TS: Gary Numan's Replicas Vs. The Pleasure Principle

Dunno if it counts but I really dug the Hybrid album. A bit too far on the nu-metal goth thing but some of the remixes of the Pure tunes were great - I think he finally found the sound he was looking for.

Just finished listening to the Berserker-era live album "White Noise" - it's actually pretty good!

Ah, Berserker is such a frustrating album for me, because if Numan had spent more time on the songwriting than acquiring and pissing about with the then-latest technology and his record label it could have been fantastic. Sometimes I listen to Berserker and there are parts of a song which'll make me go: "fuck, that's a really great bit", but it'll be surrounded by bits that aren't so great. The best example I can give of this is the track 'The Secret', which must be one of the greatest, fist-pumping and (dare I say) uplifting choruses he's ever written. But everything else in the song completely sucks!

"A Child With The Ghost" is like that as well, great chorus but the verses really slump.

From the show back in 2010. May have posted this elsewhere, but it's THAT GOOD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gmmWbaKsY4

^my favorite Numan song

what else sounds like this stuff (besides Bowie & Iggy albums from the same time period)?

Early Ultravox has the synth/rock hybrid sound too.

I assume you mean pre-Vienna

Metamatic

Systems of Romance and Vienna by Ultravox, the first two Visage albums, Magazine's Secondhand Daylight, Quiet Life and Gentlemen Take Polaroids by Japan, Empires and Dance and Sons and Fascination by Simple Minds.

I guess the first two John Foxx solo albums fit too, even though Metamatic takes a slightly different approach to Numan 1979-1980, stuff like 'Underpass' fits. Non-album single 'Miles Away' definitely does.

while we're on the topic did anyone else think the title of that song was "Underpants" for a long time

No, you were the only one :P

thx guys - some of this stuff (Japan, Ultravox "Vienna") I'm familiar with, will check out the rest

Metamatic is more to Telekon or Dance, as it is more full electronic sound. That said, Metamatic's sound holds up pretty well for a nearly a 30 year old synth pop record.

I just listened to the first two Ultravox records in a mix with early PIL, Wire, Cabaret Voltaire and others of that turn of the decade sound and their sound fit in very well.

I don't really know of any other electronic rock music that feels like Pleasure Principle. Its sound to me is primarily defined by a patient loping which is heavy as fuck. Other records which have that feel are all by solidly guitar based artists. I don't know of anyone else using mostly synths to go to that place. It is in retrospect such an obvious idea. Synths of that time were heavy as living fuck if you only had the simplicity to let them be so.

digging Ultravox's "Quiet Men", that hits the spot

agree that Numan's setup in this era seems both unique and sort of "duh, why had no one thought of this before". Sorta like the Ramones.

Yeah not a lot else has that Numan crunch... I want to say Gary Wright for some reason lol

The impressive thing about The Pleasure Principle is that there's no guitar on it at all. In fact, it's probably the only guitar-less Numan album.