.

Absolutely. From the tracks I've heard on mySpace all I can say is that these pieces are amazing.

My Lost City appears to be the fifth John Foxx album of the 80s (well 75% of the original CO album that Virgin turned away).

Rob would you also consider Electrofear an album conceived in the 80s or does it belong to the 90s?

Chris

Hi Peter, funny that you can sense wide open spaces, for me my first impression was of dense claustrophobia. As the city changes and evolves and towers brightly around him, I can feel The Quiet Man trying to evoke a simpler time (earlier or later), underground, in the dark. In that sense, the imagery works perfectly for me, the man in a pool of light (as detailed on the back cover), going to work at night and disappearing from view wondering what will come next and what is next to be replaced. Although it feels like pre-Cathedral Oceans, I would describe it almost as the anti-Pleasures of Electricity.

But that was just my first impression. More listens to follow of course.

That's a very interesting analysis, and I have to agree. I've listened to this album a lot since getting it, and having got past my initial music/imagery hurdle, I've discovered a very dark and album indeed, that is quite claustrophobic in places.

I think because I have associated that particular image with The Pleasures of Electricity and Urban Motets for so long, I expected it to be more electronic and less vocal, with the kind of 'city' feel that TPOE, Shifting City and even Tiny Colour Movies gives you, when it is actually quite the opposite.

So while I still don't feel cities in the music, I do find it a very organic and textured album. It really is like the 'dark side' of Cathedral Oceans. No birdsong, so morning sunlight. Just darkness, wet stonework, brittle woodwork and that kind of damp, cool air you get when you peer down a well, through a crack in a wall or long empty railway tunnel.

The music makes me think of all sort of thing, and forgotten rooms riddled with overgrown plantlife. There are some open spaces in the album though, particularly on tracks like Barbican Brakhage; those vast echoes remind me of that feeling of smallness when you look up at the ceiling of a grand cathedral.

There is a sense of isolation or solitude in some of the music too. "Holywell Lane" reminds me of walking empty streets at night in the Autumn, when the ground is covered with soft fallen leaves.

It's almost like you have to burrow through that modern city on the cover to get to what it was built on. There's a great sense of nostalgia, with a hint of sadness.

Does this make sense, or have I lost the plot?!

I think we are all making sense but also getting different ideas from it.

The back cover picture is a close up of the front cover (bottom left under the bridge).

Its one of John's most literal covers,a man (probably in a grey suit) lost & dwarfed by the city around him.

Brilliant cover.

So its no surprise that some of the music sounds claustrophic with the new City closing in amongst his Lost City.

Remember that the area around Shoreditch & the Garden has largely been redeveloped since he was inspired to make this music in the early 80s

The skyline now looks more like the cover with the gerkin & other tall buildings in the background.

Now I dont know if I'm making sense

I'm glad that photo doesn't feature the gherkin! Actually, I think it's more like a giant suppository...

Got my copy today and after a first listen it is......


GREAT!!!

Just got my copy, too, and am currently listening to it. Too early to comment on the album as a whole, but so far, so good.

I had mine on saturday as well, only played the first 2 tracks.
Tried it again last night but after a day of working outside I made it till the 3rd track this time ( fell asleep :p )
Going to give it another go tonight

Received my copy today and it's right now on my player. Pleased to hear Hawksmoor Orbital. Yes it's that mellow ending to the Shrewsbury Cathedral concert. Now where's Sanctus Sanctus? The first six instrumental pieces could be here. I'll familiarise myself with My Lost City and then onto the live recording.

The cover now makes more sense with John's liner notes.

We now have a lost cover and a lost tape released. The album is as good as Tiny Colour Movies and is purely analogue.

John, the Roland synth you use, is it a Jupiter-4 or a VP-330 Vocoder Plus? I can also hear a Juno-60 on some of the tracks.

Thanks for sharing these lost treasures with your fans!

Chris

....aha! Sanctus Sanctus is now playing. Now let's see what John has called it...Trellick John? :rolleyes: ...Scene 27 :p


Chris

there's VP-330 all over that album, yeah.

Electricity and Ghosts ...

Thanks for posting the link Rob, its fascinating reading
lots of the town and city back water exploration I can relate to from the various places I've lived in, here in the north, and in the south.

I've just finished reading it on MySpace (although it's easier on the Quiet Man because there are paragraph breaks!!) - but what a delightful and insightful, educational and interesting read.

In fact, I'm gonna have to put the album on!

You can really hear and 'feel' the environment these pieces were created in, in the music.

This is clearly an endless source of inspiration for John - reading it, so many of his songs, from instrumental pieces to electronic ones flashed through my head. The line about imagining his parents aged twenty walking together brought me to "Uptown/Downtown" and the romantic urban nostalgia of its parent album.

There were several parts I could relate to too. It's funny how you often find yourself walking down the same streets as your parents or relatives; sometimes without even knowing or by coincidence. Treading the same path in an almost fate-like way. And like John said, sometimes, it's your own.

I've seen Sheffield change dramatically over the last 15 years. This is my shifting city. I've seen it go from a slightly neglected and scruffy town of old-fashioned architecture, still with hints of the war all these years later - to a bright and vibrant modern city; new buildings popping up everywhere and a constantly evolving skyline.

It's such a different place now to what it was when I was about fifteen and began exploring it by myself.

Maybe this accounts for the strong emotional attachment I have to so many of John's city-themed songs/albums, and I'm sure a lot of other fans can relate to this similarly.

As one who grew up in and lived in Sheffield, I'd have to agree with you there, Alex. Many's the time I've walked down some of Sheffield's scruffy backstreets almost feeling like I was The Quiet Man!

And I can certainly relate to John's "Electricity And Ghosts" article. Back in 1991 some friends and I rented a room just off Division Street in Sheffield that had once been a cutlery works but had been converted into rehearsal rooms. It was tucked away down an overgrown cobbled alleyway and, although it seemed to be on the verge of falling down, was a place of great character. Like John, my collaborators and I would spend hours down there making strange experimental synthetic music that was inspired at least in part by our surroundings. Often we'd carry on working through the night, only stopping as the sun rose to head off to our respective day jobs.

It was owned by Steve Singleton, one time sax player with ABC and was reputed to have at one point been Pulp's rehearsal room (though I later found out that was a bit of a running gag as just about every rehearsal room in Sheffield was at some point claimed to have been used by Pulp!). The now quite well-known Richard Hawley and his band were in the room opposite.

Anyway, ezxcuse the name dropping. I'm trying to make the point that the thought processes behind "My Lost City" will be familiar to anyone who spent much of their youth hanging around band rehearsal rooms that more often than not were former industrial premises that had fallen into disuse. Much of the music that emanated out of them must have been inspired in part by their history and atmosphere, albeit subconsciously.


And my own lost city is indeed lost. Some time in the 1990s the building was pulled down and the site is now part of an indoor shopping arcade called "The Forum". Yet even in those trendy boutiques and coffee shops lurks the ghosts of me and my friends and our twentysomething selves.
One day I'll go back there to meet them.......

Just behind Division Street, on Wellington Street lies a spot where my freelance design career really started to take shape. A small independent printer and publisher run by a guy who used to be in short-lived Sheffield band They Must Be Russians.

The building was a wreck; more of a pile of crumbling stonework with makeshift floors and ex-windows than a building. God knows how he got several printing presses in there, and its a miracle that they didn't fall through the floor. But again, a building that pointed directly to the city's industrial heritage.

On my way to the Devonshire Cat one day last year I noticed that the building had been flattened. Fortunately, my printer had moved to nice, new premises on the other side of town.

An annoying block of student flats resides there now but maybe there's a ghost of me running up and down the uneven stone stairs delivering artwork!

I have the album on order but wanted to mention that Trellick Tower is an extremely iconic building. So much so, that The Passions were photographed next to it for the insert to their Michael & Miranda LP back in 1979 http://www.thepassions.co.uk/albums.html#3
It's the building on the right, behind guitarist Clive Timperley (man on right).

I've been meaning to get to Trellick for some photography but having read John's "Electricity & Ghosts", I think Shoreditch deserves a re-visit first!