ANDY JONES

The latest incarnation of The Maths – from left: Benge, Hannah Peel, John Foxx and Robin Simon

40years ago John Foxx released the album Metamatic, a record steeped in an all-new blend of synths and drum machines which conjured up a future that was as terrifying as it was mesmerising. It predicted a world straight out of the sci-finovels of J.G. Ballard or predictions by Marshall McLuhan – cold cities, burning cars, disconnected people, all residing in a harsh, unloving future. That future is now, and according to Foxx, the reality we now live in is darker than anything he could possibly have believed four decades ago… “Well it’s worse,” he sighs, “worse than I’d imagined; it’s absolute bloody chaos. It’s panned out badly, but obviously there are good things as well which can give you hope. But the media magnifies everything and changes the perspective on things that you might never have heard about before.

It has all kinds of effects that we hadn’t anticipated and that we don’t yet understand.

It affects your thinking, the ‘memes’ become embedded and you take them on. A lot of uncritical or receptive people are affected negatively and react to things quickly because of the media.

“Social media is particularly like that.

Bullying has been magnified – it’s a bully’s dream. You can get on with it invisibly and you can torture people to death; it’s awful. All of these effects take a long time to understand and technology is moving faster than our understanding of it; even faster than Ballard predicted, which is a scary thought.

“Technology is moving faster than our understanding of it, faster than J.G. Ballard predicted, which is scary”

“Then there’s the news, the gossip and the idea that we’ve confused politics with personalities and celebrity,” Foxx continues. “These things are getting mixed up and separating the strands used to be an editorial job but there’s no editorial any more. What the algorithms do is give you more of what you are looking at, so rather than criticising you they enforce what your little desire happens to be. If you’re with friends and talking about something, someone might say ‘piss off, what are you talking about?’ whereas alone on a computer you don’t have that. Someone needs to build an algorithm that says ‘get real’ or ‘bugger off’ to criticise you rather than giving you more of what you want.”

MUSIC HAS AN ANSWER

Foxx can fortunately channel his own ‘bugger off’ algorithm through his music. Indeed his latest album, Howl – produced as part of John Foxx and The Maths with longtime collaborator Ben Edwards aka Benge, master (and abuser) of the violin Hannah Peel, and guitarist extraordinaire Robin Simon – is in part at least, their reaction to the current climate. It is arguably their most powerful collection of songs yet, all driven by a collective of outspoken and hugely talented musicians that Foxx can surround himself with. “I’ve wanted to get Robin [Simon] involved, but it’s never been possible before,” John explains of his former bandmate from the Mk.1 version of Ultravox that Foxx formed and fronted until the late 1970s. “He was in L.A. for a while, and then with The Maths we were just using synthesisers. But then I said to Benge ‘have you ever worked with guitars?’ He hadn’t really so I said ‘let’s try Robin’. He came down and did a couple of things, and it built from there. Robin has this habit where he’ll give you three versions of his take on any song you write, and you think ‘bloody hell, I hadn’t thought of that!’. But you take it away and sit on it and then suddenly you realise it’s better than your original idea.” The results on Howl are a perfect blend of incendiary guitars, Benge’s electronic beats and synths and Hannah’s powerful strings.