Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle: Expanded Edition

The essential paranoid Numanoid

For once, here’s a much-hyped album which deserves the hype. Gary Numan’s third record was the Year Zero of big-selling synth-pop, though “pop” is far too light a word for a sound that scared the crap out of spotty teenagers worldwide. The Pleasure Principle left people chilled to the core with its deathly-cold combination of Moog bass, digital beats and Numan’s numb, robotic vocals. After listening to Cars, Films, Metal or Engineers, you could well believe that guitar music was finished for ever.

This 30th-anniversary reissue contains demo, outtake and B-side recordings, and will be snapped up by Numan’s legions of followers, now swelled by the many Nine Inch Nails, Fear Factory and Marilyn Manson fans converted by those bands’ covers of his work. The demo version of M.E., whose central riff was used by Basement Jaxx in Where’s Your Head At?, shows how the song evolved from humbler beginnings to one of the album’s more upbeat cuts, while the work-in-progress version of Gymnopedie No 1 reveals much about Numan’s songwriting methods. Cars is the big hit, of course, but there’s not a duff track on here. The Pleasure Principle is a simultaneously grim and enlightening experience, and highly recommended.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

Beggars Banquet | BBQCD 2063 (2-CD)

Reviewed by Joel McIver
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