Exile is probably the first album to see him firmly on the path, following-up the career reviving and direction-resurging Sacrifice. Musically dark and moody with touches of techno and goth, it's the lyrics here that truly set the tone. It's a far cry from some of his earlier work. After his innovative and coherent music of the late '70s and early '80s, Numan had taken up residence in the musical doldrums with album after album of little consequence. 1994's Sacrifice proved he wasn't too far gone, and was a wonderful return to relevance. Exile, meanwhile, took it all a step further, and is likely where he would have ended up had he never gone astray in the first place. By far his darkest album up to that point, and a wonderful contrast to the dark-in-its-own-right Replicas from 18 years earlier.

In the U.S., Gary Numan is remembered as a one-hit-wonder, while back home in his native England, he continued to crank out hit after hit and became a superstar in the process. His icy space-age persona and sound may be forever associated with early-80's British new wave (Flock of Seagulls, early Duran Duran, etc.), but he was the originator, and today seems pretty darned original. Numan was a scholar of the David Bowie Ziggy Stardust-era, and used Bowie's space alien approach as a starting point. While retaining his futuristic lyrics, Gary stripped Ziggy's sound free of the distorted guitar riffing and posturing, and replaced it with clinical synthesizers and a standoffish stage persona. His music also gives off a paranoid vibe at times, as evidenced on the hits "I Die: You Die" and "Are 'Friends' Electric?" But Numan's songs can also sedate you ("Down in the Park"), while other times sneak up on you (the unexpected punk rocker "Bombers"). And of course there's his sole U.S. hit, "Cars," which sounds like a not so distant ancestor to fellow futuristic weirdos Devo.

Former Be-Bop Deluxe leader Bill Nelson was brought in to produce this album and provide some soaring lead guitar work, but the collaboration with Numan was beset by difficulties involving Numan's ego and approach to recording. While Nelson's production is evident on many tracks and his guitar is heard in several places, much of this is business as usual (a B-side, "Poetry and Power," features more Nelson and has gone on to a great deal of popularity, especially with the Gravity Kills cover on Random). The science fiction influences here are Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Harlan Ellison's "'Repent, Harlequin!' Cried the Tick-Tock Man." While there is some evidence of confusion as to his direction, the music and songwriting has more energy than anything on the predecessor, I, Assassin, with some genuinely engaging moments along the way.

After the spare and lengthy reflections and dislocated experiments of his excellent Dance album, Gary Numan made a return to a more focused approach with I, Assassin, which turned out to be his last truly great album for many years. Much of what would characterize his later music in the '80s did start to show up here, to be sure, but instead of the formless flailing all too apparent on Warriors, and especially on Berserker, Numan's work here with modern electronic funk combines his early rigor and to-the-point rhythms with a deft, creative hand in the arrangements. "White Boys and Heroes," the brilliant opening number, remains one of his best singles, featuring fretless bass work from Pino Palladino (long before both it and him had turned into rent-a-clichés), and set against droning, distorted vocals and doom-laden keyboards…

One has to give credit to an '80s new wave musician who can adapt and create contemporary-sounding music. There are icons from that era who continue to release new recordings - Depeche Mode and the Cure, for example - but don't evolve musically; the sound is unchanging as if they were still back in the decade. This is not a bad thing, however; core listeners are usually who buy these artists' newly released albums and they don't generate new fans. That said, hats off to '80s Brit popster Gary Numan, best known for the hit "Cars," who offers up a modernized industrial-goth set in Pure. The album can comfortably sit alongside Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails on store shelves. Pure doesn't drive like the industrialized adrenaline rush that is, say, Orgy, but the tracks' lingering and creepy pace leaves behind a different kind of impact - it's more haunting than relentless…

Deluxe hardback CD. ‘Intruder’ is Numan’s 18th solo studio album and follows 2017’s ‘Savage: Songs From A Broken World’, which became his highest charting set in almost forty years when it debuted at #2 on the Official Albums Chart. That commercial success was complemented with wide-reaching critical acclaim from Mojo, The Quietus, PopMatters and more. Whereas ‘Savage’ depicted earth as a barren wasteland in which humanity and culture had been largely crushed by the effects of global warming, ‘Intruder’ presents a fresh but complementary narrative.

Isolate: The Numa Years is a compilation album by Gary Numan. It contains tracks issued on his own Numa Records label during the years 1984-1986.
One of the founding fathers of synth pop, Gary Numan has influenced countless artists with his constantly evolving form of dystopian electronic rock music since the late 1970s. Establishing a lonely, android-like persona, he rose to fame leading Tubeway Army, a pioneering new wave band whose second album, 1979's Replicas, became the first of Numan's three consecutive gold-selling, chart-topping full-lengths in the U.K. The same year's The Pleasure Principle, his first solo effort, included the perennial favorite "Cars," which remains his biggest worldwide hit…

The Fury is the seventh solo studio album by the English musician Gary Numan, originally released in September 1985, it was Numan's second release on his self-owned Numa Records label. It saw him continuing to explore the sample-heavy industrial sound that he had developed for his previous album Berserker in 1984.