SIDEWAYS
John Foxx and Louis Gordon
META13CD

First I should shamefully admit the lateness of my coming to this album, the fifth offering from the partnership between Foxx and Gordon. Initially released only a matter of weeks after its predecessor, the disappointing "From Trash", Sideways has been described as a collection of out-takes and extras from the Trash sessions, which is not a recommendation that filled me with an urgnecy to get a copy. It also includes a couple of extended versions of tracks featured on that album, though sadly not the best ones. Being longer doesn’t improve either Impossible or A Room As Big As A City a great deal. It’s a little irksome that they are rather stuck on the end of here as ‘bonus’ tracks because, at least to my knowledge, they are not available anywhere else…?

But with the clear rose-coloured hue of hindsight (and having let the glittering dust on 2006) I'd like to audaciously suggest that From Trash was a decoy, a model, programmed to distract our attention from the Secret Experiment that Foxx and Gordon were secretly working on behind the closed doors of the MetaMedia Studios.

Listening to the Music No-one Else Makes I smile my relief aloud and, drifting back, find myself at Olympia in 1967. It’s Christmas on Earth, and Gordon and Foxx have abandoned the burned out car they have been driving for too long, burst in through the psychedelic walls of hippydom and plugged in the synths buried under the heaps of kaftans and three-button suits along the crumbling walls. Armed with a Sound Collector, the agents have successfully gathered the echoes of the era and transduced them through the Aural Hedge that has grown up between the 14 Hour Festival and the Third Millennium. Backwards. Sideways, at least.
Foxx has proved throughout his career time and again that his best work is that which is furthest from the mainstream. Sideways is so far away from that its practically off the scale. A soundtrack for a strange low-budget B-Movie set in xmal Deutschland somewhere, a place where you can see the polystyrene rocks moving as the Scary Monsters lumber past, their Rayguns held together by sticky-backed plastic and tape loops. Behind the safety of the bulletproof glass and away from the glare attracted by their smokescreen the agents have re-discovered their purpose. On pounding, rhythmic and cleverly vocalised tracks like X-ray Vision and In A Silent Way in particular, they revels in the chance to explore and play around with a whole nervestorm of ideas, some of which (CarCrash Flashback, and Sailing on Sunshine at least) germinated in an Earlier Man about 20 years ago.
Or is that from twenty years hence?
Time means nothing. It merely re-arranges our memory.
If Bowie and the Beatles were asked to produce a ‘make’ for Blue Peter I like to think it would inevitably sound something like this.
Foxx has risen, it seems, from the very edge of self-destruction, and fulfilled a prophecy. His closing statement is a work of sublime genius. Phone Tap wouldn’t be out of place on his landmark solo album Tiny Colour Movies, it’s such an evocative (and indescribably weird) piece of music that sounds like something from Quatermass. Where Biosphere meets BladeRunner. As ghostly torchbeams scan across the grey landscape, the Thing from Out Of Space[sic] emerges to a drone of deafening bass notes, punctuated by the analogue squeaks, squeals and squelches that have become trademark Foxx over the years.
Seems like the End of the Beginning will be an electronic happening after all.
What’s that pink smoke coming from the speakers?

9 out of 10. Breathtaking.
For my money, this is the album Foxx and Gordon have been working towards for years.
Overshadowed and overlooked. Just as The Quiet Man would like it.

Standout tracks:
X-Ray Vision
CarCrash Flashback
In A Silent Way (Foxx & Gordon’s coup-de-grace?)
Neuro Video
Phone tap

©Birdsong 2007. Terms and Conditions apply.
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…nicer when they leave.

Just waved Kink and Biscuit off after an exhaustive three-day visit. First time we've had both of them here together for ages and to tell the truth its been exhausting.
Their constant bickering hasn't improved, and it really grates on the nerves after even a day of it.
Lots to catch up on despite our weekly chats, and the main purpose of the visit this time focussed around Biscuit's interview today for her place on the Philosophy course at Southampton.
Not sure that she was very impressed with how it went, but I have no doubt it will be fine and she will at least get an offer of a place within a week.
Seems a very interesting course too, and I know she'll love it.
Booked similar Visits to Reading and Brighton over the next couple of months.
K has effectively moved out of home to live in her boyfriend's new flat, but I'm a little sceptical about his commitment. Perhaps I'm just playing the cautious father card, but I am struggling to see the problem with his getting a job? Apparently now she is (more or less) living there he has even stopped signing on ('he forgot a couple of times'???) and lives entirely off benefits while trying to make a go of the event/gig promotion business. I think that's a great idea and they do it well enough it seems (at least ten more since the one I watched) but it isn't making any money yet and won't for a while.
But you can't tell people.
Her words, not mine: 'when you say it like that it makes me think I am stuck with a real loser'.
Far from true I'm sure, but I have doubts.
But on the other hand, the opportunity living with him represents is very exciting and important for her and she is clearly loving her new-found 'adultness'. We talked about shopping, the price of curtains and where she can get bits of furniture from, which is all quite surreal.
Her living independently is long overdue and will, I hope at last, add to the general happiness she seems to exude these days.

That said, I am apprehensive about the arrival of their brother at the house a few weeks ago. Fourteen years old, has lived with his dad since he was just three or so when HC decided that his mum was unfir to look after him and paternal custody was awarded. So many problems and court cases and convictions and sections since then, it has all been quiet for years and I know that a couple of years ago she was granted some supervised access. That's improved a lot recently, and now, all of a sudden, H has made an independent decision to leave his dad's home in (??Derby??) and go to live with his mum and the girls.
She's obviously delighted, but I can't help seeing problems ahead. Will his dad try to use this somehow to undermine her right to see him again. Is it all OK. K and B seem happy to that he is with them, but K is under pressure now to make the move for real and actually move in with her boyfriend.
I can't see a problem with this either. Apparently her residency there will stop him getting the housing benefit that pays the rent.
So pay the rent yourself?
How come this is such an issue. if he had even a crappy part-time job it would help towards it, and at only about £350 a month anyway it can't be beyond her means?
But you can't tell people. See above.

The car is an issue too now of course now that they can both drive.
But then D has just picked up a little Toyota for as little as £89 a month.
I think the whole car finance thing is a pile of shit and you always ending paying far more than you need. Who REALLY pays for deals like this??
I do think in their situation this kind of arrangement could be just what they need. But you can't tell people