John Foxx (born Dennis Leigh; 26 September 1948)[1][2] is an English singer, musician, artist, photographer, graphic designer, writer, teacher and lecturer.

Andy Kellman of AllMusic described Foxx as an influential cult figure whose "detached, jolting vocal style inspired mainstream and underground artists across the decades".

[8] Prior to 1973, he was singing and playing a 12-string guitar and occasionally supported Stack Waddy in Manchester, from which he later moved to London in order to escape what he saw as a lack of musical stimulus.

[9] In April 1974, Leigh formed a band that would eventually be called Tiger Lily, composed of bassist Chris Allen and guitarist Stevie Shears, with Canadian drummer Warren Cann joining shortly afterwards in May 1974.

Tiger Lily released a single in 1975 on Gull Records, the A-side of which was a cover of the Fats Waller track "Ain't Misbehavin'".

[12] The band undertook a self-financed tour of the United States in February, during which they performed three new songs, "Touch and Go" and "He's a Liquid", which Foxx later recorded for Metamatic, and "Radio Beach".

[15] In 1982, Foxx set up his own recording studio, designed by Andy Munro, also called The Garden, housed in an artists' collective in Shoreditch, East London, in a former warehouse also occupied by sculptors, painters and film makers.

[17] In 1983, Foxx provided some music for the soundtrack to Michelangelo Antonioni's film Identification of a Woman (Identificazione di una donna).

He sold his recording studio and returned to his earlier career as a graphic artist, working under his real name of Dennis Leigh.

[23] On 24 March 1997, Foxx made a return to the music scene with the simultaneous release of two albums, Shifting City and Cathedral Oceans on Metamatic Records.

Foxx and Gordon continued to work together, performing live on the Subterranean Omnnidelic Exotour in 1997 and 1998 and releasing a second album The Pleasures of Electricity, in September 2001.

This two-CD package, entitled Sideways, included ten original tracks plus two extended versions of songs on From Trash.

Foxx has performed and recorded with a variety of artists and musicians since returning to the music scene in the mid-nineties, most notably with Louis Gordon but also with Harold Budd, Jori Hulkkonen, Robin Guthrie (formerly of Cocteau Twins), Ruben Garcia and The Belbury Circle.

A new EP entitled European Splendour issued as John Foxx + Jori Hulkkonen was released in August 2013 on the Sugarcane Recordings label.

[24] The first volume of Cathedral Oceans was released at the same time as Foxx's comeback collaboration with Louis Gordon and the Shifting City album.

In stark contrast to the latter, Cathedral Oceans is a more ethereal, ambient work combined with Foxx's own artwork of overgrown natural settings superimposed onto faces of statues.

2003 also saw the release of the second volume of Cathedral Oceans as well as another ambient record, the double CD Translucence and Drift Music with Harold Budd.

On the opening night, Foxx performed a piano piece accompanying a reading from his unpublished novel The Quiet Man in front of an audience for the first time.

On 18 November 2006, Foxx gave a performance of the work at the Duke of York's cinema in Brighton, where Tiny Colour Movies was premiered as part of the city's Film Festival.

Edited versions of the movies were shown on a big screen for the first time with Foxx playing a mix of live and recorded accompaniment from the album.

This 'film' was shown again at Fulham Palace in July 2007, and in a slightly revised format at the ICA and as part of the 21st International Film Festival, in Leeds during November that year.

In the same month, a showcase of Foxx's work was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where he performed another version of Tiny Colour Movies and hosted a question-and-answer session.

This was followed by the first live performance of the entire Metamatic album, during which Foxx and Louis Gordon were accompanied on stage by Steve D'Agostino.

In March 2013, Foxx took part in the On Vanishing Land project, a work by British sound artists and theorists Mark Fisher and Justin Barton.

Described as a magisterial audio-essay On Vanishing Land evokes a walk undertaken by the artists along the Suffolk coastline in 2005, from Felixstowe container port to the Anglo-Saxon burial ground at Sutton Hoo.

As part of the event presentation, on 7 March, Foxx premièred a new piano work entitled Electricity and Ghosts with accompanying films made by himself and Karborn.

The duo continued to work in Benge's studio throughout 2010 and some new tracks were previewed at the Short Circuit electronic music festival at The Roundhouse in London on 5 June 2010.

A nine-date UK tour by John Foxx and the Maths was announced in July 2011, plus live performances in Poland and Belgium.

In January 2013, it was announced that John Foxx and the Maths would be the support act for Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's English Electric spring tour.

[32] The sleeve features new artwork created by Jonathan Barnbrook who has designed the covers of all the John Foxx and the Maths releases.