| Shifting City | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 24 March 1997 [1] [2] (some sources quote 24 March 1995) [3] | |||
| Recorded | MetaMatic Studio [4] CRoms studio [1] 1995 [2] | |||
| Genre | Electronic | |||
| Length | 56:16 [2] | |||
| Label | Metamatic Records | |||
| Producer | Louis Gordon & John Foxx [4] | |||
| John Foxx chronology | ||||
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| Louis Gordon chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
Shifting City is an album by John Foxx and Louis Gordon, released in 1997 [1] [2] [6] (although some sources cite 1995 as the release year). [3] Released simultaneously with Foxx's ambient album Cathedral Oceans , Shifting City was Foxx's first album release since In Mysterious Ways (1985). [1]
John Foxx is an English singer, artist, photographer and teacher. He was the original lead singer of the band Ultravox, before leaving to embark on a solo career. Primarily associated with electronic synthesizer music, he has also pursued a parallel career in graphic design and education.
Louis Gordon is an English musician notable for his collaboration with John Foxx. He has worked with Foxx on a number of albums since 1995. His solo work has also been released on the Toffeetones record label.
Cathedral Oceans is an album of ambient music by John Foxx, released in 1997. Alongside Shifting City released on the same day, it marked Foxx's return to the music scene after an absence of seven years. It was also his first solo album since 1985's In Mysterious Ways. The album's artwork consists of collages by Foxx himself, overlaying various pictures and textures with the faces of statues.
Contents
Stylistically Shifting City marked a return to the electronic sound of Foxx's 1980 solo album Metamatic , although it also shows an influence of 1960s The Beatles-style psychedelia, a style which Foxx had already experimented with on 1983's The Golden Section . [1]
Metamatic is the debut solo album by John Foxx, released in 1980. It was his first solo project following his split with Ultravox the previous year. A departure from the mix of synthesizers and conventional rock instrumentation on that band's work, Metamatic included a more hard-edged electronic sound. The name 'Metamatic' comes from a painting machine by kinetic artist Jean Tinguely, first exhibited at the Paris Biennial in 1959. The album peaked at #18 on the UK Albums Chart.
The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they became regarded as the foremost and most influential music band in history. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock and roll, the group were integral to pop music's evolution into an art form and to the development of the counterculture of the 1960s. They often incorporated classical elements, older pop forms and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways, and later experimented with several musical styles ranging from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As the members continued to draw influences from a variety of cultural sources, their musical and lyrical sophistication grew, and they were seen as an embodiment of the era's sociocultural movements.
Psychedelia is the subculture, originating in the 1960s, of people who often use psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mescaline and psilocybin. The term is also used to describe a style of psychedelic artwork and psychedelic music. Psychedelic art and music typically try to recreate or reflect the experience of altered consciousness. Psychedelic art uses highly distorted and surreal visuals, bright colors and full spectrums and animation to evoke and convey to a viewer or listener the artist's experience while using such drugs, or to enhance the experience of a user of these drugs. Psychedelic music uses distorted electric guitar, Indian music elements such as the sitar, electronic effects, sound effects and reverberation, and elaborate studio effects, such as playing tapes backwards or panning the music from one side to another.
A 2 CD special edition was released in October 2009, including three previously unreleased bonus tracks. Disc Two of this special re-issue contains the previously released “The Omnidelic Exotour” material, recorded live by Foxx and Gordon at A Certain Ratio's Warehouse in Ancoats, Manchester and at Metamatic Studio in 1997.
A Certain Ratio are an English post-punk band formed in 1977 in Flixton, Greater Manchester. They became known for their punk-funk/industrial/dance-oriented sound, which drew heavily on disco, funk, and dub elements. After over seven years on Factory Records, they spent two years signed to A&M Records before returning to independent labels in the early 1990s. After being on hiatus since the late 1990s, they returned to sporadic live performances in the early 2000s and released a new album in 2008.
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 545,500 as of 2017. It lies within the United Kingdom's third-most populous metropolitan area, with a population of 3.2 million. It is fringed by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and an arc of towns with which it forms a continuous conurbation. The local authority is Manchester City Council.
