Gary Numan Interview

SYNTHPOP hero Gary Numan sprang to fame in 1979, fronting Tubeway Army. He went on to become one of the biggest stars of British electronic music, scoring No.1 singles with Are ‘Friends’ Electric? and Cars, and chart-topping albums with Replicas and The Pleasure Principle.

Thirty years on his dystopian visions, icy vocals and memorable keyboard riffs still resonate. The 53-year-old father-of-three recently collaborated with US art rock group Battles and is about to release a new album, Dead Son Rising. Next month he’ll be performing in Leeds.

Your latest album is co-written and produced by Ade Fenton. What can people expect from it?

Dead Son Rising is a side project collaboration that started out as something quite different to the way it ended up. Initially it was a batch of songs that I didn’t use on the last two or three albums but still liked and so wanted to finish off and release. But, the end result has almost none of those original songs; in fact at least 95% of it is entirely new. With my conventional studio albums I have a clear aim from the outset, a clear direction that I want to follow and this gives those albums parameters that the songs have to fit into. I didn’t have that with Dead Son Rising and so it enabled me to be more varied and more experimental. I’m not saying it’s a better way to go about making albums; it’s just different to the way I usually do things. It is not the huge gathering of riffs and soaring choruses of my last three or four albums, although it has moments of that, but it is strange in places. Lyrically it covers a wider range of subjects than I usually look at and musically it’s definitely a step sideways.

How is the latest album different from Jagged?

My album Splinter will be the follow up to Jagged and I think the progression will be more obvious between those two. Dead Son Rising has given me the chance to move away a little from what I’ve been doing, but still want to do in the future I hasten to add. Jagged was, as will Splinter be, an album of huge grooves and choruses as epic as I can make them, with great chasms between the loud bits and the quiet bits, a very wide dynamic range. Dead Son Rising is more eerie, overall it has less in your face power but far more variation than Jagged.

The Wanted Interview

Last year when The Wanted played Party in the Park they were a band at the very start of their pop career, in fact it was the same day that their debut single went to number 1 in the UK. In the year since the band have embarked on a gruelling schedule including releasing their debut album that went platinum, a UK tour, releasing a book, performed on the X Factor and a host of other shows and are just putting the finishing touches to their second album. When we catch up with what has been called the “best looking boy band around” they have just finished a radio tour and are just about to start rehearsals for T4 on the beach. Max George has a few minutes to talk about the new album and who is the messiest in the band.

Do you ever get any time to yourselves?

No not at the minute, I don’t even know when we have got a day off. We have the new single coming out soon so it’s just really hectic at the minute.

It’s barely been a year since the first single came out, has the success sunk in yet?

No not really, we still feel the same as we did a year ago like. It still feels like it’s the start and that we have a long way to go yet. I don’t think we really have got that far, we don’t feel any different and don’t feel like super stars or anything like that, we just want to keep going and be the best that we possibly can.

You were put together through an open audition, how was that experience?

 It was all right. We all got on at the auditions and that took nine months, over that time we got to know each other so by the time us five were picked we were all getting on anyway. We got pushed straight in a house and we got on fine straight away. We are best mates.