John Foxx & Robin Guthrie – Mirrorball

Foxx once said that he wished there were time and opportunity for the Cocteaus to have recorded at The Garden. Well, good things come to those who wait, for they shall have eternal life. Perhaps Mirrorball is those sessions at last.
Four years in the making, and his third release of 2009, Mirrorball has its roots back in the Twins Victorialand heyday c1986, synchronising at the point where Foxx (V2) began to dissolve. Robin Guthrie's trademark reverb-soaked guitars create an expansive backdrop that is as beautiful as it is inventive. His phrasing and chord sequences defy logic, creating structures whose fragility is at the same time breath-taking, massive and fundamentally honest. Foxx wanders in and out of phase with this, slowly shifting his choral harmonics, Latinesque vocals and weaving exquisite filigree piano. Neither artist has anything to prove, and the affinity is here and now - with no need to go anywhere else. It is ancient and modern, fact and myth - both one thing and another. The tracks radiate sympathetic warmth and mutual confidence, while at the same time preserving the unique qualities of each (immensely influential) composer.

For all its self-indulgent opulence, there is nothing grandiose about Mirrorball. It is natural and effortless, ethereal, exultant, tender, luxurious and decadent. Medieval in parts (The Perfect line, Spectroscope), Post-modern and neo-romantic in equal measure (Sunshower, Empire Skyline) - beyond definition throughout (witness the stand out tracks Estrellita and My Life as An Echo). Above all, Mirrorball has shimmering presence.

For ten years now, Foxx (V4) has proved a masterful alchemist of minimalism, delicacy and evocation. He may be the quiet man, a ghost in the shadows, but when he steps out, he is Luminous... few can be described as quite so visionary.

If this is what the first gleaming of twilight sounds like, let us bathe in the sunset's blaze.