NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 While working on his new album, electronic music pioneer Gary Numan found himself stuck. He’d been…<\/b>
\nNEW YORK (AP) \u2014 While working on his new album, electronic music pioneer Gary Numan found himself stuck. He’d been working on a song all day in his Los Angeles home studio and his dark waves of industrial synth weren’t crashing quite right.
That’s when his 11-year-old daughter, Persia, came home from school and poked her head around the door to offer a friendly \u00ab\u00a0Hello, dad.\u00a0\u00bb Numan seized the opportunity.
\u00ab\u00a0She came in and I said, ‘While you’re here, I’ve got some problems with the song. Would you mind singing for me?'\u00a0\u00bb recalled Numan, 59. \u00ab\u00a0She’s a natural. Absolutely natural at it. Within half an hour, done.\u00a0\u00bb
The song that father and daughter created that day was \u00ab\u00a0My Name Is Ruin,\u00a0\u00bb and it’s the lead single on Numan’s strong 21st studio album, \u00a0\u00bb Savage (Songs from a Broken World),\u00a0\u00bb a CD of post-apocalyptic electronic music beautifully littered with Middle Eastern rhythms.
The cinematic, layered album reunites the British innovator with producer and frequent collaborator Ade Fenton, and the duo finished it in just six months. Numan, ever the tinkerer, had a hand in everything, right down to the font on the album cover.
\u00ab\u00a0Savage\u00a0\u00bb comes four years after Numan, who first shot to fame with the New Wave hit \u00ab\u00a0Cars\u00a0\u00bb in 1979, found himself back on the British charts again in 2013 with \u00ab\u00a0Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind)\u00a0\u00bb and newfound respect as a godfather of industrial rock.
\u00ab\u00a0The credibility and recognition that came from that was enormous. But the problem with that is you’ve got to do it again. I allowed myself 5 minutes to go, ‘Yeah, how amazing is that!’ and then immediately started to worry,\u00a0\u00bb he said.
Some four decades ago, Numan plugged in a synthesizer and created the electropop masterpiece \u00ab\u00a0The Pleasure Principle\u00a0\u00bb (with the hit \u00ab\u00a0Cars\u00a0\u00bb), influencing everyone from Nine Inch Nails to Marilyn Manson. He was fascinated with making interesting music and had a stack of synthesizer manuals by his bed. (\u00ab\u00a0I was an exciting date,\u00a0\u00bb he joked.)
\u00ab\u00a0My career started really well and went down rapidly after that. It bobbled around for a bit and the music became much more industrial and heavier and more interesting, in my opinion,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0So it’s been an exciting but gentle rise back up again.\u00a0\u00bb
The new album is a grim vision of the future, set in a \u00ab\u00a0windswept hell\u00a0\u00bb generations from now after global warming has erased the concept of East and West and created violent tribes. Numan said he has to credit \u2014 of all people \u2014 Donald Trump for helping it come together.
How’s that? Trump?
Numan explains that by the end of 2015, he was pretty happy, actually. He had emerged from a four-year struggle with depression, had moved his family to Los Angeles and had a hit record again. He actually didn’t know what to write about.
So Numan \u00ab\u00a0liberated\u00a0\u00bb some ideas from an unfinished post-apocalyptic novel he’s been working on for years, the one that featured savage tribes. Trump’s stance on climate change helped sharpen his vision.
\u00ab\u00a0Trump appears and gave the whole thing a focus it really didn’t have before,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0It helped me to focus on lots of the ideas that had been slightly chaotic and aimless before that.\u00a0\u00bb
For Fenton, who grew up as a 12-year-old boy with a Numan poster on his wall, the album is a step up from the last CD and represents both men \u00ab\u00a0firing on all cylinders.\u00a0\u00bb He said the challenge was to make it sound contemporary while remaining true to Neman’s special sound.
\u00ab\u00a0I think that he was ahead of his time and I think that even if you released ‘The Pleasure Principle’ now, it would still sound like the weirdest record ever made because it is like nothing else,\u00a0\u00bb Fenton said. \u00ab\u00a0He’s always just done his own thing and I think the pendulum has swung back to electronic music.\u00a0\u00bb
Keyboards might be king these days, but Numan recalls the days when he faced a synth-pop backlash. Guitar bands would proudly sneer \u00ab\u00a0No Synthesizers!\u00a0\u00bb and the nation’s musician’s union tried to ban him, saying he was putting musicians out of work.
\u00ab\u00a0I wasn’t trying to create sounds that you could get on the violin. I’d have used a violin if I wanted that. I was trying to create sounds that you hadn’t heard before. That’s the thing that attracted me to electronic music in the first place \u2014 the ability to create sounds and noises no one had ever heard on this planet before,\u00a0\u00bb he said.
\u00ab\u00a0I’ve got friends now that were in guitar bands back then \u2014 big bands \u2014 who’ve admitted that they hated me back then. They thought I was the death knell of music. I was going to replace everything that they held true and dear,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0I never replaced anything. It was always about adding.\u00a0\u00bb
Speaking of adding, Numan’s daughter’s contribution wasn’t done with just her vocals. She joined dad for a two-day video shoot for the song near Joshua Tree National Park. It was 118 F but Persia was a champ.
\u00ab\u00a0You know, it’s not a dad just sticking their kid on it because he’s a dad,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0The contribution is fantastic and it transformed the song. It gave it a sense of energy and an attitude that it didn’t have before.\u00a0\u00bb
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Online: https:\/\/garynuman.com\/
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Mark Kennedy is at http:\/\/twitter.com\/KennedyTwits<\/p>\n

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