Still holding the sky - Intruder by Gary Numan

 

Gary Numan's compositions have often been running ahead of the times, either in terms of the music, instrumentation, lyrics... or all of the above. After the dystopian visions of Savage, the new concept album Intruder is more about the here-and-now than some imagined future - however, the sound design, music, and production aspects of the album have that otherworldly and unmistakable Numan feel that one expects. 

It is again an introspectice record, in many ways connects us with the world of one of his recent and highly personal albums, Splinter.

Each track seems to be perfectly integrated into the whole that Intruder constitutes as an album, nothing feels out of place - and remarkably, after more than four decades of creative output, at least this reviewer could not find a single track that noticeably differs from the overall feel of the album, in terms of its quality and level of engagement triggered in the listener. 

We have many tracks of an eminently anthemic quality, some with genuine head bobbing potential... Now and Forever is a perfect example, so is I Am Screaming - we may find ourselves singing along at the top of our otherwise modest voices. Numan's melodic inventiveness is still at a sustained peak - many of the melodic phrases of the album have earworm potential, and many melodies, especially in the expansive choruses, have a not often heard beauty. 

Tracks like The Gift or The End of Dragons have those Eastern touches we last heard on Savage, whilst Black Sun takes us into the world of intimate, gentle Numan compositions. If Intruder, the title track, is suitably dark and reaching for harsher metallic rock sonorities, compositions like the aforementioned I Am Screaming show that quintessential Numan characteristic: a track can go from subtle, almost whispering vocal phrases to a soaring, uplifting, and ceiling-lifting chorus in under one second. The emotional effect, the lift, such tracks give the listener are hard to put in words, but Numan fans will be very familiar with the effect. 

This album, too is a collaboration with Ade Fenton, thus in terms of production values, technical wizardry and the overall Numan-esque soundscapes, Intruder excels. It unleashes on us an instantly recognisable soundworld, across the entire range - and the album certainly has a vast range, going from delicate ballad-like passages to Earth-shattering passages. The Chosen or Is This World Not Enough are good examples of how the vast forces at work are managed, tamed, or unleashed with full force.

The electronic percussion, too is highly characteristic, decayed metal parts of dismantled androids and remains of alien spaceships are scraped, banged together, hit with other things... 

As some may hear on some M83 albums, Intruder achieves the rare mixing and mastering fete of having even the soft, subtle, even quasi-whispered vocals come across with perfecly intelligible words whilst immersed in thundering electronic textures.

The term "synth-pop" or "electro-pop", which was used for decades to label Gary Numan's music, is still in use today... But if his recent albums were not sufficient proof of the fact that the use of this label nowadays is just a lazy shorthand, then Intruder once again demonstrates this.

To paraphrase one of the lines from The End of Dragons, Gary Numan still holds the sky as a bona fide electronic music hero, with yet another fully-fledged concept album that dares to move lightyears outside current stereotypical electronica.