Metamatic

Metamatic is an album by John Foxx, released in 1980. It was his first solo album following his split with Ultravox the previous year. A departure from the textured mix of synthesizers and conventional instruments on Systems of Romance, his last album with the band, Metamatic 's hard-edged electronic sound was more akin to Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine (1978), Gary Numan's The Pleasure Principle (1979), and early Human League. The name 'Metamatic' comes from a painting machine by kinetic artist Jean Tinguely, first exhibited at the Paris Biennial in 1959.

Production and style

Recorded in what the composer described as "an eight-track cupboard in Islington", Metamatic was engineered by then-unknown Gareth Jones. Foxx's electronic equipment included ARP Odyssey, an Elka 'String Machine' and a Roland CR-78 drum machine. His keyboard skills were rudimentary at the time, and several of the synth parts were played for him by John Wesley-Barker.

Half a dozen tracks referenced automobiles or motorways, most obviously "Underpass" and "No-One Driving". Foxx re-worked the former track as "Overpass" on the live Subterranean Omnidelic Exotour in 1998 (reissued in 2002 as the second of a 2-disc set, The Golden Section Tour + The Omnidelic Exotour); he also re-used its distinctive riff for the track "Invisible Women" on 2001's Pleasures of Electricity with Louis Gordon. The song "He's a Liquid" was influence by a still from a Japanese horror film depicting a suit draped across a chair in such a way as to suggest that the wearer had liquified; Foxx's lyrics also alluded to the 'fluidity' of human relationships. The final track, "Touch and Go", exhibited psychedelic touches that would increasingly recur in his 1980s work.