After short but entertaining sets from two excellent support acts, Perfect Crime and Silent Running (both bands to watch out for), John Foxx took the stage at a packed Lyceum Ballroom on the last night of his first live tour since parting with Ultravox.

Spurning the use of backing tapes, Foxx has instead recruited an extremely competent four-piece band to perform his music, featuring guitarist Robin Simon (who played on earlier Ultravox albums as well as John's solo work), Zeus B. Held (!) on keyboards, probably better known for his production work with Fashion, plus an extremely tight rhythm section of bass and Simmons drums.

Kicking off with 'Running Across Thin Ice With Tigers' from Foxx's latest album, The Golden Section, the band sped effortlessly through a well-paced set, with John obviously more than happy to let the musicians concentrate on playing his material, leaving him free to spend much of the evening dancing and weaving across the stage, periodically producing a second microphone fed through a vocoder to produce his own rather eerie vocal backing. Only once did he venture over to the keyboards, to contribute a screaming synth solo to 'Like A Miracle'.

Understandably, much of the evening was devoted to material from The Golden Section, which features a more up-tempo, even 'poppy' approach than Foxx's previous offering The Garden, while still retaining many of the elements that characterise his work. Nevertheless, I couldn't help noticing what seems to me to be a lack of progression in the new material, much of which came over as little more than slightly up-market pop songs.

In fact, the major disappointment of the evening was the realisation that after the cold, mechanised sound of Metamatic and the serenity of The Garden, John Foxx is beginning to sound remarkably like Ultravox again! Still, as far as the fans were concerned (and there were a lot of them) Mr. Foxx and friends could do no wrong, and as the set continued, taking in the excellent 'Twilight's Last Gleaming', probably my favourite amongst the new tracks, I certainly couldn't fault the sheer professionalism of the band.

There were a few surprises in store, too. Launching into a selection from The Garden, including 'Pater Noster' with it's powerful choral sounds and the driving 'Systems Of Romance', John steered well clear of Metamatic material, even omitting 'Underpass' and 'No One Driving'. Instead, he punctuated the concert with compositions from his days with Ultravox, such as 'Just For A Moment' and 'The Quiet Men' (both from the Systems Of Romance LP), before ending the set with 'When I Was A Man, And You Were A Woman'.

Returning to tumultuous applause, John and the band encored with yet another old Ultravox number, 'I Can't Stay Long', followed by the beautiful, haunting 'The Garden', complete with almost ghostly stage lighting and smoke effects.

After a little gentle persuasion, the last night audience was rewarded with a second encore in the shape of an extended version of 'Your Dress', during which John paused to thank the audience and various technicians for the success of the tour before praising his musicians as 'the best band I have ever played with'.

To summarise, apart from the weakness of some of the new material and to a lesser degree some aspects of Foxx's stage presence (the persistent gyrations did become rather irritating, smacking just a little too much of Bowie's Thin White Duke!), the concert was generally very enjoyable. On a technical level, the performance of the band was superb, and was backed up by an effective lighting system which was both powerful and yet restrained, plus probably the best PA I've heard at the Lyceum since Genesis played there in 1980.