Metamatic Forums John Foxx John Foxx John Foxx The Virgin Years 1980-1985

Whilst I appreciate and understand that in the download age musicians have to make a living any way they can, I’m afraid this whole release just comes across as a cynical rip off to me. As feline1 has suggested, the new master isn’t necessarily better than any of the previous Metamatic remasters, it’s just different, and the fact you have to run it through analytical software just to spot the difference does make me question if it really merits commercial release at all.

I could kind of understand the point in remastering if Metamatic had been a recording with a wide dynamic range with lots of individually miked acoustic instruments and multi layered vocals, but it isn’t. It’s an 8 track analogue recording featuring just analogue synths, processed vocals and a drum machine, so any kind of remastering job is unlikely to make much difference apart from making it subjectively louder ot getting rid of some of the hum and hiss, which many people find to be part of the charm of the album.

And whilst I know it’s a common technique, bundling the new CD in a boxset with 3 albums that we all already own and have already bought several times over is a bit of an insult to the loyal fans who’ve supported John over the years. If there was a time to release “The Virgin Years” boxset, it should have been in 2009 when the deluxe edition 2CD albums were released, thus giving the fans the choice of just buying individual albums or getting the full set in a handy package.

This isn’t a dig at Rob, who I’m sure has put a lot of effort into the boxset, just an attempt to point out that asking loyal fans to fork out £15 for a new remaster of an old album doesn’t seem like much of a bargain. It would have been much fairer if the wav files of the individual tracks could have been put up to download from the online store at say 79p each or £5 for the whole album.

Yes - every version released so far of this album has a variation on the track-listing

In my relative ignorance of all things technical-wise, I'd like to ask what differences the format of the re-mastered METAMATIC would make to the perception of sound 'quality'?

METAMATIC was re-mastered this time round primarily for the limited edition vinyl release on Record Store Day so that it could sound how it was originally meant to etc...

This version has subsequently been issued on CD for The Virgin Years box set - so transferred / recorded onto a different format (i.e., digital rather than analogue).

If it is then transferred / played through or otherwise converted to a hi-quality digital media player, would it sound 'different' in any way to the same thing on vinyl??

Thanks in advance

To be fair, I still used my EARS to spot the difference (and a good pair of Sennheisers) ... all the software was doing was letting me line two WAVs up beside each other and flip between them.

I certainly have some sympathy for where you're coming from with all this 'another year, another repackage' type releases.
My preference would be for John to get his entire catalogue well organised on all the online stores via a digital aggregator, so that all the bazillion extra tracks are in their proper context. E.g. he could release all his various singles as 'EPs' on iTunes et al, so for example you can buy "No-one Driving" and it has the four correct tracks and the right cover art (7" edit of No-one Driving, This City, Glimmer, Mr No), or an "Endlessly" EP that has the 6 or 7 odd tracks and mixes associated with those singles. Then the catalogue would make more sense and you'd get more of the lovely artwork.

At the moment, you have to wade through about 9 different CD releases, pieceing together all the bonus tracks yourself and trying to work out "is this the same version of He's A Liquid that's on the 3rd re-issue of Metamatic? Or is this one only on Glimmer? Or Metatronic? Or...?" etc etc

Another thing I would love would be for John to release stems of the multi-tracks of Metamatic so we could play with it ourselves! I'd LOVE to buy that!

At the risk of making purists howl, assuming the same WAVs were used to create the vinyl and the CD, the CD will sound loads better.
The signal on the vinyl will get scratched off slightly more every time you play it,
and you get a variety of distortions that don't exist on CD (e.g. more distortion closer to the inside of the vinyl cos the linear speed is slower... tracking errors across the vinyl as the needle doesn't keep the same angle relative to the groove... slightly wow and warble as the turntable speed wobbles... pops and noise from dust...)

To physically fit the signal onto the vinyl, some bass will have had to be rolled off (otherwise the needle would jump out of the groove). Whether this was already rolled off in the WAV file and so is also missing on the CD version is question for Dallas Simpson.

The CD version will of course have bitswizzling errors and jitter, as all CDs do. I tend to rip em off with error correction and then leave em on the shelf

"Spin Away" is certainly a lovely track, it would be interesting to hear from John as to why he left it off the album in 1985. I still think it's a bit of a cheek to try and rewrite history like this though On my iTunes, Spin Away is not on the In Mysterious Ways album! It is relegated to the bonus tracks

With respect to IMW. I imagine John looks back at that album and thinks it's not the album it could have been.Personally I think it's a real hotchpotch of styles and suffers for it. Not to say that there aren't some excellent track on there. However I think the original tracklisting should have been left as it was.If people want to create their own 'version' of the album then they have the option.

Well I’m still waiting on my copy, have contacted Townsend and seen to be getting the run around so have asked for my money back, not happy at all!

Unfortunately I have had a similar experience...


Although I have just been told today that my copy of EUROPEAN SPLENDOUR has just been despatched

I guess we just have to be patient, and to be fair to them, they did not charge me for the CD until yesterday when copies 'became available'

Shouldn't the box set be on the "news" page and "recent releases"? Might boost sales a bit, especially if people aren't on the mailing list or frequent the forums.