I judge book by its cover and I can’t lie. II

I once write about how I rarely read albums reviews and I just pick my next album based on the cover (which I think it’s a bad habit, because I feel like I’m missing out a lot of good albums!) so one of my friends told me to turn it into a series when I talked about how I started listening to Steve Hauschildt. And I thought why not since I always do it.

My post is about John Foxx and his outstanding artworks. I sorta talked about him before in My Best Discoveries This Year but I didn’t give him enough appreciation for his work. John Foxx isn’t only a musician, but he is also a photographer and graphic designer, collaborated with some artists and released three *cut-up & collage* films. And the best way to describe his work; where he mixed between digital collage and multiple exposure- is dark, super vague and abstract. And I absolutely dig his style. *can you see it? there is a lot to get inspired by!*

The Quiet Man series are my favorite work by him, because the things that influenced him are the things that personally love and get inspired by.

 

The Pleasures Of Electricity

“Then he had a phase of wanting to absorb as much current as he could stand. This had a remarkable effect. The impression of shifting images accelerated until he became a softly glowing blur – like cigarette smoke uncoiling in a strobe light. He claimed that electricity stimulated him, made him exhilarated, but afterwards I could see that he looked fainter and more distant than ever.
I was also beginning to catch glimpses of something ruined behind the boyish appearance. It all seems to have been maintained through an act of will, the maintenance becoming inattentive as he grew increasingly detached and distracted.”

This is used as an album cover for his collaboration with Louis Gordon. * the follow-up to 1997’s comeback album Shifting City* Since I’m more a fan to John Foxx solo work, I mistakenly slept on this record *unfortunately* too long. & it was a very pleasant experience. In this work Magritte not only influenced the artwork but also the title, The Pleasure Principle resembles to John is The Pleasures of Electricity.

On this record I felt it was John’s most obvious minimalist sound than any of his previous albums (solo or in a group) but John said the whole album is made by a very strong influence from Kraftwerk. but the lyrics have some similar themes to Metamatic like psychogeography, walking through cities and skyline buildings. The similarity not only the theme but also kind of musically, the track “Invisible Women” recycles the riff from “Underpass”. My favorite track off the record is “A Funny Thing. The track is dark retro-electro with synth riffs that made it a very unique track. And it is something I like from electronic music.

 

This faceless man in a grey suit took a huge role in his work, features many of his songs, for example “A New Kind of Man” & Ultravox Single “Quiet Men”. The artwork of the album was originally photographed by Foxx himself and he designed it to look like René Magritte’s painting The Pleasure Principle. As we saw in the artwork of The Pleasures Of Electricity.

In “Neuro Video” artwork, we have an update version of one of the original album cover concepts for The Pleasures of Electricity. which is the faceless man in a grey suit. and continues throughout the booklet. No live shots, no text, just pure Foxx imagery.

This album leads me to listen to From Trash, their most personal album, and it’s their best. It supposes to be an album of electronic film noir, but with these metallic&analog synths I found it more retro-futuristic/dramatic 80’s, especially in “Never Let Me Go,Your Kisses burns, The One That Walks Through You”

The Pleasures Of Electricity 2 

This artwork was used twice,one was inside the foldout sleeve of  The Pleasures Of Electricity. And Used for a compilation album; 20th Century: The Noise. And it’s absolutely gorgeous.

The booklet of this album is done by the amazing Barnbrook

 

 

 

 

Tower Bridge Angel

Another artwork that I admire, it is used for “Quiet Man” album, without even googling it, you can see it was inspired by the masterpiece Wings of Desire mixed with 30s surrealism. It really gives me the same feeling when I see Wings of Desire cinematography, it’s so beautiful. & of course the significant element of his work “the faceless man in a grey suit” appeared here too. The Quiet Man is a spoken-word album, divide into five sections written by Foxx and read by Justin Barton merging with ambient music going through the background. & not my favorite but worth to check.

 

Different collages made by him for his singles that I really love.

 

 

And finally, his amazzing collaboration with Karborn! At some point in my life I *shamelessly* wasn’t interested to listen to John Foxx, until I saw “B-Movie (Ballardian Video Neuronica)” artwork that is designed by Karborn* since I liked it so much & I had to listen to the music & watch the video.  The pair presented film and sound seance manifesting J G Ballard neurons. On this album Foxx collaborated with musicians like Steve D’Agostino and Benge from John Foxx And The Maths. All the music is exclusive to this soundtrack except ‘The Other Side’, an extract from the forthcoming Electricity & Ghosts album (due for release in 2015), which just happened to fit with the visuals.

After a long time of discovering B-Movie, Karborn suggested me to listen to his other project with Foxx “Evidence of Time Travel” and this album has become very special to me and literally top every record I ever heard from Foxx. As I said before about this album, it gives you the sensation of the streets of a dark future city, apocalyptic cityscape. Karborn did a very massive job of making the graphic art and AV. The record, live AV show and online visuals trace the poignant tale of a man who falls in love with the aforementioned abstract entity. John Karborn explains: “[He] cannot bear to be apart from her, so he records himself into the material as is if he had always been present.”

Short extract from Evidence Of Time Travel | The Invention from Evidence of Time Travel *a fascinating experience I had from this!*

Topic 3: John Karborn (An interview)

John Leigh AKA Karborn is a prototype artist and designer based London,he uses analog machines and synthesis to create his images & videos, his works mostly are inspired by JG Ballard works, time travel and science fiction.   I’m fascinated by his collaboration with John Foxx’s B-Movie & Evidence Time Travel. The way he magnificently combines his visual and Foxx’s music into an abstract masterpiece short movie is unreal.(I will elaborate more in another post.) He also creates surreal and complex collage that I absolutely admire too. Karborn has been a huge inspiration to me since I was in high school, and in that time I would never think I would get the chance to interview him and ask him a few questions.

 Before you read the interview, please read this. Beautiful & emotional piece he did an artwork for it last week on NY Times.

1) How did it start? Tell me about your art background? Did you study it?

I needed a system to avoid education as well as the workplace… and art seemed attractive.. It was like rock and roll for a new generation, maybe, just maybe you could hit the big time… it was new and unexplored terrain, begging for some imagination and promises of adventure. So armed with complete naivety and a few early ideas i wanted to see what could be made with images and videos… over time i added more complexity, equipment and finesse to the evolving system of educational and professional avoidance. it’s mostly been rewarding and sustained me through, although I’ve had to be flexible and swallow my own failures and reassess often enough. it evolves and changes like everything good.

2) Who’s your heroes in art? Ultimate inspiration?

calder, ernst, magritte, nam june paik, jean tinguely, robert crumb, make-up adverts, animated gifs.

3) Is there any project you wish you could make?

loads of course. would be great to lay solid lines that pass over earth sea and air to connect all the city capitals in the world that could be followed and walked over. im not going to share any that i think would be possible to execute however 🙂

4) What happens when a project becomes difficult to progress?

throw it in the bin. you’ve made a chore for yourself and it’s doomed… so destroy it and something may come from the ashes.

I Was Always Trying To See You Through The Noise

5) When did you decide that you can make money off your art?

slowly and often in error. i decided to work in other ways to make money when i could in order to preserve the integrity, if possible, of the work and remove that pressure. there is works that do and works that don’t. money shouldn’t be a reason for if the work does or doesn’t.

6) How do you come ideas for your projects – is it a process of research and development or personal inspiration? 

lots of reading, research and often quiet sketches and primitive explorations. play-time if possible. and the more i work the more i look for quick immediate solutions to idea.

7) What was unique about collaborating together with John Foxx? 

he is fantastically imaginative and interesting and entertaining to collaborate with. its a very pleasurable dialogue we have through the pieces we make together and i will always cherish them hugely. it’s a kind of discussion and i feel many of my best pieces/projects have come from our relationship. i value his input and time hugely.

8) What is your favourite album by John foxx? 

Metamatic and Tiny Colour movies.

9) Does the technology lead you or do you have a brief in mind for which you then seek the technology to produce?

technology does lead me to a degree, but im also a very lofi person. i like simple tools and often use equipment others disregard. digital has become so perfect its fun to work with analog kit that has more character and is unpredictable, even though now we seem to be emulating those more chaotic processes with digital machines, datamosh, instafilters, glitching etc. a lot of what i do is paper and paint and sheets of glass / found rubbish from the street. its fun to find new ways things can go wrong and ride that, see what it does.

10) What technique did you use in , and which one is your favorite?

I enjoy my sculptural collages like Love & Factory and Theatre of Memories the most. I’ll expand on those system of ideas soon and create new sculptural portraits next year but more abstracted, more primitive and more colourful.

11) Any musicians that you’d like to work with together in the future?

always though it would have been nice to do a proper film or piece with, say, burial.

12) What are you working on right now?

new evidence of time travel and silks.

 

 

To check his work more: Site | Tumblr | Vimeo