Thursday 20/04/06 Gary Numan @ Carling Academy, Birmingham

Once upon a time in the 80s, Gary Numan was the king of electronic music.  Electronic music was all there was, and it was good.  He reigned for a peaceful decade, ‘til along came the children of the 90s.  They divided his land into many territories, conquering each in turn. Electroclash, electrotrance, electrohouse, electropunk – they all came to exist, with new kings crowned in each domain. Numan was left for dead on the battlefield of pop, his only recompense an obscure subgenre called NuElectro, sometimes mistakenly accredited as being named after him. Another fallen monarch whose time had come.

Yet here he was in Birmingham, preparing to do battle once again.  His rivals listened to how the crowd booed him and cackled with glee as they ran into the night.  If only they’d listened more closely.  Those weren’t boos at all.  The assembled army were chanting for their leader: “Noooo-man! Noooo-man! Noooo-man!”. He and his regiment took to the stage with a confident swagger, and manned their updated artillery.

The industrial edge of what they unleashed left little doubt why the latest album was called ‘Jagged’.  Think you know Numan?  Think you hate Numan?  Think again.  The edginess and darkness of this offering heralds a rebirth of biblical proportions. It cut through the night like a knife, shining gloriously, devilishly sharp.  Highlights are ‘Pressure’ and ‘Halo’.  The particularly anthemic ‘In A Dark Place’ sweeps the crowd into an emotional frenzy. Arms flailing out of control, heads a-banging as if it were metal, does it really matter if that’s a wig he’s wearing?  Numan is rocking, his artschool days forgiven. 

‘‘R’ Friends Electric’ brings things to a close, starting softly with piano and building to a melodious wall of sound.  This masterpiece, originally two songs melded into one, turned the assembled army of Numanoids into human synths ‘til there was barely any need for instrumentation at all. There are expectations for another encore, but it never came to be.  He left his loyalists high and dry, yet happy and awed. 

Somewhere in the night, Numan’s rivals shivered, clutching their sampled CDs underarm.  They may have taken his old domain, but these new lands would be much harder to conquer.  Numan’s from an age where you needed to be a great frontman to survive.  Whilst others fade, survive he will.