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#45751 02/22/13 02:37 PM
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JF and the M headlining.

Darn, still can't get back for this date (now very restricted to Japanese school holidays!!

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just back from this!

A rather sparse turnout, the venue was not exactly 'rammed', but an appreciative crowd nonetheless.

John, Benge and Hannah played well, the sound was good and meaty without being overpowering (and damn sight better than the audio sludge we got in Margate with OMD a few weeks back!)

I'm still not really convinced The Maths are playing the best-constructed set they could be - but my quibbles were banished as, to my delight, the final encore was "TIDES", an absolutely lovely and life-affirming bit of krautpop from the 2nd Maths album which has been neglected until now...
....but delight soon turned to "AHINE?!?!?" and hilarity when John launched into his vocal about 3 keys too high, and proceeded to gulder his way through the entire song singing some wierd interval instead of the melody he should've been, compounding matters by splazzing it through his harmonizer. Mental! lol (Mind you, we've all been there at some point... sometimes you just can't find yer note...) Oh well, "bless" wink

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Here's the setlist from last night's show :

EVIDENCE
HE'S A LIQUID
EVERGREEN
NO-ONE DRIVING
SUMMERLAND
THE RUNNING MAN
BURNING CAR
CATWALK
UNDERPASS
PLAZA
TALK
SHATTERPROOF
THE SHADOW OF HIS FORMER SELF
WALK
MY TOWN
A NEW KIND OF MAN
****
THE GOOD SHADOW
TIDES

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there were certainly some good songs in that set, I'm not sure they really flow and build in that order though...

and 'running man', 'catwalk' and 'summerland' seem a bit meh to me - they've been in the set solidly for the past 3 years, but there's tons of better Maths tunes, never mind better John Foxx tunes.... Oh well!

Is it just me or were there actually a couple of new unreleased ones? (Talk? Walk?) There were a couple I didn't recognise towards the end.

I do think it's a bit of a shame that The Maths has withered down to being a 3-piece. With Benge only banging his drum pads (not that he shouldn't - it's great to watch!) and John only singing, that basically means Hannah is the only one left playing an instrument! ... so the "live band" is more or less just reduced to one synth or violin playing the top-line melody, with all the other stuff (basic drum pattern, all the sequences and bass and middle stuff, and twiddles) all just coming off a laptop. This is a bit of a dilution of the original live concept of The Maths for me....
... if they were back to being a 4 or 5 piece, with only the basic drums and sequence being on the Mac, it would sound amazing!

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Yeah I mean don't get me wrong - it was great gig and I'm delighted to still be able to go and see John Foxx live in the year 2013 and for him actually to have real synths on stage and everything! Laptop/backing track gigs are BORING, and most of my favourite music over the years was done on analogue synths - so it is a very big plus point for me to see someone like John actually gigging using some of the instruments that made his music sound so good in the first place.

Hannah Peel's electric violin, of course, is *not* exactly what's on the records (it's usually replaced some highly-reverberated ARP Odyssey/Elka Strings) - but it SOUNDS BRILLIANT - she's cranking it through distortion and playing it with great feeling. It actually conked out in the 2nd song and one of the roadies had to sort it for her!

There was a song mid-set which was slow, pared down, just bass throbs and nice red fractal-ish visual on the screens - I didn't recognise it, but I think it might actually have been "Talk" from The Shape of Things - which ironically I'd been listening to early that afternoon!

TIDES is totally my favourite song John has done in the last 10 years, am very pleased they played it - but he totally and utterly cocked it up, bleess him! lol Absolutely disaster hah ahah THis is one of the things I LIKE about real live gigs though.

Basically what I'm saying is that they should get me on stage too to play bass wink

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Originally Posted By: Birdsong

My over-riding impression was that a majority of people thought it sounded amazing anyways laugh

And I daresay everyone has a thought about what should and shouldn't be there, or what order. It's John's decision and given the recent OMD tour, we pretty much knew what to expect.

Of course they have staple songs - the nature of these musicians is that they get very little time to rehearse together.

WALK and MY TOWN are on the Evidence album, but I think they were new to the live set, as well as the last song TIDES from The Shape Of Things


Wish I could have been there Martin.

Walk & My Town were played at Cargo last year.

Hannah did play 'Space Violin' on a couple of Evidence Album tracks which I'm assuming is heavily treated violin.

Tides is new to the set

Brian

Last edited by Brian; 06/08/13 05:34 PM.
Brian #46311 06/08/13 05:17 PM
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Here lie forgotten things…

Me? At a John Foxx gig? A rare thing these days for a complex number of interplaying reasons. Among these - and here is the part where you can all shout at me - is that I have not managed to coincide my infrequent appearances with a really good show and tend to experience frustration and an element of disappointment when I walk away.
I think that is just 'the way it is' and live on stage there are other acts who, at least for me, hit the spot with more consistent accuracy.

But on the back of the recent highly-praised tour with OMD (and Brighton is only 80-minutes drive from my house) I ventured forth with high expectations, a good friend alongside and a deep blue sky above - to the wonderful Concorde 2 at the foot of the cliffs in Kemp Town.
The building, with its cast iron arches and delicate wooden latticework is known as The Madeira Shelter and was built to provide shelter and protection from the weather for Victorian bathers waiting to use the hydraulic cliff-lift housed inside.
The lift is still there and still in use - it was quite surreal watching people with pushchairs, dogs and brightly coloured plastic toys exercising their right to cross the hall floor while a few metres to their right John Foxx and the road crew went through the soundchecks...

They went through four tracks in full, using The Shadow Of His Former Self (which Hannah also sang through solo) to balance and sort the vocals. Foxx insisted that his vocoder was pitched up as high as possible, checked by the sound-desk when the dials went up to eleven and those little red lights came on. It was short, sweet and effective - Foxx has a natural way of putting people at ease and encouraging everyone that it will all be OK.

And so it was. More than OK, by a long way. I stood near the back throughout, the smile in my heart getting persistently brighter with each track played and it became progressivley more obvious that this was the best John Foxx And the Maths gig In the World, like, Ever.

They burst into flower with Evidence, pushing the bass through the floor and out the open door. A slightly slowed, oiled and oozing interpretation that bled down the walls and wrenched your gut. Outside through the fire escape I could see concrete and railings as they played He's A Liquid, and the sky turned white in the falling sun while Benge hit the Simmons drum set like gun shot.
One of John's personal favourites to play live is the bouncy poptronic single Evergreen, merging seamlessly into No-One Driving and sitting comfortably alongside it's 30-year old grown up cousin. Two more upbeat catchy and persisent songs followed from the Interplay album - Summerland and The Running Man. Purposeful. Intentive. Is that a word? Full of intent...?
Foxx is still running, and he's still a fair few years ahead of the rest of us. He seems completely at home up there, like the front man in a good band again. His relationship with and respect for and Hannah Peel is a clear as the smile on his face. She comes in and kills the track with some annihilating violin work. They laugh and smile together when he misses a bit of timing and she picks him up. A nod and wink from a frenetic, focussed Benge and they crash in to the 'classic' Burning Car and the swaggering arrogance of Catwalk.

I went outside during this song. It was just too tempting. There can't be many venues whose main entrance looks straight out onto a beach and opens directly onto the dance floor? A quiet word with a security guard and I slipped into the evening for five minutes - the music inside more than loud enough to reach and soundtrack the shifting sea.

All of which triggered the geometry of the most remarkable coincidence, because the next track in the set is unmistakably Underpass. The lights were on the pier, and a car passed between me and the venue before I slipped back inside. Barnbrooks' visuals for this track are now as much a part of it as the music, and the typography is as iconic as the track. He told me the name of the condensed, retro serif typeface too and I've darn forgotten it...

From elevators come to the sea view. Foxx could have written that line for Plaza about tonight's venue, and he delivers it bathed in a cool blue light. All the faces shimmered and even the walls were turning round.
After a menacing version of Talk, vocoded to the hilt, The Maths moved into Shatterproof and it was only at this point that I felt a little deflated and less than convinced. It seems this track has been smoothed out, slowed down and shined up. Certainly it was lacking some of the venom with which it spat out of the blocks on other gigs. It strangely felt as if the song is actually one of the few shatterpoof tracks in the catalogue - over-familiar and 'safe'?

Not so The Shadow Of His Former Self, which has more than grown into the space afforded to it over the past couple of years. No sentimental trash here - it's one of the set's highlights and it could have happily been twenty minutes longer. But that wouldn't have given time for a sauntering Walk around My Town off The Shape Of Things.

Foxx is relaxed. Refreshed and strong, he has really taken ownership of this arrangement. It clearly suits him and lifts the confidence. He really does present himself as another New Kind Of Man these days - invigorated and inspired.
Confident enough to close the set with a live debut for Tides - as described above, affirming and 'lovely'. The whole encore was a beautiful, endearing thing. The Good Shadow is curiously quaint, both un-nerving and re-assuring in equal measure.
I felt it was an excellent set, perfectly representative of the Maths live sound. Well lit, well performed and expertly managed from the sound desk. Loud of course (some of them prefer it that way) but to good effect without being over-powering. Deep breath and happy thoughts. Turn and wave. He's done it. At last, I get it.

Thanks to everyone involved and here's to you, John Foxx - it seems I am indeed compelled to play these games again…

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yeah I think they'd re-arranged 'Shatterproof' slightly - although this doesn't surprise me as it has a *very* odd set of notes going on: the sequence, the bass blasts and the vocals/string rises seem to bear little harmonic relation to each other smile on record that can work by sheer force of just being there coming out of your speakers, but trying to play (and most especially) sing it live, it is a bit of a struggle to make "work" - so they've smoothed it a bit.

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Hmm...I have mixed feelings about that as I'd loved the slight wonkiness of the album version. That "oddness" hooked me immediately. Ah well. It'd be interesting to hear the re-arranged version.

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I too attended the gig at the Concorde. I must admit that, like others, I was surprised at the low turnout. Eventually the room filled out a bit more, but it couldn't have been more than half full (but looked more as people were spread out, plus numerous people stayed in the bar area). Not sure why. And the place was filled with so many older men that it looked like a Ross Kemp convention. I haven't seen Foxx live since the Roundhouse which, to be honest, was my least fav gig of his. This time it was unbelievably loud with fantastic visceral, internal-organ throbbing bass and there were some superb versions of tracks I hadn't liked on CD, e.g. Running Man (and what visuals - very retro and Man from Uncle) and Evidence. Yes, I agree that the line-up on stage is a little sparse, but I agree with Martin that this was a damn good gig and, for the ninth time I've seen him, probably the best yet. Although for a long time I thought that Foxx's best work post-Metamatic was with Louis, I'm now coming to realise that the Maths is even stronger with a rawness I find very appealing. And as has been said, Hannah is superb with the violin; very Billy and gives a powerful edge to various tracks - and, like Benge, they look very cool up there on stage. And Foxx seems to get better with age; I love the passion and energy he gives the tracks (and especially on 'Burning Car' when he'd slightly delay coming in with 'Alright'; worked wonderfully).

Adam #46321 06/10/13 11:04 AM
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"it looked like a Ross Kemp convention"

grin

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hah. well at least it wasn't a Phil Mitchell convention. smile

With all due kudos to Louis (who basically managed to get John out of retirement after a decade away - no mean feat!), this kind of electro pop is just BETTER when done with real analogue synths (and violins, if the fancy takes you). No ifs, no buts - it just is BETTER! They sound better. And the musicians perform on them better. End of!

(which is why I worry a bit at the laptop creeping back into The Maths live show, on the grounds of 'convenience' - good art isn't supposed to bloody be convenient!!! grin )

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Fair point, well made.

But needs must. John Foxx proves himself on record, and live shows are almost entirely peripheral. Why not make it easy for himself?

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I'm certainly not disputing Louis' importance (as I also hope that he and Foxx record another album at some point). I actually think he and Louis produced some catchier melodies, but I agree that analogue synths provide a much more satisfying sound. Benge is another terrific partnership for JF and I'm sure they'll continue to produce a few more albums. The wonderful rawness of their sound is, as others have said, reminiscent of early Human League, but sometimes even earlier than that with The Future and tracks such as 'Dance Like a Star'.

Although I understand frustrations about laptops, Martin is right about 'needs must'. Foxx isn't making a great deal of money touring, so there must be an economic imperative to keep the band small. Even with just the three of them, they can't be walking with much cash - so I think we just have to accept that as an artist who is every bit of the word 'cult' - and not mainstream - he's not in it for the money, yet clearly a lack of money restricts how many can tour with him for live shows. Let's be grateful it's not just John and that laptop!

Adam #46333 06/12/13 07:15 PM
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Tsk - he can flog a few of his songs for adverts to fund more tours smile

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Indeed - but he's got to want to...

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