Gary Numan
Savage (Songs From a Broken World)
(BMG Rights Management UK Ltd)

Gary Numan’s 21^st studio album, Savage (Songs from a Broken World) is a concept album. Here, Numan presents a desert landscape resulting from global warming, and a blending of Western and Eastern cultures in a post-apocalyptic world. This is one of those albums where you wait to hear every bleep and steam-issuing slip. You may think you have tread this kind of sonicscape with the likes of Trent Reznor, but really Numan is the influence on guys of Reznor’s generation and his ilk (which Reznor fully acknowledges) and quite frankly, Numan does this particular synth attack better than anybody else.

Plus, he still has a strong voice to back it all up.

“Ghost Nation” opens with its quick-synth-release-verses and across-the-plains choruses into the low plinky sounds of “Bed of Thorns,” with its entrancing female humming vocals and Numan’s sexy slow singing. The “End Of Things” is a sci-fi movie soundtrack of metallic single notes and swirls of color behind Numan’s whisper, then as is often the case here (and in his usual style), he gives forth an impassioned pleading vocal on the tribal beat driven chorus.

“When the World Comes Apart” is a heavy stomp of a high-bleeding synths, drums and guitars; lots of the lyrical concept gets revealed here. “What God Intended” is all monster machine blips, beeps, and Numan pleading as sexily as he can.

Savage (Songs from a Broken World) undulates seductively towards the listener as much as it, at times, repels with its scary sounds, and Numan’s in your face delivery and lyrics. The album is a great piece from a true master.