Metamatic Forums John Foxx Collaborations Torn Sunset

With only one listen (it arrived today) it's too early to tell where this will end up in my personal ranking of John Foxx albums. It is undoubtedly fluty, and I am not a great fan of the sound of the flute, but the reverb and quiet tones and Foxxian shimmer got me through.

I read something about Harold Budd once, I think, that talked about how one of the dividing lines between ambient (which I love) and newage (which I emphatically don't) is that ambient tends to be austere or subtle while newage goes for the pretty, sugary, and slick. As I recall, the context was a review of Budd's album The White Arcades. The critic thought that album saw Budd teetering on the verge of succumbing to the pretty vagueness of newage. (I could see his point, but I liked the album well enough anyway.)

The point of that digression being that I found some sparseness and subtlety in Torn Sunset. It's not isolationist (a state A Secret Life approaches) but it stands a fair chance of revealing itself to be another solid Foxx ambient album.

(Random side note: Billy Currie should listen to A Secret Life and the Foxx/Budd albums, because his instrumental solo albums could stand to have a few layers of sound pared away.)

I know what you mean! I've only managed to get three tracks in so far without feeling drowsy!

I don't know if it's just the flute that's doing it, but it really does seem very "new age" and disturbingly like the background music on a hypnosis CD. I keep expecting a reassuring deep voice to suddenly appear telling me to relax and visualise a soothing white light enveloping my body!