John Foxx

www.metamatic.com

Yeah, I always seem to write about the basic level; a man, a woman and a city. It’s because I am an urban creature most of the time. I think that’s increasingly relevant now because I think most people do live in cities and I think it is very interesting what happens in that environment. We alter ourselves constantly to live in it, to survive in it and that process has very poetic levels. I don’t want to sound pretentious, but it is very moving the way people accommodate each other and the city that they live in, and try to build this environment together. You almost have to dissolve yourself, re-incorporate yourself with the city in order to make it work on any level. All those tiny interactions and the major draws and minor draws that result from all that. I find it endlessly fascinating. I could sit in a cafe all day and some times I do. It’s like being part of a beautiful ocean that is constantly moving. A lot of what I sing about is trying to describe some of that process.

—John Foxx (via passing-strangers)

'Trapped In This'

Exquisite Corpse is a Surrealist take on an old parlour game called Consequences, in which participants write a word or phrase on a piece of paper, then pass it on, but each new contributor is only allowed to read part of what’s already been written.

When the Surrealists tried it they came up with “Le cadavre / exquis / boira / le vin / nouveau” (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine) and the name stuck.

You can make up your own rules for the game, as we did. Because we wanted lots of musicians/writers to take part (40 ended up doing so), and a story that would hopefully be fluid and make some sense (you be the judge of that), we allowed players to read every contribution before adding theirs.

We initially insisted that contributions be kept to a single sentence. That didn’t work out, because we didn’t have the balls to tell Ian Rankin to re-submit his entry. We subsequently requested something short and simple, and that, of course, is a tough ask of many musicians/writers. As such, we refused five contributions, cut down and edited four that were decadent or over-long, and corrected grammar.

The writers included John Foxx, Robert Wyatt, The Horrors, Gary Numan, Billy Childish, Brian Eno, Gazelle Twin, Luke Haines and Anna Calvi. 

The Weird

Brilliant collection of short stories by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Borges, Kafka and Haruki Murakami. 

KNIGHTS ELECTRIC PART 3 

KNIGHTS ELECTRIC PART 2 

KNIGHTS ELECTRIC (PART 1)

The four tracks from John Foxx’s Metamatic in the film are:-

UNDERPASS (opening sequence)
FILM 1
NO-ONE DRIVING

MR NO (closing sequence)

Knights Electric is 24 minutes long and was played in cinemas as an opener for more high-profile sci-fi and futuristic films.
According to the director - it was quite a wow when it played at cinemas – people actually preferring it to the main picture it went out with.