Customer Reviews

Garden

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

 

 

Listening to "The Garden" is almost like listening to an electronic opera or orcheastra, with it's breath taking harmonies, perfect beats and dreamy vocals of John Foxx.

This album is a perfect companion to "Metamatic". New wave at it's best.

As a fan of more melodic and danceable new wave over the experimental synth stuff of the late 70s, I prefer this album over Foxx's first post-Ultravox solo CD, "Metamatic." This is where I see him joining in on the synthpop sound indicitive of the early 80s. Here we have some new wave gems that fit in snuggly with the music of the new romantics. So if you love groups like Devo, the Human League, and Ultravox (yes, the Midge Ure years), and are looking for artists who created that sound back then but may have slipped past your radar, then don't hesitate to pick up this John Foxx CD. And while you're at it, grab the two follow-ups, the synthdance brilliance of 1983's "The Golden Section" (moving in a more Depeche direction), and 1985's "In Mysterious Ways".

The piece "The Garden" is an awakening from The Great and Perfect Primordial Sleep. John Foxx translates his dreams into songs and they are all surreal like a Salvador Dali song - if he wrote them - but he didn't so The Foxx has to make them. Extra's on this album are the 2 Swimmer tracks (which are torpedoes of deliberate audio immersion. Walk Away is a song you cannot Walk Away from unless you get tired climbing it's endless starcases up to the Maxfield Parrish Synthesizer solo - which is impossible if you are big fan of huge MACROVOX sounds of tunes like You Were There and the dream-cloaking device wildness of Night Suit. I became someone-else when I heard this.
... Forever.

This album contains some of John Foxx's finest music and some other songs which are less memorable.
Systems of Romance, Europe After The Rain and The Garden are sublime and amongst the best songs John Foxx ever composed. However, some of the other songs on this album are a little retrogressive and use guitars - surely a very passé musical instrument by the start of the 1980s?
;-))

This album stands between Metamatic and The Golden Section somewhat uncomfortably. Ultimately, Metamatic and The Golden Section were better albums overall - Metamatic, for its purity and diligence, and The Golden Section, for its ability to conjure up very beautiful emotions and ideas.

Yet, Systems Of Romance isn't without its qualities. I think it will remain the last album John Foxx might have recorded with Ultravox and it exhibits the tireless imagination and creativity of Mr. John Foxx in this direction.

The original Lp came with a beautiful booklet of photos by John Foxx. In many ways, the photos gave us more of a clue about the future musical direction of John Foxx than the actual music recorded on the album, which was slightly retrograde.

However, I have no qualms about giving this album five stars - even though I was as bored with electric guitars and "Rock" music as John Foxx clearly was in 1979-1980!

What I find very curious is that THE GARDEN was released After METAMATIC and not Before it.My reason for saying such is that this album uses a lot more guitar riffs whereas METAMATIC is synth-only. Musically I would describe this album as being very much akin to 70s progressive rock. But nonetheless its VERY catchy and well made. The title track sounds more like what you would expect from John Foxx: non-rythmic and all-electronic. If you are a fan of 70s synth prog-rock you are sure to LUV this album.