Customer Reviews

Crash & Burn

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This dark album explores so many things - ideas, feelings, impressions, lusts, revulsions, private thoughts, private lusts, dangers, dangerous thoughts and obsessions. It is actually the album that that dreary luddite and "Grunge Neil Diamond", Nick Cave, can only dream of making!

I listen to this album. However you could dance to it and even make love to it. The music is modern, uncompromising, colourful, honest, organic and erotic. It is one of the most impressive albums John Foxx has ever made. It is Metamatic's dark, disturbing, cynical and sexily sardonic sister - a sister with her black hair, dark eyes, whitest skin and very red lipstick temptingly dancing in front of us. This is music which needs to be felt in several ways - the poetry of the words must be heard, the poetry of the music must be heard and the sounds must be felt. A album for the brain, emotions, body and hormones .... and subconscious ......

I have rarely heard albums as good as this in my life.

John Foxx is a living treasure. He is the Alban Berg and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina of Elektronica and Techno.

The John Foxx of the first Ultravox! record, of the mid-1970s, and the earlier Tiger Lily recordings, is fully present here; the vocal delivery, the music/arrangements, sound and the lyrics still send chills up this spine.

He had something really unique that was let go of when the Foxxless Ultravox had such commercial success in the 1980s. Foxx, too, ventured in a different direction, until the very last glimmer of that decade when he became Nation 12, with Tim Simenon of Bomb The Bass, after living in the U.S. for a time involving himself in Acid/House. Nation 12 released two 12" singles that were fantastic with the same calibre of unusual and evocative artwork that Foxx fans know well! These are nearly impossible to find but well worth experiencing once found.

Crash & Burn continues the Metamatic (1980 first Foxx solo record) feel that many of us missed during the Reagan/Thatcher decade and it is expanded upon because of his collaboration with Louis Gordon, an established artist on his own, which he's had since his mid-'90s "return." In fact Gary Numan also returned in the mid-'90s and both Foxx and Numan continue to get better, which is great!

Even though my favorite on this one is Sex Video, because of its departure from the norm, Dust And Light really stands out for me. It's got the Ultravox Systems Of Romance feel of isolation, exhilaration, (non) participation and sexuality. Ultraviolet Infrared is another that evokes some Ultravox and some Foxx solo, like The Garden and The Golden Section. But only slightly. This is all really new stuff.

A must.

I was beginning to lose faith in the Foxx/Gordon partnership as their last three albums were starting to sound a little formulaic and "same-y" (this includes The Omnidelic Exotour where the duo revamped many of Foxx's older songs to match his new sound) but this album shows them branching out a bit more. At first, when the opener "Dive" began, I sighed in frustration. Not at all a bad song, just more of the same. "Cinema" took me by surprise with its distorted vocals and (possibly synthetic) guitar. Other songs feature distorted vocals as well and the synths are also becoming a bit more aggressive calling to mind KMFDM. The ironic "Sex Video" in particular has an interesting rhythm and some pretty industrial sounding synths. The album's one weak spot is the odd "Ray 1/Ray 2" which sounds like the Silicon Teens all growed up. Why it's on this album (or why it was even recorded for that matter) is a mystery since it's so bizarrely out of place. All in all a great effort from a godfather of the synth rock movement.

I find Crash and Burn another successful effort from the collaboration between John Foxx and Louis Gordon. While the previous album (Pleasures of Electricity) was in part more serene, lighter in tone and emotionally warmer, Crash and Burn is mostly quite aggressive, dark, relentless and sees a kind of return to the old Metamatic form (in an updated manner).

"Drive" starts off quite nicely, with some catchy synthlines, a propelling 4/4 'techno' beat and quite raw raspy vocals by Foxx with a certain grungy feel to it. It evokes the feeling of driving quite well, this time more energetic and out of control (compared to the similar-themed but much more serene and reserved "Automobile" from PLEASURES).

"Cinema" is quieter in tone, having some nice synth textures (more and more so as the song proceeds), a more lightweighted drum machine sound (not that techno stomp) and some richly inventive lyrics by John Foxx.

"Broken Furniture" starts quite foreboding at first, but then evolves into another relentless techno stomp (which seems quite a typical staple from the Foxx/Gordon collaboration). I like the lyrics again, and also the snappy synth solo in the mid and end parts.

"Crash and Burn" is one of the central tracks of the album, featuring raw dirty synths/bass (also some Metamatic-reminiscent weeping padsynth in the last verse), again that 4/4 stomping techno beat (this time a bit more subtle though), some highly-distorted harsh vocals by Foxx, and an overall sinister atmosphere of a quasi-apocalypse/warfare/destruction etc. (I may be wrong, but get the impression, that this song was at least subtly/indirectly inspired by the 911 attacks and all subsequent events, including Iraq war, with lines like 'He's a lover of lethal mechanical toys', 'We're witnessing particularly vicious crimes', and of course 'You're going to crash, crash and burn').

"Once in a While" again is more serene/quiet, laidback, with a softer rhythm (not the Gordon-favored techno stomp), and a feeling quite sensual and sleazy; Foxx's vocals are also distorted here, but not as heavy as on "Crash and Burn", and he sings quite in a suggestive, voluptuous tone (about some sensual, but elusive relationship to a woman).

"Sex Video" is again similarly harsh and violent as "Crash and Burn", featuring some crude brutal sounding bass-synth riff, stomping techno-beat and cold repetitive vocals chanting the song tile. It's quite repetitive, but I like the fact that here with this harsh bass-synth riff there's a really strong element featured, countering the relentless 4/4 techno-rhythm somewhat (which on some songs is the only strong and overloud element) (I'm only left wondering, why for this aggressive music this certain song title/theme, "Sex Video", was chosen - a sex video/pornography can have violent elements to it, but not as harsh as the "Sex Video" music would suggest).

"Sidewalking" is quite beautiful and sad, quieter than "Sex Video" or "Crash and Burn", but not as quiet as "Once in a While" or "Cinema", somewhere in between. It has a propelling bass/beat section, raspy imaginative Foxx vocals and quite a catchy synth hook in the chorus.

"Ultraviolet/Infrared" is my personal favourite. It has distant similarities to the dancefloor antics of early 80s New Romantics (Visage and the likes), but is rawer and more energetic, less polished than those. It is really one of the highlights of the album, as it's very melodic, more upbeat and optimistic in tone than the rest of the album, again has a catchy synth hook in the chorus, and most of all has a more varied song structure (chord changes etc.), is less repetitive than most of the album tracks (it's clearly divided into verse, chorus and solo sections).

"She Robot" shows a clear Kraftwerk influence (the only one on the album, as opposed to PLEASURES which had more Kraftwerk-tinged tracks); stream-lined rhythms, cold synth parts, metallic sounds and highly reserved vocoder-vocals (the mechanic vocals in the verses also make another Foxx classic come to mind - "030" from Metamatic).

"Dust and Light" is another high point. It has a stark synth-bass riff, again a catchy leadsynth hook in the chorus, inventive vocals and generally evokes the Foxx typical feelings of uncertainty, disconnection and isolation among the masses in the cityscapes.

"Ray 1/Ray 2" could really regarded as the album's `low point', though it's not really bad, as it's again more lighter and optimistic in tone, and features some outbursting hyper-verbosity by John Foxx. It was surely meant as tongue-in-cheek.

"Smoke" is the serene and minimalist closer, featuring only minimal instrumentation: soft drumcomputer rhythm, subtle bass, and of course that catchy synth bleep tone. Foxx's singing here is slightly wistful, longing and sad, again speaking of a close but at the same time elusive relationship ('You linger on my clothes .. You drift like sun .. my memories can't hold you as you spin'). It's a decent and tranquilizing closer to the otherwise so harsh and relentless album (for the most part).

Concerning the alleged 'remastering' on the 2011 CD, as far I'm concerned I can't detect any major improvements to the sound quality of the 2003 original release. This 2011 deluxe edition is still worth purchasing, as it features a nice full-packed bonus disc with various live recordings and songs from the Drive EP (of which I regard "Underwater Dreamsex" as a highlight).

The last time I listened to John Foxx was The Garden. His cold robotic style and minimalistic lyrics have always been vaguely interesting mainly due to his unique voice. With Crash And Burn John has maintained the simplicity of his early work but has stripped it of some of the charm (if I can use that term). Crash & Burn starts out with some promise. Drive, Cinema & Broken Furniture are very much in the Foxx tradition, but the high points thereafter are few and far between. Lyrically Crash & Burn is a bit weak and their repetition is only interesting when backed by good melodies which is also lacking here. I'm not sure what role Louis Gordon plays in this production but I think John needs a new collaborator.