Metamatic

Metamatic is a painting machine by kinetic artist Jean Tinguely, first exhibited at the Paris Biennial in 1959.

Metamatic is the name of an LP by John Foxx, former lead singer of Ultravox, released in 1980 and it continues some some of the spirit of the Conny Plank-produced Systems of Romance record. It also includes at least two tracks that were performed live with Ultravox, Touch And Go and He's A Liquid. This collection of tracks sounds more akin to the likes of Kraftwerk, Gary Numan and Thomas Leer than it does his former band.

The mood is stark, influenced by the fiction of the English writer J.G. Ballard, surreal and stripped-down electronic statements which conjure up moods and images of sex, violence, personal dramas and manias, love, betrayal, isolation, inclusion, cities, abandoned rooms and buildings, car bombs, fog, sunshine, trees, the elements and the skies. There is a hint of Star Trek, sixties version, overall. Sometimes uncannily like Peter Cook's popstar character in the movie Bedazzled, Foxx, with seeming detachment, talks the lyrics. He just as often shouts, sings and whispers them. The talking style also packs emotion and began on the first Ultravox! record in the track My Sex. Mick Jagger used this style in the Rolling Stones Shattered. David Kilgour, of the New Zealand band The Clean, sounds very Foxx-talk in his Here Come The Cars. There is also Flash And The Pan's Walking In The Rain.

John Foxx also releases his music, his colloborations with Louis Gordon and the music of Harold Budd on his own label, called Metamatic Records.