John Foxx
at the Tivoli, Brisbane, 4 May 2008
I saw Foxx last night, it was totally fantastic. He gave a performance of his work 'Tiny Colour Movies' which I found particularly moving (its a very ambient series of compositions for super-8 home movies and other found footage -- extremely Ballardian). After that there he returned to the stage with his latter-day collaborator Louis Gordon and performed updated versions of his more familiar material (i.e. stuff from Metamatic & later material, and even at least one track from early Ultravox! material). Despite its slight updating (mostly in the low end) it was the icy electro synthpunk typical of what you'd expect of Foxx, only it puts the current rash of 20 year olds imitating this style in the charts to complete shame. Loud, clean and crisp sound system helped as well. Remarkably well-preserved for his age too. The only downside was the small crowd it drew to the Tivoli, anyone who claims to be a fan of electronic music, "electro" or any of it's thousand modern variations and who misses it without a good excuse is a complete pretentious dilettante who should never be taken seriously on the topic of electronic music ever again. Inspiring night all round.