‘Extended Ultravox’ is a 1998 UK released CD that was the first such compilation to bring together some of the wonderful Ultravox 12″ A side single mixes to CD format. It has since been superseded by the later ‘Extended’ release from 2018, which somewhat broadened the scope of what to compile.
Continue reading “Ultravox – ‘Extended Ultravox’ UK CD (EMI Gold 7243 4 93465 2 9, 1998)”
Rarely has an album sleeve so poorly represented the mood and the message of the music inside than ‘The Fury’, I dare say. Musically, this was a hard-edged, tough, largely electronic sound filled that mined the technology of the day to keep up with the in your face sound of acts on ZTT, et al. To the extent that it left behind the earlier, more unique Numan sound, much to the alienation of a good chunk of existing Numan fans – even more so than ‘Berserker’ (which we looked at before) already had, as it had ushered in the move to digital synths, leaving behind the analogue warmth. Partly, that fan exodus may well have been because they never made it to the music, such was the antipathy to the image. Fair to say that both ‘Warriors’ and ‘Berserker’ had already been a tough sell, image wise – but this time round, beyond the pale for many a fan, I would wager. While the music may have been edgy and electronic, the image was – as Numan himself would later describe in his autobiographies – less the intended James Bond and more “the man who lost it all at Monte Carlo” casino wheel/cards table.
The album itself as released on the Numa label though comes in two distinct versions – the ‘regular’ standard issue and the ‘extended mixes’ version – much like ‘Berserker’ had ushered in, but this time every track was longer on the extended mixes version. Continue reading “Gary Numan ‘The Fury’ – Numa variations”
The 2000s were a great time to be a John Foxx fan, with so many releases and re-releases and events of all kinds. If you lived near enough to London to make attending events feasible, even better. To be fair, John had also been making his way elsewhere since his return to active duty in 1997 – but London got far more than its fair share of Foxx action (as it does of just about any kind of action)…
‘Neuro Video’ is a live CD that captures a particularly memorable live event at the short-lived London venue ‘The Luminaire’ – and there is a significance to why the photos here picture the CD against a backdrop of a ‘For Trash’ T-shirt – as the date of the event, 24th November 2007, was the ‘T-shirt gig’ that had been trailed some while beforehand via the metamatic.com website (and John’s MySpace site of the time). Cynical marketing push to sell merch? With a capacity of 275, The Luminaire was a tiny venue, so hardly the case… but who could resist gaining free entry to a John Foxx and Louis Gordon gig for free simply by turning up in that specific T-shirt, if you could make it. Continue reading “John Foxx and Louis Gordon – ‘Neuro Video’ live CD (Metamatic META19CD, 1998)”
Some while back I posted about a John Foxx video compilation released back in 1989 on VHS format and noted that other releases from the same series, Virgin Music Vault, was a release by the Skids…
Continue reading “Skids video compilation (Virgin Music Vault, VVC580, 1989)”
Another example from the many releases on Strange Fruit from the late ’80s into the ’90s that delved back into the BBC Radio 1 session recording archives. This one is on the ‘Nighttracks’ imprint which was reserved for the sessions that were recorded for the BBC Radio 1 evening shows other than John Peel’s show – sadly, that sun-label only released a fraction of the possible sessions compared to the main label.
Slightly different titles on these two releases, but the same session. Dating from the period of the ‘Yummer Yummer Man’ single release, the tracks chosen range from the then current single back through the previous ‘Jesus Egg That Wept’ mini-album and ‘Pop Eyes’ album.
