John Foxx
Metamatic

THE REVIEW

In 1980, Foxx began his solo career. The years spent with Ultravox would leave their mark, not only on the compositional metrics of his new solitary path but also on the very sound of his former colleagues, who would no longer be able to achieve the level of brilliance of the first three chapters marked by the leader's voice.

So in that 1980, John Foxx abandoned all types of acoustic and electric instruments; electronics would be the only sound source upon which his elegant and cold vocalizations would rely. The Kraftwerkian futurist poetics would be reimagined in a perspective shaped for the new decade that had just begun, revisited in a personal and convincing way.

"Metamatic" stands as a cold and tense synth-pop monument. Robotic movements and sinister echoes dominate every passage of the work; the perfect, clean, and antiseptic sounds radiate future and nocturnal atmospheres, with Foxx's hypnotic vocals wandering amid sharp and evocative melodic structures. From the initial "Plaza," the synthetic and rarefied air of the work is palpable, with lashing drum machine beats and futuristic melodies intertwined with the voice and synthesizer. The lyrics are alienating, delivered with a detached manner. If in Ultravox electronics was an additional element of the group's sound, the solo Foxx of this first chapter raises entirely synthetic sound walls. No other instrument apart from the synth and his voice accompanies him on this journey through future metropolises and technological psychoses. The stylistic unity of the individual tracks is extraordinary, an obsessive search for a shadowy atmosphere and an admirable melodic clarity. From the metallic labyrinths of "Underpass" to the mechanical and Kraftwerkian ballet of "Metal Beat" or again, from the sinuous and cybernetic movements of "No One Driving," "A New Kind Of Man," and "He's A Liquid," up to the dark and meditative landscapes of "Tidal Wave," all stamped by Foxx's voice, at times detached but always elegant and in perfect alignment with the sonic transformations.

Already with his next solo album, Foxx would gradually soften much of the cold austerity of this debut, also due to a renewed use of rock instrumentation to accompany the electronics, thereby losing much of the allure of this "Metamatic," which with that "Touch And Go" set to mark its finale, amidst pounding artificial rhythms and hypnotic-minimal melodies, awakens sentient machines and androids dreaming of electric sheep.