Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx My Lost City

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'.