Dislocation (track)
by Ultravox

What a fantastic track. Remember it’s still 1978 when it got composed. Sure, Kraftwerk is already around and they did something similar with their TEE spoken word performance called “Hall of Mirrors” but obviously lyrics were not Kraftwerks strength. John Foxx would later edit and re-record this song (it’s on “Impossible” of 2008) without matching this original. In the lyrics Foxx once again shows that he does not write lyrics but poetry: a concatenation of surrealistic images (And Foxx was very familiar with the artistic world and its most interesting representatives) and descriptions of situations where it seems as if the world we know through our senses is suddenly behaving in a different manner. We are misled by our senses: the deserted, empty street could be a train station. Events that are absolutely innocent in themselves (The I - character talks to someone while being in a half - sleep and realizes afterwards that he has had a conversation with a complete stranger) seem to be very different at second sight. As Foxx is doing so often, here he also dislocates things, persons and events hence creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and detachment. Very ballardian and surely very surreal. The alienated sounds (the hollow percussion, the choir or is it just one man humming monotonous) serve the images that are produced by the lyrics of the song. The merit of the production is to make a – pretty minimal - sound carpet that is just as intriguing as the text. Only the leading bass synth gets emphasis. Brilliant in every way.