Do You Dream Of Electric Sheep?

Can it really be almost 40 years since Gary Numan led Tubeway Army over the top, out of the trenches and into the no-man's land of post-punk electronica? Apparently it can. Numan played everything, bar bass and drums, on Replicas only recruiting his Army when he was ready to advance into touring. The shock and awe generated by the second single from this album (Are 'Friends' Electric?) was only reinforced by his part-robot, part-Bowie-as-alien image. Rapidly accumulating sufficient technology and self-confidence to eventually go solo, Numan went on to blitz the album charts and invade stadiums around the world for half the next decade.

Replicas was the second album by the band, Tubeway Army, though by this point it was Numan who was the focus; going solo following the success of this album. He helped spearhead the liberation of synthesiser music from hideous mistreatment in the gulag of deadly serious progressive rock. Using early Ultravox and Bowie and Eno's Low as his touchstones he achieved commercial recognition while maintaining the icy dislocation, key to the sci-fi 'machine' phase of the Ashford boy's career. Filled with songs that would withstand the ravages of time and remain in Numan's setlist for years such as Me! I Disconnect From You and Down In The Park, the album, amazingly, still sounds fresh today.

A lot of this has to do with the current trend of all things analog and old-style. The fat, warm synth tones are employed (along with early drum machines - another cool modern trope) to great effect here, allowing Numan's bleat to ride simple yet effective tunes. Numan's dystopian vision was responsible for a host of Marilyn Mansun-type sins. Yet that would be like blaming Black Sabbath for all the rubbish metal that followed in their wake. And like Sabbath the original material is still as doomily brilliant as ever. Replicas may not be the most sophisticated end of electronica, but its very simplicity makes it as timeless as hell. Numan’s career underwent a nosedive in the '80s yet it appears that after years of being the butt of so many jokes, Gary is having the last laugh.

Robotic Power Pop

In 1976, then Gary Webb met bassist Paul Gardiner in a short-lived punk band called the Lasers. Splitting a year later, the two along with drummer Bob Simmonds formed Tubeway Army with a goal to fuse the amateurishness of punk with a newfound interest in synthesizers. Replacing Simmonds with his uncle, Jess Lidyard, and changing his name from Webb to Numan, this line-up recorded two singles, “That’s Too Bad” and “Bombers” for Beggars Banquet in 1978. Think robotic power pop meets the likes of Kraftwerk in a mosh pit.

Tubeway Army also exhibited characteristics associated with glam rock’s experimental and electronic side seen in outfits like the John Foxx-led Ultravox and Roxy Music, and Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy. Understanding that using synthesizers could help Tubeway Army break free of the clichés associated with punk, Numan began incorporating a mini-Moog synthesizer into the mix after finding one left behind in the studio. Free from punk’s limitations and avoiding any synth stigma via prog rock, Tubeway Army’s self-titled debut helped lay the foundation (along with bands like Suicide) of what became synth-punk.

Considered by many as a transitional album, bridging the punky nature of the band’s first two singles with the more familiar synth-driven material found on the band’s second album Replicas and Numan’s later solo credited material, Tubeway Army is at once hard-driving proto-electro clash and coldly calculated robotic synth pop, coupled with a science fiction dystopia a la Philip K. Dick (The first line of album opener “Listen to the Sirens” lifts directly from Dick’s novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said) and an oddly perverse perspective courtesy of William Burroughs’ seedy underworld.

To speak well of Numan and Tubeway Army’s contribution to today’s musical landscape would be nothing less than understatement. With the electro-clash-punk-synth-pop-rock sounds of yesteryear returning via retro sounding outfits as well as newer artists evolving into fresher takes on the familiar, Numan’s influence is far greater than simply giving the world “Cars”. Listen to the guitar progression of “My Shadow In Vain”, which sounds like an early template for the Knack’s “My Sharona”, or the intro to “Friends”, which rivals that of any Foreigner or Foghat track of the day, and you’ll see his influence did not need to wait 30 years to be felt. Regardless of the time period, Gary Numan’s contributions to music, either solo or with Tubeway Army, in both the electronic and rock idioms are unmistakable, undeniable, and unrivalled.