Music Reviews

Gary Numan – I, Assassin – 1982 So, what happens when you take Gary Numan, introduce him to a genius fretless bass player, Pino Palladino, and tell him, “hey, it’s been a year and ‘Dance’ wasn’t that big a seller, we need a new record.”?You get a weird mismatch of Continue Reading

Gary Numan – Dance – 1981 I like Dance. I’m one of the few. It’s such a departure from the previous albums, where they were cold and distant, Dance is minimalist, melancholic and lamenting. Employing more jazzy rhythms than rock, the first side opens and closes with 9+ minute meditations Continue Reading

Gary Numan – Telekon – 1980 The first thing you notice on Telekon is how it much it sounds like the New Wave we have come to know and love. Well, that MTV helped shove down our throats. With The Psychedelic Furs, Echo & The Bunneymen, and all that followed, Continue Reading

Gary Numan – The Pleasure Principle – 1979 If Kraftwerk met Tangerine Dream, had a few drinks, then went back to a slightly dingy hotel for a night of synth-laden but highly melodic robot sex, the resulting offspring would probably sound a lot like Gary Numan’s The Pleasure Principle.You know Continue Reading

Gary Numan – Replicas – 1979 The sound is bigger. The film stock is 70MM. The androids are cleaner. Replicas.“Me! I Disconnect from You”, one of my favorite grammatically interesting songs from the set, is driving and cold and everything the late 70s felt like. From Ursula LeGuin’s “The Lathe Continue Reading

The girl I had a crush on as a teen turned me on to the music that would define my adolescence. Whether I wanted to or not, I was, because of Toby, about to become a Gary Numan fan. Over the years I pretty much forgot that she was the Continue Reading