Throwback: Gary Numan - I Die You Die

Throwback: Gary Numan - I Die You Die

Chances are you've never heard Gary Numan aside from his played out 80s hit "Cars." Gary Numan was heralded as the new David Bowie when he arose in 1979, but eventually faded into obscurity by the late 1980s, only to come back in the late 1990s as a goth/industrial force to be reckoned with. He eventually climbed back onto the charts with the 2003 song "Crazier." (His crowning achievements of the goth period are the albums Exile and Hybrid. I love Exile so much that the cover design is actually tattooed on my right arm.)

I first found out about Gary Numan when an older friend of mine played him for me during my teenage years. I was instantly converted to a Numanoid. Numan's career is so massive and sprawling that I continue to find songs and remixes from him that I haven't heard before. The 1980 song "I Die You Die" is one example of a Numan song I have only recently discovered. Hopefully it will make you a fan as well.

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Review: Gary Numan - Jagged Edge

Review: Gary Numan - Jagged Edge

Around ten years ago, my Big Brother Matt played some Gary Numan for me. I instantly fell in love. Numan's style is simultaneously dark, transient, powerful and strange. Later learning that Numan shared very odd personal characteristics with myself, such as being generally libertarian, a religious skeptic and having Asperger's syndrome (all documented on his Wikipedia page), made me all the more of a devotee.

Between 2000 and 2006, Gary Numan only put out one album with new material: the stellar remix album Hybrid. In 2006, he put out a new album called Jagged, which was overall very disappointing. All the songs were formulaic: starting with strange industrial sounds, building into hard guitars and a chorus and then fading out. Alot of the songs had potential but needed to be reworked so that they stood out from one another.

With his remix album Jagged Edge, Numan breathes life into the mediocre 2006 album. Strange musical combinations make themselves known on this album, most notably on the song "Edge (AF)," in which samples of Islamic prayers are overtaken by distorted keyboards and science fiction sounds. The song "Slave," which has a beautiful chorus, is reworked twice here.

The remix versions of Numan's albums often turn out to be the best of his work. Like his fellow geek George Lucas, Numan is not content to release a finished product and is constantly tinkering with his art. Jagged Edge comes highly recommended, as does the remix albums Hybrid and Exile: Extended.

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Time Travel: "We Are Glass"

Time Travel: "We Are Glass"

If you were to listen to new artists like The Fascination Movement or M83, you would be right in thinking that new wave never got old. There are certainly some out there to whom synthpop is a new phenomenon, so I recommend this video of "We Are Glass" by Gary Numan as a primer in 80s music schooling.

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