Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Tubeway Army - Replicas
Readers (fans?) of my main web site will know that, back in my student days, I wrote a Classic Albums column for one of the uni papers. It was great fun: they entrusted me with selecting a choice cut each week, and providing the text and a scan landed on the music editor's inbox by midnight on Monday, no questions were asked. Hence I instantly picked out a handful of my favourite albums that no-one else seemed to care about much, and foisted them upon the unsuspecting student masses.
Tubeway Army's Replicas was the first to be featured, and to be honest, you might as well go and read the review on that page, because not much has changed in my opinion since. Oh, go on then - I'll bring you up to date a bit. Three years on, and now on a remastered CD (I originally reviewed from a vinyl copy), it's still sounding startlingly crisp. What's more, Gary Numan has been lauded by a whole host of dance and electronica artists, as well receiving more than a few praises from less synthesised genres. Can it be that this album is now cool?
Listening to it again for the umpteenth time, I tried to pin down what's so good about these early electronic sounds. The blend of traditional and new is key: it's a simplistic setup, with punky guitars and bass, a few layers of mono synths and real acoustic drumming. I think that's it, the real drumming - it blends you from new wave to electronic and keeps some soul and variability in the recording that a drum machine would lose.
I'm less sure about the instrumentals now. Are they there to help you reflect on what you've just heard, or to demonstrate the new exciting sounds, or merely to pad out Side 2? I'm surprised they've never appeared in an advert for, say home insurance. Or fridges. The remastered CD contains a host of bonus material, but I ignored that - I'm generally not a fan of extras on reissues (with the exception of including non-album singles so they can have an official CD issue).
There's some lovely moments on this album, as the Minimoogs drift out of tune as each track goes on, or a few wrong notes are hit (listen to the instrumental towards the end of the title track, Replicas). It suddenly gives all the talk of machines and electronics an unexpected edge - a fragile, human touch. A few years later, everything would be digital and precise, but for a brief moment in 1978, you could believe that the future was wobbly sine waves and white hair.
Tubeway Army's Replicas was the first to be featured, and to be honest, you might as well go and read the review on that page, because not much has changed in my opinion since. Oh, go on then - I'll bring you up to date a bit. Three years on, and now on a remastered CD (I originally reviewed from a vinyl copy), it's still sounding startlingly crisp. What's more, Gary Numan has been lauded by a whole host of dance and electronica artists, as well receiving more than a few praises from less synthesised genres. Can it be that this album is now cool?
Listening to it again for the umpteenth time, I tried to pin down what's so good about these early electronic sounds. The blend of traditional and new is key: it's a simplistic setup, with punky guitars and bass, a few layers of mono synths and real acoustic drumming. I think that's it, the real drumming - it blends you from new wave to electronic and keeps some soul and variability in the recording that a drum machine would lose.
I'm less sure about the instrumentals now. Are they there to help you reflect on what you've just heard, or to demonstrate the new exciting sounds, or merely to pad out Side 2? I'm surprised they've never appeared in an advert for, say home insurance. Or fridges. The remastered CD contains a host of bonus material, but I ignored that - I'm generally not a fan of extras on reissues (with the exception of including non-album singles so they can have an official CD issue).
There's some lovely moments on this album, as the Minimoogs drift out of tune as each track goes on, or a few wrong notes are hit (listen to the instrumental towards the end of the title track, Replicas). It suddenly gives all the talk of machines and electronics an unexpected edge - a fragile, human touch. A few years later, everything would be digital and precise, but for a brief moment in 1978, you could believe that the future was wobbly sine waves and white hair.
# posted by Sam : 19:09
