John Foxx interview in Aussieland

I'm going to just throw this out there, in case anyone is interested in this kind of thing. John Foxx (real name Dennis Leigh) is a fascinating fellow. I'm actually quite surprised; he's very nearly my parents' age (only short by two or three years from my dad) and I'm not exactly young anymore either. He came to prominence—of sorts—in his very late twenties and earliest thirties as the front-man and in fact main man for Ultravox! (later Ultravox without the exclamation) which was a kind of art school and krautrock influenced punk band at first, but which later produced what is largely considered the very first synthpop song ("Hiroshima Mon Amour") in 1977 and the very first synthpop album (Systems of Romance in 1978.) Gary Numan is gushingly effusive of his work, especially on Systems, but he left the band in the late 70s and went solo. Here, sadly, two ironic things happened.

First, Billy Currie, the synth player for Ultravox, recruited Midge Ure, whom he had met on a Gary Numan tour and on the Visage project, to be the lead singer and guitar player for the new Ultravox, which had four absolutely fabulous, classic synthpop or new wave albums—not as electronic as something like Depeche Mode, for example. They had a real drummer, a real bass player, and plenty of guitar, for instance. The string of albums: Vienna, Rage in Eden, Quartet, and Lament are all very much worth chasing down. They were remastered and re-released with all kinds of bonus tracks back in 2008 or 2009 or so, and I've had these versions for a number of years.

In 1980, Foxx released Metamatic as his solo album, the culmination of the direction he was headed following Systems of Romance. It's quite a wonderful album; a kind of cyberpunk soundtrack, before there was a cyberpunk (Foxx himself credit J. G. Ballard as a very British version of some of the same themes as Philip K. Dick, for instance. However, by the time he did it, Kraftwerk had already done The Man-Machine, which actually had pop (or at least poppish) songs on it in the same style, and Gary Numan had already released Replicas (as Tubeway Army) and The Pleasure Principle, and for that matter, The Human League had already released Dignity of Labour EP and Reproduction. This meant that Foxx's Metamatic sounded derivative, even though he was one of the first to actually do this, and most of those follow up acts (especially Numan) were in fact derivative of him instead of the other way around.

In any case, this type of really cold, dystopian, proto-cyberpunk type of very late 70s early 80s art school synthpop didn't last all that long before stuff that was warmer and more accessible and pop-oriented started overtaking it, including, of course, Vince Clark's output first with Depeche Mode, then Yazoo, then Erasure, etc. Human League's own output after the founding members left the band in the hands of the lead singer that they recruited, who came out with Dare! and the hit single "Don't You Want Me" etc. This type of synthpop is very dark, but it's not the same kind of dark as Depeche Mode later evolved into. Even relatively dark stuff like Visage and early Midge Ure Ultravox doesn't really sound quite like it. Listening to Metamatic compared to Depeche Mode's Some Great Reward, for instance, which came out just a few years later, they barely sound like the same kind of band at all, even though they were, curiously, using the same kinds of instrumentation (completely electronic), both worked closely with engineer Gareth Jones, and the Depeche Mode work was partially recorded in John Foxx's own studio in Highbury.

I strongly recommend finding on Spotify or YouTube the following albums and listening to them as best you can:

Ultravox

• Ha! Ha! Ha! (1977)
• Systems of Romance (1978)
• Vienna (1980)
• Rage in Eden (1981)
• Quartet (1982)
• Lament (1984)

John Foxx

• Metamatic (1980)
• Shifting City (1997) (But get the deluxe version which has the Omnidelic Exotour with remakes of much of his earlier work)

Visage 

• Visage (1980)
• The Anvil (1982)
• Beat Boy (1984)

The Human League

• Reproduction (1979) (Get the deluxe version that has all of the Dignity of Labour EP included in the bonus tracks)
• Travelogue (1980)

Tubeway Army

• Tubeway Army (1978) (This is probably comparable to Ultravox's Ha! Ha! Ha! in that it's not really very electronic but punk, for the most part, although the early electronic roots seen here are probably what stand out as the most memorable.)
• Replicas (1979)

Gary Numan

• The Pleasure Principle (1979)

And just for some more context, it wouldn't hurt to listen to the Joy Division albums from 1978-1980 or so (can't remember their exact dates) and maybe the first couple of New Order albums. And, while you're at it, maybe the first three or four OMD albums.

Although I talk about Depeche Mode a lot, and it does seem like most of the subsequent synthpop scene is more influenced by Depeche Mode and/or Erasure than any of these guys, it's fascinating to see this kind of strange, very late 70s early 80s proto-cyberpunk dystopian type of synthpop that was developing in parallel. Maybe it was more of a dead end, or maybe it contributed to what later became industrial music or sorts, but either way, it's a fascinating period with some fascinating releases.