Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx Barcode magazine interview 2003

I came across my physical copy of Barcode magazine this morning & had a fabtastic read. Glad to see it's here on the interwebular net-o-scape.

http://www.barcodezine.com/John%20Foxx%20Interview.htm

Coupla snippets that stood out.

How did you come to work with Harold on the latest Translucence + Drift Music releases?

He came to a concert where I played Cathedral Oceans. I was too nervous to even speak to him at the time, but I heard that he liked the music. Later we met up and decided to work together. He very generously came over from Los Angeles to record. We set up a good piano in a big stone house overlooking a garden, pinned up some abstract paintings as a road map and began to record. There is still enough remaining material for another album.

& this 'un.

For those people that like the ambient sounds on Cathedral Oceans and your work with Harold Budd, are their any particular types of keyboards or software that are more suitable for that type of composing?

It’s really more to do with circumstances and environment, I think. One beautiful reverb. A clear head. A good acoustic piano in a large room overlooking a garden with trees, trees, trees. The time of day is important too. I recorded my sections at dawn in summer. There are some traces of birdsong in parts of the recordings. Time seems suspended in the few hours around Dawn.

Superb! I don't think I've seen this one before...

Nice one - cheers Ilektrik.

Actually... The interview in the magazine (Barcode #1) is different to the one online. The one in the mag is from 1999, I think.

John talks about his work with Louis (Shifting City), Harold Budd, the Acid scene, Cathedral Oceans. Here are a couple of quotes from the interview.

On Cathedral Oceans: " I really enjoyed working on Cathedral Oceans, building up layers of branching echoes. It's a strangely organic process. More like gardening than recording."

Acid: "After about 1982/83 any scene which existed rapidly became an overcrowded bandwagon & naturally got a bit dull. The only exception being N.Y. Electro beginning during that period. The bland bit lasted until the advent of Acid in about 1987/88. Things really picked up after that. New genres breeding like a virus in Viagra. Retro scene is interesting & I enjoy the fact that these things are still valued. But what I most like to see is the grammar being appropriated to evolve new stories."

With Barcode #1 there is a cd which has 'Infinite In All Directions' as the last track.

I also discovered a magazine called 'Sequences' which has a decent review of 'Shifting City' in it.

Does anybody have any interviews with John around the time TPOE was released?

Nice read Ilektrik!

This probably belongs to the 'Media Archive ' thread...?

Metro's 60-second interview with John was September 2001. Don't recall if it refers to the TPOE recording...?

Record Collector #256 carries an interview with John entitled Foxx's Glacial Tints ( :rolleyes: ) about the same time, but I've not read it.
So if anyone has this piece...

There's another interview from December 2001 published in Future Music 80s special, but that's a retrospective piece.

Before that, EV18 (August 1999) has an interview with John called "Quietly Confident" which refers to TPOE briefly

That's all I know of Alex. Seems to have been a very quiet time and a 'gentle' release
Have you anything in the Quiet City media archive?

Oooh - that's a rarity.

Have sent you an ilektrik kind of virtual e-message

I don't think that it did...

In fact there wasn't a huge amount of press which coincided with the original release of The Pleasures of Electricity.

Yup, I've got that - and we've got permission to reproduce it here in the Media Archive. I'll E-Mail it across to you later...

Yeah, it's just a retrospective piece. Again, we've got permission to reproduce it.

I wrote that - and it mainly centres around what John was intending to release at that particular point in time.

Rob

Yo!

So there you are Alex - about as definitive answer as you're going to get!

Unless anyone else turns up something...