Gary Numan
Numan doesn't so much sing his emotionally bleached-out lyrics ("I leave the table saying, 'I am real' ") as chant them with a twinge of desperation in a boyish voice. He seems to float on a background of billowing organ, various thrummings and dispassionate electronic effects that creates a kind of amniotic fluid. Bass and drums add enough momentum to make the albums of the 22-year-old Englishman useful for dancing (with this caveat: there's only one tempo, an easy, mid-speed cruise). In any case, Numan has one of rock's more distinctive sounds and it is deliciously hypnotic at its best, for example on last winter's The Pleasure Principle. His brave-new-world view may be getting the best of him, though; most of the songs here are listless and the opacity of the lyrics indicates that he's run out of software. Telekon is new wave Muzak.
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