John Foxx Metamatic synth question

[heath]

On the John Foxx song ”No One Driving” what kind of synth is the lead line in the beginning?…. Is it a Polymoog? Also on “New Kind of Man” is that also a polymoog at the beginning?

I’d be very interested to know what synths were used on this album and where. I hear the CR-78 all over the album

[Minimoog]

I hear a fair bit of what could be Polymoog on that album. The whole thing was made with just 3 synths, of which the Odyssey is the main one. Not sure about the 3rd...

Probably best to mention the contrasting theory that the whole album is just Odyssey with CR-78 and bass guitar.

[labouch]

I think the synth doing the strings and clavi sounds is the Elka string machine (Rhapsody, I think).

[Dubsounds]

No Polymoog was used on Metamatic despite appearing in the No-One Driving video as a prop.

Metamatic was recorded ENTIRELY with an ARP Odyssey and a CR-78 Compurythm with a splash of Elka strings and acoustic piano (played by Foxx and John Barker) and Bass guitar (Jake Durant) (the latter keyboards mainly as post production overdubs as the Odyssey backbone formed the initial takes).

Metamatic was recorded in a tiny studio in Finsbury Park called Pathway which was owned and run by ex BBC engineer Gareth Jones. It was all recorded on an 8 track Teac machine and with only the most basic effects, mainly RE-301 Tape Echo with chorus and spring reverb and a (yet again) MXR Phaser pedal.

One interesting anecdote was that John mentoned that to get a "sequencer feel" to the mechanical Odyssey basslines, John played them by hand, detuned an octave down and at half speed... only for the tape to be played back later at normal speed with the pitch back to normal but the feel of playing much tighter than "human" so to speak.

The entire album was cut on a shoestring (a real sequencer at that time being way over any budget they may have had - bear in mind John was cycling to and from the studio everyday so tey had bugger all cash) but the beauty of it being that it was a million times more inventive and invisioned than if it had been banged out in a big bucks studio. The financial austerity is reflected in the overal minimalist electro sound. To me this the most unique and treasured synth album ever made.

[flipmartian]

Yup, like Shaun said. Found some interview on the web somewhere ages ago that revealed that John Barker actually played most of the Ody stuff - including the main melody on Underpass, for example. Dunno why but I felt a bit disappointed.