John Foxx's Metamatic Turns 45: The Echoes Interview
In the 1980s, you couldn’t be sure now long New Wave music would last. But sitting now in 2025, Depeche Mode, Orchestral Manourvres in the Dark and Gary Numan are still recording and touring, and newer bands like Ladytron, Washed Out, Emma Anderson, Maps and World Brain are ascending. It’s a sound that isn’t going away. This year, one of the most influential albums of electro-pop turns 45, Metamatic by John Foxx.
JOHN FOXX: That was the thing that fascinated me most about synthesizers. Whenever you get a new instrument it changes the shape of the music completely. You write your music, and you write to accommodate the qualities of the machines.
Musically adventurous and lyrically trenchant, Metamatic remains a timeless artifact of electronic music and pop. We’ll hear John Foxx, Gary Numan and Gareth Jones talking about this release and its creation 45 Years ago.
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Weekend, January 18-19, 2025 – Echoes Program 2502A |
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Start Time |
Group Name |
Song Name |
Album Name |
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First Half Hour |
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| 0:01:00 | Kate Bush | The Fog | The Sensual World |
| 0:06:00 | Sheila Chandra | Sacred Stones | The Echoes Living Room Concerts Volume 2 (v/a) |
| 0:12:37 | Steven Halpern | Cannabis Dreams (part 2) | Cannabis Dreams |
| 0:17:39 | Wax Tailor | Shaman In Your Arms (ft. Jennifer Charles) | Fishing For Accidents |
| 0:20:46 | deepspace | Floor 426-B | Neon Blue Utopia |
| 0:25:33 | Thomas Lemmer & Oine | 1222 Miles (Sferix Remix) | One Vision Remixed |
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Second Half Hour |
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| 0:30:00 | Interview: John Foxx | ||
| 0:45:06 | John Foxx | No-One Driving | Metamatic |
| 0:48:37 | John Foxx | Underpass | Metamatic |
| 0:52:18 | break | ||
| 0:52:48 | Dieter Spears | Somewhere Sometimes (feat. Beartone) | Late Day Summer Breeze |
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Third Half Hour |
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| 1:01:00 | James Hood | Cherry Mandala | Ceremony Radio Edits |
| 1:06:00 | Wouter Kellerman/Eru Matsumoto/Chandrika Tandon | Open Sky | Triveni |
| 1:11:44 | Spectral Wanderer | Spectrum of Serenity | Spectral Fields |
| 1:16:08 | Sheenah Ko | By The Time | Transformation |
| 1:21:29 | World Brain | Ville Fleurie | Open Source |
| 1:25:02 | Bill Nelson | Deep Sky | Studio Cadet |
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Fourth Half Hour |
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| 1:30:00 | Federico Albanese | Your Spell | Blackbirds and the Sun of October |
| 1:32:43 | In These Trees and Tartie | Ablaze | The Quiver |
| 1:35:52 | Nicholas Gunn | Campfire | 30 |
| 1:40:10 | break | ||
| 1:40:55 | Bruno Sanfilippo | Dew on the Tip of a Leaf | Only Five Petals |
| 1:44:01 | Morcheeba | Cut My Heart Out | Blackest Blue |
| 1:48:51 | Stellarium | Passage to Circinus | Infinite Vector |
4AD was one of the defining record labels of the 1980s and 90s with artists like Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Clan of Xymox and Wolfgang Press. Among those groups was Lush, the band fronted by the duo of Emma Anderson and Mikki Berenyi. They recorded three full studio albums between 1987 and 1996 with the inevitable and short-lived reunion in 2015. Since then Berenyi has written a memoir and released two albums with her band Piroshka in 2019 and 2021. But Anderson, other than her band Sing-Sing in the early 2000s, has been silent, until now. In 2023 she released her solo debut, Pearlies and in 2024, a remix disc called Spiralée- Pearlies Rearranged. John Diliberto talks to Emma Anderson and her producer, James Chapman of Maps, about a reluctant singer, 60s influences and remixes on Echoes from PRX.
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Weekend, January 18-19, 2025 – Echoes Program 2502B |
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Start Time |
Group Name |
Song Name |
Album Name |
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First Half Hour |
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| 0:01:00 | Emma Anderson | I Was Miles Away | Pearlies |
| 0:06:00 | Erik Wøllo | Shoshin Voyage | Solastalgia |
| 0:12:12 | Lukas Midub | Keep Walking (feat. Veronika Boulter & Beta Solaris) | Shiny Lights |
| 0:17:00 | Kinobe | Lucky Stars | Out of the Blue |
| 0:20:37 | Wouter Kellerman/Eru Matsumoto/Chandrika Tandon | Ancient Moon | Pathway to Light |
| 0:25:16 | Aukai | Dream Stop | Temporal |
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Second Half Hour |
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| 0:30:00 | Interview: Emma Anderson | ||
| 0:44:28 | Emma Anderson | Willow And Mallow | Pearlies |
| 0:48:15 | Emma Anderson | For a Moment | Pearlies |
| 0:50:55 | Emma Anderson | For a Moment (Deary Dub Remix) | Spiralee: Pearlies Rearranged |
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Third Half Hour |
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| 1:01:00 | Harold Budd | Boy About 10 | By the Dawn’s Early Light |
| 1:06:00 | Diane Arkenstone | Water Touches Air | Aquaria II: Ascension |
| 1:09:42 | World Brain | Fromage Collatéral | Open Source |
| 1:12:50 | Shadowlands | Shadowlands | Shadowlands |
| 1:16:14 | Anoushka Shankar | New Dawn | Chapter II: How Dark it is Before Dawn |
| 1:21:25 | Liquid Bloom/Bloomurian/Onanya | Organic Intelligence (CALAGNA Revision) | Organic Intelligence Regenerated |
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Fourth Half Hour |
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| 1:30:00 | Rena Jones & KiloWatts | Perserverance | Caesura |
| 1:35:25 | Alison Moyet | More | Key |
| 1:38:43 | Robert Schroeder | Xtreme Pressure | Observer |
| 1:45:15 | break | ||
| 1:46:10 | General Fuzz | Forest Bath | Forest Bath (Single) |
| 1:49:16 | Statik Sound System | Free To Choose | In Dub Vol 1 |
| 1:53:36 | Paul Ellis & Pabellón Sintético | Whispers from an Unseen Realm | Veiled Portraits |
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