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Rating:
An understated electronic music with clear and enveloping sounds. A work that marks the return of John Foxx after twelve years of silence. The English musician had left behind four solo albums in the first half of the '80s, while earlier, in the crucial biennium 1977-78, he had led the band he founded, Ultravox, along the then-emerging paths of new wave.
"Cathedral Oceans" thus comes out in 1997 and is careful not to elbow its way in, not to raise its voice to get noticed. The eleven tracks it comprises proceed with meditative slowness, favoring clear and crystalline sounds that bring to mind pure air at high altitudes or, considering the title, the pristine breezes of the oceans.
Only in two cases are the tracks entirely instrumental (the title track at the opening and the brief "If Only"): in the others appears Foxx's voice itself, but so filtered and electronically treated that it becomes an additional sound source compared to the synthetic sounds that form the backbone of the album.
A voice that does not sing lyrics but proceeds in a measured chanting. An evocative solution in the initial tracks but one that runs the risk of becoming somewhat cloying if, as happens, it is repeated without variations throughout the album's duration: here is the only criticism that can be made to this gentle work of ambient music.
Towards the end of the '90s, electronic music was experiencing one of its many evolutions, the glitch aesthetic, for instance, was just emerging: "Cathedral Oceans" is entirely foreign to these upheavals and favors a traditional conception of electronic sound which satisfies particularly those who love clean and glassy sounds. Neither nostalgic nor futuristic, the album is a work that to this day does not leave enthusiasts of the genre indifferent.
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