A progression from the sound of The Garden (1981), Foxx called The Golden Section "a roots check: Beatles, Church music, Psychedelia, The Shadows, The Floyd, The Velvets, Roy Orbison, Kraftwerk, and cheap pre-electro Europop".

In addition to Foxx's wide array of synthesizers, the production made extensive use of vocoder effects and sampling, along with traditional rock guitar.

Foxx's two previous solo albums, Metamatic (1980) and The Garden (1981), had included a number of compositions written for earlier projects but shelved for one reason or another, such as "He's a Liquid" and "Touch and Go", originally performed live with Ultravox, and "Systems of Romance" and "Walk Away", written during sessions for the album Systems of Romance.

It utilised sitar, backwards cymbals, a shehnai, and a reversed string arrangement at the end, set to an adaptation of The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" drum pattern.

The final track, "Twilight's Last Gleaming", shared its title with a 1977 World War III film, a William S. Burroughs short story, and a phrase from "The Star-Spangled Banner", though it did not overtly reference any of them.