Changing blossoms into fists and taking bites from every kiss

John Foxx produced a body of work in the late 70s and early 80s that had a profound influence on me sonically. First, as a part of Ultravox!, he married the hooky glam of Roxy music to the razor-edge of punk creating something that sounded like the score for a William Burrough's film written by J.G. Ballard (but with a sense of humor). His musical explorations continued into the extremes of synthesizer based pop - from the synth/punk/glam hybrid of the third Ultravox! album to the cold sterile tones of his early solo work and then back to a more atmospheric and textured pop of his later albums. He stopped making music for a decade, resuming work in a very ambient vein in the later 1990s, but I'm primarily interest in the six albums from 1976 to 1983.

Ultravox! was recorded in late 1976. There is a lot to like about this album as it has all the better qualities of early 1970s glam rock -- virtually screaming Roxy Music, Bowie and Marc Bolan -- and the smart wit of early punk (via the Velvet Underground), which was just at the edge of bursting out with The Damned and the Sex Pistols a year later. The exclamation point, which follows the name on the first two albums, comes from the Krautrock/motortek band NEU!, an influence which would be more apparent in the music several years down the road.

The drum and harmonica intro on the album opener "Satday Night In The City Of The Dead" could be something off a Sweet album and it's a hook-filled trip down the darker side of Tottenham Court Road on a Saturday night. Other standouts are hat trick that end the album : "Dangerous Rhythm", "The Wild The Beautiful And The Damned" and "My Sex". The "Dangerous Rhythm" is a reggae beat, which was pretty unusual at the time, especially for a band of white boys. Five years later this would have been a major hit single. "The Wild The Beautiful And The Damned" was essentially the signature tune for the band for the first two albums, an nihilistic love song as it were. "My Sex" is the oddest thing on the album, a song full of strange and compelling metaphors for sex and specifically the object of the title set to a haunting piano and synthesizer soundscape. [The 2006 remaster includes 4 live tracks.]

Ha-Ha-Ha is a much harsher record but still has the feel of the glam rock era Bowie. The stars of this record are the slash-and-burn guitar of Stevie Shears, which wails and feeds back and screeches though most of the album and the synth work of Billy Currie, which matches Shears shriek for shriek. I can't think of another album from this era that has such agressive and noisy synth work, though in a decade it would be a major part of the metal/industrial movement. "ROckWrok" is the flip-side of "My Sex", a blazing ode to getting laid in every possible way. For the first 53 seconds of the next song, "The Frozen Ones", it sounds like the band is picking up where they left off on the last disc but, surprise, they shift back into high-energy guitar mode. "Fear In The Western World" is all about feedback and howling guitars. When the last song on side one, "A Distant Smile" finally hits, the band is back to the synth and piano soundscapes from the end of the first album... for exactly 2 minutes and 40 seconds, when the the band again shifts into sonic onslaught mode. It is one of the great sides of music produced in the late 1970s. Things settle down a bit in the second half though Shears still plays like a man possessed. The album ends with "Hiroshima Mon Amour", a haunting song that sounds a bit like Green World era Eno with saxophone, pointing the way for the next phase of the band. Ha!-Ha!-Ha! is critical listening and really points the way for much of the music that would come about in the 1980s , including Ministry and their offspring, Nine Inch Nails. [The 2006 re-mastered CD adds 6 extra tracks including the absolutely essential "Young Savage" in both the single version and an incendiary live version.]

Systems of Romance was a drastic shift into much heavier synth based music. My least favorite of the first three Ultravox! albums but important in that it essentially invents sound of the New Romantics and 80's synth-pop (Gary Numan, Duran Duran etc.)

Foxx left the band after this record. Ultravox became Ultravox with Midge Ure and continued on in the synth rock vein of Systems, mining a respectable career that has more than a passing resemblance, when compared to their first three albums, to post-Gabriel Genesis: mainstream respect and sales but not none of the fire of the early work. Foxx's first solo album is the rather wonderful Metamatic. It's the synthesizer music of German bands like Kraftwerk stripped down to a simple melodic line or two, a drum machine and Foxx's voice. While it sounds a bit dated to modern ears, it is in fact a landmark of the genre that doesn't get the credit it deserves.

Foxx hit his stride with The Garden, a truly masterful album of evocative texture and mood.

While it doesn't break any new ground, The Golden Section continues in the vein of its predecessor with sonic texture dripping off of lovely songs.

Foxx produced one more album in the 1980s, but it is a lesser effort that sounds more like unfinished out-takes from The Golden Section than anything new.

Following this release Foxx retired from music. He popped up occasionally under his given name, Dennis Leigh, as an artist. He's a gifted photographer, among other things, most notably producing the cover of Sexing The Cherry by Jeanette Winterson and the artwork for Lightbulb Sun by Porcupine Tree. In the late 1990s he began recording again and has produced several interesting ambient albums. He continues to work in ambient electronica and visual installations.