Gary Numan

Gary Numan experienced renewed interest during the late '90s due to a popular remake of "Cars" by electro metallists Fear Factory. As a result, Numan reappeared back from the dead - releasing new albums, launching tours, and winning over new fans. The time was right to issue a brand new Numan compilation (despite the fact that countless career overviews had surfaced throughout the years), as the 29-track double disc Exposure: The Best of Gary Numan 1977-2002 appeared in shops in 2002. Despite what its title would like you to believe, there are quite a few holes here - the majority of the tracks come from Numan's early work. Most Numan fans would agree that his finest work came from this era (circa the late '70s/early '80s)…

In the U.S., Gary Numan is remembered as a one-hit-wonder, while back home in his native England, he continued to crank out hit after hit and became a superstar in the process. His icy space-age persona and sound may be forever associated with early-80's British new wave (Flock of Seagulls, early Duran Duran, etc.), but he was the originator, and today seems pretty darned original. Numan was a scholar of the David Bowie Ziggy Stardust-era, and used Bowie's space alien approach as a starting point. While retaining his futuristic lyrics, Gary stripped Ziggy's sound free of the distorted guitar riffing and posturing, and replaced it with clinical synthesizers and a standoffish stage persona. His music also gives off a paranoid vibe at times, as evidenced on the hits "I Die: You Die" and "Are 'Friends' Electric?" But Numan's songs can also sedate you ("Down in the Park"), while other times sneak up on you (the unexpected punk rocker "Bombers"). And of course there's his sole U.S. hit, "Cars," which sounds like a not so distant ancestor to fellow futuristic weirdos Devo.

One has to give credit to an '80s new wave musician who can adapt and create contemporary-sounding music. There are icons from that era who continue to release new recordings - Depeche Mode and the Cure, for example - but don't evolve musically; the sound is unchanging as if they were still back in the decade. This is not a bad thing, however; core listeners are usually who buy these artists' newly released albums and they don't generate new fans. That said, hats off to '80s Brit popster Gary Numan, best known for the hit "Cars," who offers up a modernized industrial-goth set in Pure. The album can comfortably sit alongside Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails on store shelves. Pure doesn't drive like the industrialized adrenaline rush that is, say, Orgy, but the tracks' lingering and creepy pace leaves behind a different kind of impact - it's more haunting than relentless…

Gary Numan is known for robotic, stylized singing. His primitive electronics and pre-"new romantic" sound did nothing for me. A myriad, zealous voices will tell you that Numan was sings "good songs." Now, in this 2-CD collection of Numan interpretations you can hear those good songs without Numan's idiosyncratic delivery. The known and the unknown join to make proto-dance music out of mechanical master's material. Matt Sharp (Weezer) and Damon Albarn (Blur) cover "We Have a Technical." Also on the compilation are Gravity Kills, EMF, The Magnetic Fields, Jesus Jones, the out-of-place hip hop group Underdog (but, there's only one of them), Sukia, The Orb, Pop Will Eat Itself. One of my favorite cuts is "Metal" by Towering Inferno. Brian Eno described their Kaddish album as "frightening" and they are here joined by Eddie Reader. I also am very fond of the two versions of "Are 'Friends' Electric?" Techno rockers Republicaare joined by Numan himself for one version and Belgian discovery An Pierle offers another.

Upgrading an earlier two-fer CD that curiously omitted great swathes of both albums, the coupling of 1979's breakthrough Replicas and the 1978 demos that comprised The Plan is both chronologically and musically askance – one entire LP, Tubeway Army's eponymous debut, divided these two projects in time, and while it, too, barely hinted at the utter re-evaluation that Gary Numan would soon be making, the jolt would have been a lot less pronounced had some kind of internal logic been adhered to. No complaints, of course, about the bang for your buck. No less than 38 tracks are spread across the two discs, as the original 12-track The Plan and ten-song Replicas are joined by a wealth of bonus tracks, each offering up a full snapshot of Numan's activities at those particular points in time. The Plan adds three more of the demos that were recorded with the original LP's worth, then adds on the six songs recorded during sessions for the band's first two singles, on either side of the main attraction; Replicas is appended by half a dozen session outtakes, two of which were period B-sides.

Isolate: The Numa Years is a compilation album by Gary Numan. It contains tracks issued on his own Numa Records label during the years 1984-1986.
One of the founding fathers of synth pop, Gary Numan has influenced countless artists with his constantly evolving form of dystopian electronic rock music since the late 1970s. Establishing a lonely, android-like persona, he rose to fame leading Tubeway Army, a pioneering new wave band whose second album, 1979's Replicas, became the first of Numan's three consecutive gold-selling, chart-topping full-lengths in the U.K. The same year's The Pleasure Principle, his first solo effort, included the perennial favorite "Cars," which remains his biggest worldwide hit…

Isolate: The Numa Years is a compilation album by Gary Numan. It contains tracks issued on his own Numa Records label during the years 1984-1986.
One of the founding fathers of synth pop, Gary Numan has influenced countless artists with his constantly evolving form of dystopian electronic rock music since the late 1970s. Establishing a lonely, android-like persona, he rose to fame leading Tubeway Army, a pioneering new wave band whose second album, 1979's Replicas, became the first of Numan's three consecutive gold-selling, chart-topping full-lengths in the U.K. The same year's The Pleasure Principle, his first solo effort, included the perennial favorite "Cars," which remains his biggest worldwide hit…