Electronic Sound Magazine Issue 64 Back Issue

“You think it can’t get any worse… and then it does.”

So said John Foxx when we chatted to him for this month’s cover feature. It was just a matter of days before the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak became clear, and boy did it get worse. As we go to press, we don’t know how it’s going play out, but the new John Foxx And The Maths album certainly reflects the tension of the times we’re living through.

It provides a certain amount of catharsis too, we can all join in with its howl of pain. It’s a brilliant album, one which will delight fans of Foxx-era Ultravox and ‘Metamatic’ with its updating of the sound they represented back then. It’s powerful and unleashed, the machines snarling and lurching, but it’s also tender and funny too. A perfect album for 2020. Foxx himself remains optimistic, despite it all. Making music is the antidote for him. Listening to music and supporting its creators, these are positive ways of getting through everything that life can throw at us, and that’s what we’re going to be doing, in splendid self-isolation, in the pages of Electronic Sound, as usual.

Elsewhere, we have an in-depth chat with the Eno brothers, Brian and Roger, about their new collaborative album ‘Mixing Colours’, we get chastised by the mighty Hans-Joachim Roedelius and spend time with MJ Cole, whose new album will really surprise those who know him as a drum ’n’ bass producer. We also have Plone, who make their return with a new record on Ghost Box, and we visit Bangface for some proper fun and games.