I reckon The Pleasure Principle is easily Numan's worst album. I reckon he was told by the record company to get something out when Cars hit the big time and he just threw it together. Its only got about three proper songs on it, the rest are just b-sides. I was a big fan of his until that album, then I didn't buy any of his stuff until Pure, 20 years later.
Dell G7 (Hexa-Core i7)|Cubase Pro 10||Analog Keys|Ultranova|MicroMonsta|Uno|Skulpt|Craft Synth 2.0| novakill.com
But what constitutes a proper song. Do you mean 'pop' formula or such like.
The band has commented that these were weird pieces with unusual arrangements - and I think this point of diff was what attracted me to this. (and that swirling phased string polymoog noise that backs it all)
I also have to admit that I prefer a lot of the B sides to the actual singles, especially the obscure 2nd Bs on the 12" discs.
Anyways this is a great point of the subjectivity of music - you prefer his hard grind and I prefer the quirky synth stuff (having said this I do so love all the old Tubeway Army stuff!)
ufo wrote:But what constitutes a proper song. Do you mean 'pop' formula or such like.
A proper song has music and lyrics, otherwise it is just music and if the internet has taught us anything, it is that any idiot can make music. And this was his 3rd album in about a year, so it's shouldn't be surprising that he was scraping the bottom of the barrel for good ideas. In 1979 Systems of Romance was the benchmark, as well as Numan's inspiration, and The Pleasure Principle fell well short by any non-commercial measure.
Dell G7 (Hexa-Core i7)|Cubase Pro 10||Analog Keys|Ultranova|MicroMonsta|Uno|Skulpt|Craft Synth 2.0| novakill.com
A couple of weeks ago I accidentally discovered the best music I've heard in years. I was trying to find a copy of PVC's 1982 classic Berlin By Night. I did a search in the Zune Marketplace that came up with half-a-dozen possibilities, none of which were the right song. But one of them was by another German band called Genepool so I thought it might be a cover version. Turns out is is a completely different songs that is actually really, really good in its own right. So I listened to the 30 second previews of the rest of the album and bought it. After one listen I went and bought two more of their albums and those three things are pretty much the only things I've been listening to since.
Genepool are very post-punk, with huge guitars, big basslines with plenty of synths in there, too. It's like the best bits of half-a-dozen of my favourite Punk and New Wave bands put together into one, high energy package. They've been around since the early 2000's and are still together, even though their last album was a couple of years ago now. I can't get enough of it.
Dell G7 (Hexa-Core i7)|Cubase Pro 10||Analog Keys|Ultranova|MicroMonsta|Uno|Skulpt|Craft Synth 2.0| novakill.com