John Foxx
Metamatic

THE REVIEW

After releasing three excellent albums as the leader of Ultravox!, John Foxx decided in '80 to embark on a solo career.
His former band dropped the exclamation mark along the way and shifted towards more commercial synth-pop sounds, (doing so with a lot of class nonetheless) abandoning the decidedly punk nuances of the early days. Foxx, on the other hand, surrounded himself with synthesizers in search of coldness, total rarefaction, the most antiseptic electronics.
With this intent, he released this masterpiece. His is a journey into depersonalization, everything (or almost everything, as we will see later) within this album evokes non-feeling, alienation. The sound cuts through you like a sharp blade, it feels like being projected into a completely mirrored room. Everything is reflected, a myriad of sound reflections that disorient you.
The synth raises its voice menacingly, looking down at you from a great height in "He is a liquid," a "ballad" that is nothing short of spectral. But here one does not feel fear, anguish, no, here one is completely annihilated by an intense and white light, there is no place for feelings, these are like crystallized. Foxx's approach to the work is philosophical, his aim is not to "use" the machine, nor to escape the machine, he wants to "lose himself in the machine," the only way to exorcize the cybernetic universe that dawns from afar.

"Metal Beat" is the manifesto of this philosophy, a geometric march with Foxx's robotic singing seemingly conversing with the sound. Never had the synth produced such subtle and sharp sounds until now; This track is a theorem, his philosophical theorem.
The next "No One Driving" seems to possess almost a certain "warmth," but it is only its proximity to this "monster" that makes it appear so. In reality, it perfectly follows the trend of the album.
"New Kind Of Man" is dominated by apocalyptic synthetic waves, Foxx seems to have lost the space-time coordinates ( "He WAS a new kind of man..." ), he seems to see what he could have been without knowing if he is now what or who.
At this point, he tries to declare a plea for help in "Blurred Girl," but now, swallowed by a hypnotic spiral of synths, he sinks further away, a victim of his curiosity, and his voice resonates with a dramatic echo. The effect this time is poignant, the only emotional glimmer of the album, and it is an intense, paralyzing emotion.

With this solo debut, John Foxx demonstrates all his potential, offering an intellectual transposition of what would later become, in the best cases, refined danceable music for "dandy" discos. His language will remain unmatched, demonstrating the greatness, admittedly somewhat unrecognized, of this artist.