JOHN FOXX - THE GARDEN

John Foxx – The Garden

Released: 1981

John Foxx escapes the grey concrete of Metamatic, wading through European gardens overgrown, through the mist of fountains, shaded by colours reflected through stained-glass windows.

The Garden is a complete contrast to Foxx's stark debut, Metamatic, offering a fuller, more organic sound. The return of Robin Simon on guitar heralded a distinctive style for this album, making it somewhat comparable to Systems of Romance. This may be no coincidence, since The Garden features a track of the same name.

Foxx had become again obsessed with the overgrown jungles and abandoned cities of author JG Ballard's The Drowned World, and following a walking tour of England, and a time spent living in Italy, a more Europea flavour began to run through his music. By 1981, with new romanticism in full flow, John Foxx knew he wanted to produce a more natural, organic and textured album – even taking it to the extreme of recording outdoors. In addition to guitar, more real bass and piano were played on The Garden, adding texture and warmth.

Architecture, fountains, swimming, overgrown gardens and churches are recurrent themes in many of the lyrics on The Garden, although tracks such as “When I Was A Man and You Were A Woman” lyrically reflect the city setting of Metamatic. The album's opening track, “Europe After the Rain” takes its name from the Max Ernst painting of the same name; an image featuring a strange organic, overgrown landscape, which nicely ties-in with the Ballard influence.

Foxx's childhood experience of singing in a church choir come into play on the vocorder-treated “Pater Noster”, and the synth-funk of “Blue Light” from Systems of Romance, is revisited for “Night Suit”, which also revisits the familiar “Quiet Men” territory. Vocally Foxx sounds liberated, with a sharper, warmer performance. A real passion is felt on tracks such as "Walk Away", "Europe After the Rain" and the haunting title track, which closes the album. Echoes of birdsong open “The Garden”, which stands out not only as the finest piece on the album, but also one of John Foxx's most emotive songs to date.

The atmosphere of “The Garden” and the associated imagery of ruined churches and dense foliage, formed the starting points of Foxx's long-running Cathedral Oceans project, which eventually saw the light of day in 1997.

The Garden was released in 1981, and followed the footsteps of Metamatic in the UK album and singles charts. A number of original vinyl issues of the album came with an illustrated LP-sized book called The Church.

The Garden is very a different album to Metamatic – it is almost like a second debut, yet musically it remains equally unique, interesting and addictive as its predecessor.