Ultravox

Ultravox were formed by John Foxx (Dennis Leigh) in 1976. The lineup (with guitar and synthesizer) recalled that of Roxy Music, and the music shuttled between Kraftwelt and Brian Eno. It was Brian Eno himself who discovered them and influenced their evolution. The group’s brilliant idea was to mix robotic rhythms, hard-rock riffs, and romantic melodicism. In this way Ultravox simultaneously rode three emerging phenomena: new wave, punk-rock, and disco-punk. Their songs were undermined by the same fear of the technological future that would bring fame to Pere Ubu and Devo. Their songs were short, fast, and violent, just like punk-rock. Finally, their songs relied on catchy refrains and on almost operatic airs. They were revealed by the cascading strangled riffs of Young Savage (1976), which massacred an obsessive boogie rhythm.

The album Ultravox (Island, 1977) is a kaleidoscope of disorienting arrangements tinged with Central European decadence: the melodious and languid march of Dangerous Rhythm, with Middle Eastern melismas and tear-jerking crooning, the psychotic crescendo serenade of I Want To Be A Machine, culminating in a torrential Gypsy minimalism, and the desolate sketch of My Sex, an aseptic recitation lulled by waves of funereal electronics. The link with the past is represented by Wide Boys, a generational anthem with a Native American beat entangled in a web of electronic filters, and by Saturday Night In The City, an android vaudeville played with punk fervor and scarred by a blues harmonica. The morbid street ballads, such as Life At Rainbow's End and especially The Wild The Beautiful The Damned, with an epic Jefferson Airplane-like flair, revive with greater melodic emphasis the pathos of the sublime and the perverse.

Foxx’s expressionist cabaret reaches another peak on Ha Ha Ha (Island, 1977). The anguished tone dominates the breathless boogie of Rockwrok, the macabre disco-paced chant of Man Who Dies Every Day, and the heart-rending melody of Hiroshima Mon Amour. These ballads mark the transition to a more experimental, existential, and dreamlike form of rock song, through reminiscences of classical music and music-hall. Billy Currie, on both violin and synth, animates the leader’s simple sinuous melodies with crystalline touches, whether layers of electronics, symphonic counterpoints, or Gypsy laments.

It is therefore no surprise that Systems Of Romance (Antilles, 1978), produced by Conny Plank, is even baroque, although it lacks the winning numbers of the previous record (except for the sardonic dance of Quiet Man).

After Foxx’s departure, the sound of Ultravox changed drastically, losing much of its polished lyricism and also the last remnants of punk violence.

In 1980 Billy Currie joined Midge Ure, Steve “Strange” Harrington (animator of the neo-futurist scene), and two former Magazine members (Barry Adamson and John McGeogh) to form Visage (Polydor, 1980).

Midge Ure (guitar), Billy Currie (violin), and Chris Cross (bass) crafted with Vienna (Chrysalis, 1980) a contrived and precious work (New Europeans, Mr.X, Astradyne), although, for commercial reasons, it degenerates into the synthesized symphonism of Vienna and Passing Strangers, and into electronic songs for chic discos (Sleepwalk and All Stood Still being the most epic and kinetic).

The Voice is the hit that takes off from Rage In Eden (Chrysalis, 1981), the last album produced by Conny Plank, but the album is especially valuable for atmospheric, psychoanalytic, and even cadaverous ballads such as The Thin Wall, I Remember, Stranger Within, and Accent On Youth.

An increasingly ambitious mannerism distinguishes the later works. Quartet (Chrysalis, 1982), produced by George Martin, found another success with Hymn, but it is above all Reap The Wild Wind, Visions In Blue, Mine For Life, and When The Scream Subsides that shine.

Lament (Chrysalis, 1984) is less contrived and more spontaneous and ultimately also more accessible, thanks especially to Dancing With Tears In My Eyes and the single that preceded it, We Came To Dance. The program of fusing electronic pop with Celtic folk would have no follow-up, but One Small Day, Man Of Two Worlds, Lament, and A Friend I Call Desire remain in fact among their most moving compositions. With this album, Ure and Currie reached the peak of romanticism in their career.

This second phase of the band’s saga, which managed to balance chart-friendly melodies with complex musical fantasies, highlighted the lucid and programmatic mind of Billy Currie, who may well have been the true inventor of the Ultravox sound and whose violin leads much of the most daring material. It is probably his exquisite musical sensitivity that lies behind the harmonies of violin, guitar, and synthesizer that represent the group’s most important legacy.

Midge Ure later recorded The Gift (Chrysalis, 1985), with If I Was, and Answer To Nothing (Chrysalis, 1988), in an intellectual and psychoanalytic vein closer to Kate Bush (who appears on the second).

John Foxx in turn continued his austere program of metropolitan futurism tinged with Central European, Christian, and Gothic-pastoral moods. The gems of Metamatic (Virgin, 1980), namely Underpass and No One Driving, of The Garden (Virgin, 1983), especially Europe After The Rain, and that of Golden Section (Virgin, 1985), Endlessly, are milestones of synth-pop. The excessive romanticism of In Mysterious Ways (Virgin, 1985) is in fact the style most congenial to this bard with pathetic tones. His records offer an evocative mixture of alienation and technology, skyscrapers and bistros.

Midge Ure returned with Breathe (RCA, 1996) in the guise of a mature chansonnier, accompanied by a small orchestra of accordions, mandolins, violins, and bagpipes. The sound is almost Celtic, while the lyrics continue the “Christian” program begun with the hit Dear God.

John Foxx also returned to the scene, surprising everyone with Cathedral Oceans (Metamatic, 1995), which reconnects to the refined harmonies of Garden but with an even more paradisiacal, new-age, cosmic tone. My Lost City (2010) collects unreleased material from the 1990s.

The historical role of Ultravox is fundamental, as they served as a liaison between early electronic rock (Kraftwerk, Roxy Music) and new wave. Their emphatically mechanical and manneristically sentimental sound represented better than anyone else the essence of new wave existentialism: on the one hand the fascination and fear of industrial civilization, on the other the tender abandon of the poètes maudits. Their decadent futurism also represented the alter ego of punk rock: equally nihilistic and desperate, yet finding the strength to invent a sonic scenario where the punks merely screamed. Perhaps also because their roots lay deep in the labyrinths of 20th-century European culture, whereas punk was truly an ex novo phenomenon.

On the commercial front, Ultravox at the very least deserve credit for having adapted the romantic rock of Genesis and King Crimson to the era of disco and punk rock. By emphasizing melody and electronic arrangements, theirs was nothing less than the first cry of synth-pop. And it would never be surpassed in quality by the swarms of imitators of the 1980s.

Foxx became ridiculously prolific in the new century. Shifting City (1997), The Pleasures of Electricity (2001), Crash and Burn (2003), From Trash (2006) and Sideways (2007) were collaborations with Louis Gordon. His ambient music surfaced on Cathedral Oceans II (2003) and Cathedral Oceans III (2005), besides the double-disc Translucence and Drift Music (2003), which was a collaboration with Harold Budd. Tiny Colour Movies (2006) was an instrumental album. Impossible (2008) is a remix album. Cinemascope (2009) is a six-disc box-set. Mirror Ball (2008) was a collaboration with the Cocteau Twins' guitarist Robin Guthrie. Interplay (2011) was a collaboration with electronic artist Benge (aka Ben Edwards). He then formed the Maths with Matthew Dear and Ben Edwards that debuted on The Shape of Things (2012).