Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx Endlessly Endlos

Don't forget the change in producer which differentiates the 1982 and 1983 versions, and which is fairly fundamental to the sound.

Musicians: am I right in saying that the 1982 has no proper 'bass' to speak of?

Yeah, although it's the same multi-recording - what Zeus "B" Held appears to have mostly done is dubbed on a "rollicking" new Simmonds-tastic drum track, sequenced bass and arpeggiator squirrelism.

And yeah, the 1982 original doesn't really have a dedicated bass instrument - for most of the track, John's just making use of the fact that his clumpy-bumpy drum-machine-loop has bucketloads of bottom end (Prince's "Kiss" did a similar thing a year or two later) plus he has a acoustic rhythm guitar chugging away behind everything - and then later on, of course, there's the cello-style melodic riff which goes down pretty bassy too ... so all in all I think it's a sensible production decision on John's part not to have some extra boring bland bass synth puttering along under all that. It would only clutter things.

I never realised that the 1983 Endlessly is the same multitrack as the 1982 one; I always thought it was completely rerecorded. John's vocals seem a lot clearer and strident on the 1983 version(s); are they rerecorded or has Zeus B Held simply mixed them higher and added a touch of compression? And I always thought the 1983 version was faster, though this might be an illusion due to the driving Simmons-tastic drums.

For all that, time has not been kind to the 1983 versions; the drums and digital synths now sound horrendously dated whereas the 1982 version just sounds kind of timeless; no-one (not even John) has done anything like it since!

I think real drums on both versions would have worked better.