The Golden Section (1983) is an LP album by English rock-music figure John Foxx. His first work with a producer since 1978's Systems Of Romance with Conny Plank, The Golden Section was produced by Zeus B Held, well known in the Krautrock scene of the 1970s. (Foxx met Held at a party given by Heaven 17, a band for whom he'd had much enthusiasm.) This marks Foxx's closest approach to the New Wave pop movement. The album includes vocoder effects and sampling, Beatles allusions, and references to Foxx's earlier career (such as his earlier Ultravox period). In addition to echoing his past, The Golden Section also incorporates new elements, like falsetto vocals and lyrical images that seem more LSD-inspired than ever before.
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"Ghosts On Water" has drums and percussion that sound as though performed by Jerry Moratta and uses vocal samples from the embers of song before, "Endlessly". This version has a surprise sitar, some backwards cymbals, a shehnai, and a string arrangement played backwards at the end. Again, a form of the "Tomorrow Never Knows" drum pattern was used. "Sitting At The Edge Of The World" might not sound out of place in Yellow Submarine, with its Mellotron, perspective-altering lyrics and shimmering melody. "Running Across Thin Ice With Tigers" has Beatlesque harmonies and a tiger's roar. Overall, it recalls Salvador Dalí's Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumblebee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening.
Foxx told the BBC that, at one point, when Bryan Ferry left Roxy Music, he was invited to join. He turned them down, but "Your Dress" sounds like something Foxx wrote right after thinking about it.
Track listing
All tracks composed by John Foxx.
- "My Wild Love" - 3:45
- "Someone" - 3:30
- "Your Dress" - 4:26
- "Running Across Thin Ice With Tigers" - 5:37
- "Sitting at the Edge of the World" - 4:23
- "Endlessly" - 4:18
- "Ghosts on Water" - 3:12
- "Like a Miracle" - 5:10
- "The Hidden Man" - 5:44
- "Twilight's Last Gleaming" - 4:24
2001 reissue bonus tracks
- "Dance With Me" - 3:29
- "The Lifting Sky" - 4:28
- "Annexe" - 3:10
- "Wings and a Wind" - 5:15
- "A Kind of Wave" - 3:37
- "A Woman on a Stairway" - 4:29