177. Gary Numan
O2 Academy Brixton
14 October 2017
What I have written in these pages about this man doesn’t need rehearsing. It is fair to say that I love a Numan gig, they are dramatic, sonic walls of sound and light that drill into your core. But there are some Numan gigs that stand out. A witch’s brew where the light show and that sonic tsunami combines into something colossal; an extreme weather event of a show. This was one of those gigs.
It has been nearly forty years since Gary Numan first arrived, all android cheekbones and alien angst, and schooled the Top of the Pops crowd that jumping around the place in spangled jumpsuits was not the only move; it was fine to be both emotionless and dramatic. And here he was again, striding onto the Brixton Academy stage like a post-apocalyptic messiah, flanked by strobes, fog, and enough lasers to start an intergalactic conflict.
Numan’s latest incarnation: the desert-wraith from Savage: Songs from a Broken World, is less “Are Friends Electric?” and more “Are You Ready for the Collapse of Human Civilisation?” His look tonight was Mad Max meets yoga instructor: leather straps, dust-torn robes, and a face full of serious purpose.
From the moment the lights went down, the opening blast of “Ghost Nation” hit like a warning siren, a wall of synth and sandstorm guitars that rattled the floorboards. Numan stalked the stage with arms outstretched like a gothic scarecrow welcoming the apocalypse.
And yet, amid all the dystopian grandeur, there’s something weirdly joyful about watching him now. He’s relaxed. Happy, even. Smiling. (Or at least what we interpret as smiling, it could have been a software update.) Between songs, he actually spoke to the crowd, thanked us, looked, moved. This is the same man who once refused to make eye contact with the 1980s.
The set was a clever balance of new and nostalgia. The Savage material, dark, pulsing, cinematic, felt tailor-made for Brixton’s echoing vault. “My Name Is Ruin” thundered with tribal drums and ghostly backing vocals from his daughter Persia, who joined him on stage and completely stole the show by looking effortlessly cool while her dad did robot ballet beside her.
Of course, it’s the classics that drew the faithful. “Metal” arrived like a ghost from 1979 and “Down in the Park” still sounded like the future, perhaps more so now.
The sound was massive: walls of synth colliding with slabs of guitar. But what elevated this was the lighting, so intense that at one point I’m fairly sure I saw the future, past, and several alternate timelines at once.
By the encore, “Are Friends Electric?”, the entire place was trembling. The old hit, reborn as an industrial hymn, filled the room with nostalgia and electricity. Thousands sang along. This wasn’t retro. This was resurrection. As the lights dimmed and the final synth note dissolved into smoke, Numan stood there, bathed in white light, smiling like a man who’d finally outlived the joke. The crowd roared. The android had become the elder statesman and somewhere deep inside, every synth kid of 1979 felt a little less alone.