When the CD dropped through the letterbox last week I really wanted to do it justice and with no time to listen to it I was saving it for a visit to my home town in Glasgow last weekend, thinking that it may well be an album to listen to while walking through a place that held many memories and had seen many changes for me. Unfortunately none of that happened and I had to settle instead for a short afternoon walk around where I live here, which holds no memories, or emotional connections. The sun was out and it was seemingly a nice day for late February, but it was all not quite as it appeared to be from indoors, as once I got outside it was totally freezing, the sun was also really quite blinding, and a cold wind blasted my earphones as I started to listen to the CD while walking along one of those vanished railway routes that have long since become a wooded walkway and cycle-path, but this was kind of fitting after all as ‘My Lost City’ was also not quite the album that I had anticipated.
Apart from some tracks that immediately get a hold of your imagination, by the end of the album I was left feeling somewhat removed from the experience of it, and didn’t feel in any rush to get back to playing it.
After reading through the posts here and then in particular the ‘Ghosts And Electricity’ link, this together with the fact that I wasn’t able to get ‘Imperfect Hymn’ out of my head, it was haunting me alright, I gave the album another whirl on the travel to work yesterday, and I certainly felt that it was journeying music, and beyond its initial church affinity it is really quite an alternative urban soundtrack. Maybe I’m at a disadvantage, or even an advantage here, but I’m only familiar with C.O.1, and with TCM I’ve never taken that to heart, also I know nothing of the ‘Shrewsbury '88 bootleg’, (John was sadly off my radar then, though his ghost did surprisingly appear from time to time in the 90’s!), so maybe otherwise I’d now also be thinking that My Lost City was a C.O.4, or a TCM2 in disguise, but for me this album is a fresh experience.
I still think the CD cover photo isn’t quite right, when you read Johns back-story to the work, then a city portrayed on the front is of course logical, and the fact that he’s not really referring to a visible city, (as is on the cover), that the music is speaking of the changing or invisible city beneath or beyond, allows you to argue that this particular tweaked photograph is after all a suitable cover image, that it doesn’t matter just what the city is. But personally I think its far too stylized, too pulp fiction, it draws too much fantasy attention to itself, especially when the music seems to be more about what we cant actually see, but can only sense around us. For me a more realistic and obscure or non-descript scene from a city, like a random shot or a still from one of those forgotten lives that John has eagerly collected from market stalls would have worked far better as a cover image.
And of the music? well, there are certainly one or two tracks here that are among Johns very best work, though frustratingly there’s also one or two that just don’t have that Foxxian magic for me.
‘Piranesi Motorcade’, doesn’t seem to have anything ‘Foxx like’ about it at all, I can just imagine walking into a church and hearing this playing, the music fitting perfectly into the scene, and then someone saying to me “oh that’s that John Foxx on the organ”, and me replying, really? no way, I didn’t know he played church music.
‘Magnetic Fields’ is quite a weak ambient track, but it does seem to work as a bridge between ‘Holywell Lane’ and ‘Just Passing Through’.
‘Umbra Sumus’ sounds like a derivative C.O. track, and a bit dull, though I appreciate that it was very likely part of the genesis of the C.O. sound.
‘Scene 27, Intro To The Voice Behind The Wallpaper, Trellick Tower, 3am’, a great title! (though perhaps it has less to do with any ghosts of the past and more the possibility that John might have been round late at a friend’s flat in the Tower after a night out and he could hear the neighbours arguing through the wall?), again its nice church music, but its just not as mysterious in that way that John can be, maybe it will grow on me, John certainly sounds happy singing it!
‘Hawksmoor Orbital’, this is my number one track on the album, yes on the surface it does sound like church music, but here the balance is right, underneath there’s this restrained surging of something tidal, something massive far below in the depths climbing upwards, with Johns voice riding along high on top. A whole album’s length of this track please John, building up very slowly and softly, and continuing on very Very Loudly to a mountainous reverberating climax…
‘Holywell Lane’ is for me John’s most romantic track, if there had been any direct follow up to The Garden album back in 81’ which retained the darker intensity of the Garden sound while also predicting the more pastel direction on 85’s IMW, then this track would surely have been on that imaginary album.
‘Imperfect Hymn’ a great opener for the album, really gets into your mind and takes root there like a shadow of pure delight, and a few more tracks like this would have been fantastic indeed.
‘Barbican Brakhage’ in mood it’s the opposite of ‘Imperfect Hymn’, but boy what a track, John’s happy, almost rejoicefull, but its not forced out of character, not a love struck deviation from the Foxxian page book, he’s bathing in the sunlight alright, but still got that mysterious edge…
I have just one particular comment about the album, which I feel is a missed opportunity, if only the album had been mixed so that each track flowed directly into the next one. The gaps between tracks loses some of the atmosphere and momentum that could have otherwise conveyed a continuous musical journey through a lost city.
This is quite an interesting album, maybe even important in what it offers us in its best parts, and I know its highly unlikely but deep down I‘d like to hope that it may give rise to an even greater follow up in the future.
‘My Lost City, The Remix…’
