Condition: Used
Gary Numan & Tubeway Army - Replicas
Label: WEA Music Of Canada / Beggers Banquet
Catalog#: BEGA 7
Format: Vinyl, LP
Record: VG++
Cover: ringwear, edgewear
includes inner sleeve
Country: Canada
Released: 1979
Genre: Electronic
Style: Synth-pop
Tracklist
A1 Me! I Disconnect From You 3:22
A2 Are 'Friends' Electric? 5:24
A3 The Machman 3:07
A4 Praying To The Aliens 3:59
A5 Down In The Park 4:26
B1 You Are In My Vision 3:14
B2 Replicas 5:00
B3 It Must Have Been Years 4:01
B4 When The Machines Rock 3:14
B5 I Nearly Married A Human 6:31
Credits
Bass - Paul Gardiner
Drums - Jess Lidyard
Engineer - John Caffery
Engineer [Assistant] - Harvey Ishiki
Mixed By - Gary Numan , John Caffery, Rikki Sylvan
Producer, Keyboards, Guitar, Vocals - Gary Numan
Notes
Licensed from Beggars Banquet.
the artist name was changed from Tubeway Army to Gary Numan & Tubeway Army in order to capitalize on success.
Replicas is easily one of the most unique and exciting pieces of music I own. Due to my prejudice against non-guitar-based rock, I didn't discover Gary Numan's work on my own; a much more open minded friend turned me on to this LP.
I was immediately taken with it, for it sounded fresh and new and wholly original. My experience with this type of electronic, keyboard-driven music is very limited; obvious bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails were about as far as I went into that field before I discovered Replicas.
What Gary Numan has done here is fashioned a cold, bleak, alien world of the future. Some of the synthesizer work could be straight out of THX 1138 or Blade Runner; it evokes the same sort of hopeless chill. Numan's exaggerated voice, robotic and monotone, makes one wonder if he's human. In the copious liner notes , Numan himself explains the strange world he's created.
Obviously this guy read lots of Philip K. Dick and other edgy SF masters whose vision of the coming society was one of the breakdown of human identity due to the prevalence of engineered, thinking machines.
Two of Numan's trademark songs start the album off, and both have titles that could have been taken right from Philip K. Dick himself: "Me! I Disconnect from You" and "Are 'Friends' Electric?" Punchy, driving, and eerily catchy, these set the stage for the entire album. Numan easily mixes his brand of synth-rock with pop aesthetics. The lyrics stop short of being obvious, provoking thought more than confusion.
"You know I hate to ask
But are 'friends' electric?
Only mine's broke down
And now I've no one to love"
"Down in the Park," the hit single, reveals what happens to the few rebellious humans left in this world: they're locked in The Park, where, when it gets dark, torturous machines come out to terrorize them. "Very few people survive one night," Numan says in the notes, "no one survives two." Watching from Zom-Zoms, the elite club high above The Park, are the humans who have been deemed acceptable by the ruling machines.
"Oh look
There's a rape machine
I'd go outside
If he'd look the other way
You wouldn't believe
The things they do"
Other songs like "Machmen," "Praying to the Aliens" and "You Are in My Vision" continue the paranoia, the fear, and the irrevocable feeling of living in a sterile, yet decaying, totalitarian future world where machines and men--and those that are both--are at war.
"The wreckage of a hero
Lies broken in the corner
And everyone pretends
They like to live that way"
Really, this is an incredibly exciting, contemporary-sounding album. Being introduced to the work of Gary Numan was one of the highlights of my musical journeys last year; I hope my words on Replicas have done it justice, and I encourage you to pick it up for your own enjoyment.
Gary Numan - Down in the Park
(live 1979)
this is coolness that transcends time.
Gary Numan - The Machman
Filmed at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London in September 2004.
The album replicas was based on a short story about the future where basically silly humans were taken and tortured BY the machman if they did things wrong. They were like police officers, and had rectangular pupils like on the back album cover. Your are talking about the "friends" (featured in DownInThePark, Are Friends Electric etc.) which would do anything. The park was the main place where the humans were tortured, hence the words in the song, + the crazies were ppl refugees
Gary Numan - Me! I Disconnect from You
The Touring Principle 1979
The astonishing thing about this is that Numan is only 21 years old here, and on his first tour, but with such confident stage presence; after having written all the songs and played all the instruments on the album except for drums and bass.
Gary Numan - Tubeway Army - Are Friends Electric
live in 1979
this guy has been sampled and looped by hip-hop more than possibly any other artiste, this is the 'old days' when people mostly played their own instruments and even laid down tracks in one take, listen to replicas, recorded from start to finish in a few days and marvel, watching this performance changed my life..
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