GARY NUMAN
Sharing every step of the way online, the pioneering electronic rocker works on album 21. “I don’t think I’ve thought it through,” he says.
Sat on a hotel balcony overlooking a Californian freeway, Gary Numan listens to the sound of cars. “Normally when I’m making an album I’ll be recording hundreds of noises and background ambiences like this,” he tells MOJO. “I enjoy the pre-planning and starting with a number of ideas. This time, I haven’t done any of that.” The reason being that he has funded his next album via the PledgeMusic website, and the perks of pre-ordering include regular in-studio film updates on how recording is progressing. “I wanted to have an absolutely blank canvas, before I started,” he explains. “The whole point of it is to invite fans in and let them see it from beginning to end.” In November 2015, he retired to the windowless, soundproofed studio in a converted guesthouse “a few yards” outside his Los Angeles home, working around family commitments. Has the approach yielded any advantages? “None that I can see, to be really truthful,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve thought it through properly. When you’re working on a song you come up with dozens of ideas, some of them will sound pretty good in the morning, but by the afternoon they’re sounding pretty shit and you’ll dump them. Doing these updates, you’re playing people these things you’d normally hide, and everybody has an opinion about them. You think, This isn’t it, don’t start criticising, fuck off! But how can you show the process if you don’t explain why that track evolved into something else?” It’s too early, he says, to discuss the nine or 10 pieces he’s working on in detail. Rather than his usual habit of writing on piano, he says he’s been starting with string motifs, bass grooves and low-end frequencies, and writing melodies to go with them. “I still want it to be heavy, dark and very electronic,” he goes on. “I’m very happy in that space and there’s a fantastic variety you can bring to it. The last one [Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind)] was about how I’d had years of depression, and being diagnosed and cured of that. “The three years since I’ve moved to America have been very turbulent, with a lot of stuff that was very difficult to get through. I imagine that the majority of the new album will be looking at that. Everything I write is genuinely about my own life… and I tend to not write about anything that’s happy or enjoyable! Ha ha!” He confirms that Brum producer Ade Fenton, who worked on his last three albums, won’t be involved this time, though the singer doesn’t rule out bringing in help from Los Angeles musician friends. Like Splinter, some songs may be based on a novel he’s writing. “I’m trying to start with an epic,” he says. “It’s not about aliens or space ships, it’s all swords, magic and demons, all that nonsense. “I’m under pressure in my own head,” concludes Numan, who is currently managing himself and is also juggling collaborative work with John Foxx, The Duke Spirit and Mexican group Titán. “Doing this has been far more unusual than I’d been expecting, far more. But one of the problems I’ve had in the past is getting into routines, and it’s good to break out of that.”