1. Imperfect Hymn
2. Holywell Lane
3. Magnetic Fields
4. Just Passing Through
5. Barbican Brakhage
6. Hidden Assembly
7. Hawksmoor Oribital
8. Piranesi Motorcade
9. City Of Disappearances
10. Umbra Sumus
11. Scene 27 - Intro To The Voice Behind The Wallpaper, Trellick Tower 3am
' . . . discarded songs from a lost city . . . psychic electricity reaching between buried streets and particles of magnetised iron . . . on tape made from the solidified remains of prehistoric forests . . . carried on electromagnetic impulses, crackling through time and space, into the air again.'
An extract from the sleevenotes for My Lost City by John Foxx.
My Lost City is a compilation of recordings made at The Garden studios on Holywell Lane in east London around (I'm guessing) '81-'86. It flitters between the Cathedral Oceans material and The Quiet Man piano pieces with a few minimal synth works in between.
The Cathedral Oceans material sits between religious overtones and ambient mood. However the Cathedral Oceans material on My Lost City (Barbican Brakhage, Hawksmoor Orbital) are really heavy on the religious overtones compared to what we know. It's almost as if you can hear him thinking, trying to work out exactly what he wants Cathedral Oceans to do. It's when you hear tracks such as Barbican Brakhage and Hawksmoor Orbital that you realise how much he has stripped away for Cathedral Oceans;
‘I hadn’t listened to the recordings that have just been released as the My Lost City album since they were made, over twenty years ago. When I played them I was struck by the way they evoke a time and a place - and how I’d been unaware of this when they were made.
Then they seemed like fragments, unfinished and unsatisfying. A stop on the way to somewhere else.
Now they seem like a time capsule discovered from under the streets. Made by someone else. Like an old radio tuned into a long gone station. Curious psychic electricals, crackling distantly from the speakers.’
An extract from the essay Electricity and Ghosts by John Foxx.
Living in east London, I regularly find myself wandering the same streets and places that are submerged in the text of My Lost City – Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Fournier Street, Holywell Lane, Commercial Road, The Barbican, Brick Lane, Christ Church, Fournier Street, Brushfield Street, Brune Street etc…the ghost town that Foxx recognised straight away; ‘Post industrial, empty . . . blackened buildings patterned on versions of architecture from ancient Rome’ are still almost there despite future Olympic and Square Mile utopia’s trying to erase its existence.
I'm enjoying it more than the Cathedral Oceans trilogy at the moment - I think it's because it's shiny and new and also because Cathedral Oceans is meant to wash over you to some degree, whereas My Lost City is varied enough to require further, deeper listening if you want it to. My Lost City is the hiss and spit of tape noise, the voice of Foxx splintered through long delays, tape loops and echoes into urban (imperfect) hymns to a city of disappearances …London.
2. Holywell Lane
3. Magnetic Fields
4. Just Passing Through
5. Barbican Brakhage
6. Hidden Assembly
7. Hawksmoor Oribital
8. Piranesi Motorcade
9. City Of Disappearances
10. Umbra Sumus
11. Scene 27 - Intro To The Voice Behind The Wallpaper, Trellick Tower 3am
' . . . discarded songs from a lost city . . . psychic electricity reaching between buried streets and particles of magnetised iron . . . on tape made from the solidified remains of prehistoric forests . . . carried on electromagnetic impulses, crackling through time and space, into the air again.'
An extract from the sleevenotes for My Lost City by John Foxx.
My Lost City is a compilation of recordings made at The Garden studios on Holywell Lane in east London around (I'm guessing) '81-'86. It flitters between the Cathedral Oceans material and The Quiet Man piano pieces with a few minimal synth works in between.
The Cathedral Oceans material sits between religious overtones and ambient mood. However the Cathedral Oceans material on My Lost City (Barbican Brakhage, Hawksmoor Orbital) are really heavy on the religious overtones compared to what we know. It's almost as if you can hear him thinking, trying to work out exactly what he wants Cathedral Oceans to do. It's when you hear tracks such as Barbican Brakhage and Hawksmoor Orbital that you realise how much he has stripped away for Cathedral Oceans;
‘I hadn’t listened to the recordings that have just been released as the My Lost City album since they were made, over twenty years ago. When I played them I was struck by the way they evoke a time and a place - and how I’d been unaware of this when they were made.
Then they seemed like fragments, unfinished and unsatisfying. A stop on the way to somewhere else.
Now they seem like a time capsule discovered from under the streets. Made by someone else. Like an old radio tuned into a long gone station. Curious psychic electricals, crackling distantly from the speakers.’
An extract from the essay Electricity and Ghosts by John Foxx.
Living in east London, I regularly find myself wandering the same streets and places that are submerged in the text of My Lost City – Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Fournier Street, Holywell Lane, Commercial Road, The Barbican, Brick Lane, Christ Church, Fournier Street, Brushfield Street, Brune Street etc…the ghost town that Foxx recognised straight away; ‘Post industrial, empty . . . blackened buildings patterned on versions of architecture from ancient Rome’ are still almost there despite future Olympic and Square Mile utopia’s trying to erase its existence.
I'm enjoying it more than the Cathedral Oceans trilogy at the moment - I think it's because it's shiny and new and also because Cathedral Oceans is meant to wash over you to some degree, whereas My Lost City is varied enough to require further, deeper listening if you want it to. My Lost City is the hiss and spit of tape noise, the voice of Foxx splintered through long delays, tape loops and echoes into urban (imperfect) hymns to a city of disappearances …London.
