At a time when dark electronic music is back in vogue both commercially and critically, it’s nice to see some of the founding fathers reaping the greatest rewards.
Generally speaking, 2017 was a good year for both Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails (pioneers of goth-synth), with successful tours and sales for a various assortment of LPs and EPs. Yet potentially the stand out electronica artist was Dorian Gray styled Gary Numan, who bounced into town with new album, ‘Savage’ (which broke his personal record for album chart placings), and a five-star reviewed accompanying live show.
Contextualised inside a mythical future, ‘Savage’ takes Numan’s traditional heavy/dark/intense computer-driven-goth-rock-sound and blends it with a dystopian future to create themes of alienation, paranoia and distrust.
Typical literary references (Vonnegut, Burroughs and, of course, Philip Dick) are used to immerse the listener into this world, making the album feel close to a science fiction gaming experience.
The immersed world of ‘Savage’ was built out even further with its connected live show, a performance which was widely praised as Numan’s best yet in the first leg of its UK tour in late 2017; ‘best yet’ being high praise indeed given his past successes.
Back for its second leg, this show is fully recommended to anyone who likes interesting electronic music perfectly placed into a live setting.
Gary Numan’s ‘Savages’ will come to The Middlesbrough Empire on Saturday 17th March. Tickets, priced at £32.45 in advance (including booking fee), are available from seetickets.com (at the time of writing).
For further information about The Middlesbrough Empire and the range of gigs coming up at the venue in 2018 please head to themiddlesbroughempire.co.uk.
