Gary Numan - Jagged Edge

The Numanoid’s remix album. Wait, come back!

On paper, the idea of a 2-CD industrial/electronica remix album, based on a record which already sounded like a bunch of digital samples, isn’t promising. In the hands of a lesser master of the sequencer, Jagged Edge would sound horribly dated, like all those vile Limp Bizkit hip-hop collaborations from about five years ago.

Fortunately, the songs on Jagged were just that: real songs with hooks and arrangements. As such they stand up to the savage re-tweaking which Webb has meted out to them on Jagged Edge. By sticking to a basic recipe of ambient trance with muscular, distorted guitar riffs and (crucially) live, or at least live-sounding, drums, Numan has avoided sounding like a B-league mallcore act. Instead, songs such as Slave and Halo (a Jagged high point) are sinister slabs of music with multiple references to his Pleasure Principle days, all whining one-finger synth lines and those staccato vocals. In fact, some of the songs hardly sound like remixes at all: Fold’s threatening electro-metal and Melt (Nine Inch Nails-style processed samples) stand up in their own right.

Did this need to be a double-album? Perhaps not, but at this stage in his career, Numan has earned the right to do whatever he wants.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

Mortal | tbc

Reviewed by Joel McIver
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