Charles Hutchinson responds to a convivial request for an interview with John Foxx, the orignal singer in Ultravox.

THE invitation could not have been more polite.

"Just wondered whether you would be at all interested in a quick chat with John Foxx about three rare gigs coming up @ end of July in Yorkshire," it read.

"As well as being an electronic music legend, he is also a lovely chap, plus he has an amazing history (working with Brian Eno before David Bowie, original singer in Ultravox before Midge Ure, top graphic designer, designing many famous book covers etc), and he's played recent series of gigs in UK cathedrals. Would be great if you fancied 10 mins on the phone with him?"

How could we refuse such a convivial request to preview Foxx's underground gig at Fibbers on Sunday.

The man himself is equally polite, modest and considered when interviewed, giving every question due care and attention in quiet North Western tones.

From airy, vast cathedrals to compact, below-stairs Fibbers is a big contrast, John? "Compact Fibbers? Just right for us! We just thought we'd like to play in differing places," he says. "I always like playing clubs, and I hate it when there's no underground scene, because I started out watching music in clubs.

"I used to go to the Golden Penny in Chorley the small industrial town where I was brought up and I always enjoyed going down there and listening to the sounds before I really knew about things. I remember standing by the grouting outside listening to Van Morrison singing Gloria, when he was in Them. That's a really seminal song; it's gone through everyone, Velvet Underground, Patti Smith; songs like that are embedded in me."

Foxx furthered his musical education at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, watching John Lee Hooker and the emerging English blues bands of Yardbirds and Spencer Davis.

"They all left an impression, and that's my musical background that and church music from when I was in a choir," John says.

"I love the sound of echoes in buildings; you realise how music was made in that environment, and it's very powerful in its own way and different to rock music."

This has led to his concert series entitled Cathedral Oceans. "It's all to do with long echoes and delays, singing harmonies to yourself on a 30-second delay, so that your music reacts like the walls of a building. You realise that so much music was formed from what came back off the walls, like Gregorian chants. But now technology is so advanced, you can pack your cathedral in a suitcase," John says.

Sunday's concert will be far removed from his cathedral works. "The Fibbers gig is very much a night of hard-edged electronic music. That's what we're about now; we have this thing in our head called Electron Rock," says John, who performs with Manchester musician Louis Gordon.

"What we wanted to do was make an attempt to rescue electronic music from the dance scene. When I listened again to the music from when I started I realised the drum rhythms were attempting to imitate rock rhythms, which are less subtle but more unusual, slightly quirky. It gives it a different character to dance; it gives it elegance."

A pioneer of bleak British electronic pop in the nascent Ultravox and his solo career, Foxx now embraces both the early technology and the latest sound equipment.

"It's always a balancing act as you don't want to abandon the sound you helped to originate," he says. "The best thing to do is to combine both worlds. Use the power and control of today but the technical innovations that we came up with before.

"The problem with analogue synthesisers was that they'd react to heat and the voltage would shut down, so you were always fighting against that, but now the digital equipment is more stable."

His songwriting principles have not altered. "It's always a temptation to add more but one of the biggest things you can learn is how to be simple and how to be minimal. That's the hardest thing to do, to throw out everything but the central idea. The more you keep in, the harder it gets, but some people never learn that lesson."

John Foxx plays Fibbers, York, on Sunday. Tickets: £7 advance, £8 door.