Gary Numan

★★★★ Intruder BMG. CD/DL/LP

Nineteenth solo album from synthpop’s official National Treasure.

For over two decades Gary Numan has written less as a pop star and much more as a sound sculptor – a master at layering dense sound but sometimes at the expense of a pay-off hook. Intruder carries with it the same dark-waved filmic density as his previous album, Savage (Songs From A

Broken World), and the themes explored – the futility of religion, the evil of humankind’s ecological warfare against the planet – are similarly cheerless. But what we get more of are melodies that stick. The title track – all soaring synths – is a reminder of the Pleasure

Principle era; The Gift is astonishing, melding old school drum machine rhythms with an explosive dark wave sound built on Middle Easterninspired melodic contours. And the keyboard on A Black Sun and The End Of Dragons cuts through the heavier sound texture and reminds us just what a lovely melodicist Numan can be.