I love it

At the time I knew Graham (the drummer from Yen), who told me that around this time Numan was listening constantly to Janet Jackson - and it shows!

I am going to launch a defence of the 'Machine +,Soul ' album:

Love this podcast.

I really like Outland and Machine + Soul

Dire

The 'Metal Rhythm/Outland/ Machine+ Soult triptych has never been surpassed to those of us who became fans during his ' middle years'. Sure he has , before and since, produced material which is more artistically worthy - of the kind that critics tend to like. But hey Numan' s a rock/pop exponent - not Harrison Birtwhistle!

Not sure your narrative is true I speak to a lot of fans who prefer this period to the stale nine inch nails parody material and one dimensional production from Ade Fenton. It’s true at the time fans would rather see the more simplified song writing of Replicas, Telekon, Dance . The issue with the Outland album is it was two years too late by the time it was released and he’s always been behind the times also having no money to have a mixing engineer shows in the horrible sounding mix of the album. The songs though are full of melody and more passion in his vocal style and lyrics than his latest output of the last twenty years he’s become too lazy to do anything about it and instead relying on a nearly three year pre-order campaign to massage chart positions yet in reality he sold more copies of Outland in 1991 than he did for Intruder in the UK where he claims he’s as big now has he was in 1981 which is an untrue statement in 1981 everyone knew who Gary Numan was in 2024 those that knew who he was still think he’s done nothing since the early 80s with the exception of the die hard fans Numan doesn’t have the appeal outside of those fans I suppose the difference is he’s not trying to do either but by doing so hasn’t changed his musical style from wanting to be Trent Reznor for 20 years