I’m pleased to see that British electronica pioneer John Foxx has a new artbook due soon. Electricity And Ghosts will offer a full retrospective of the art, photography and graphic design from his career.

I was a collector at one time, having at one time had all his early gatefold double-singles, as well as the early albums both with early Ultraxox and then solo. I say “was” a collector because he was in the bulk of my record collection, which was left behind when I went away to university in the late 1980s. But that collection and all those Foxx singles were later carted (unbeknown to me) to the local charity shop (‘thrift store’), by a relative who had always loathed the looks of Gary Numan and all those late-70s/early-80s electronica ‘Space Patrol cadets’.

Ah well, it’s all on .MP3 now (his early solo work is best had in one shot via the five-album The Virgin Years 1980-1985 which has the singles b-sides as a bonus). But it would certainly be nice to have all that Foxx pre-Photoshop artwork back again. The artbook is not yet on Amazon, and is currently only pre-ordering from the publisher. But I need books sent to an Amazon locker, so I’ll have to wait until it’s on Amazon. What a wasted marketing opportunity, since he’s currently front-page on the latest Electronic Sound magazine.

All those potential Amazon pre-orders from readers… and not even a way to save the book to your Amazon WishList.

Why write about a British electronica musician and singer here? Well, I always thought he must have been partly inspired by Lovecraft’s “The Outsider” and perhaps a little by the ‘ruined London’ theme in British science-fiction (with a nod to Ballard and the French flâneur tradition). His signature neo-romantic (not to be confused with the 80s synthetic popsters of the ‘New Romantics’ scene) imagery is of the ‘Grey Man’ in a suit walking through the sunset in a romantically-overgrown and abandoned London, through abandoned Georgian arcades and plazas and into gothic graveyards with oversized looming statuary. Very Lovecraft-of-the-letters. Though I don’t recall that he’s ever nodded to Lovecraft in an interview.