Sterilizing a Classic: on Poppy and Gary Numan

Listen to “Metal” by Gary Numan — in it there is a wonder that resonates as strongly as it did in 1979. One gets the sense that it’s being recorded from a retro-futuristic laboratory room; the opening features a lone metallic Moog synth, churning rhythmically between octaves. It starts in one stereo channel, as though it is the sound of the computer fan whirring in the corner. Then enter the synthetic snares on the upbeats, the stereo balances, and a flanger takes the groove through a vacuum tube to an altogether different world. The synthetic snare is now a counterpart to Cedric Sharpley’s frantic drumming, which rides fast on the groove in anticipation, each hit crystalline. The Moog is underpinned by another, softer pad sounding softly from the floor. Paul Gardiner’s bass churns even lower, following the embellishments of a third synthesizer. The room is tangible, the mix is pristine, and each element is discernible. Numan’s tenor leaps out, singing from the perspective of a distraught android struggling to be fully human.

Read literally, it is, as Numan says, “a work of pure science fiction.” The android narrative, however, fits well with Numan’s penchant for writing about being misunderstood, alien, strange; the machine openly desires, “I want to be you, I could learn to be a man like you,” addressing the listener. As per the instructions of the ‘liquid engineers,’ it must undergo a process of nationalistic enculturation (“I need my treatment, it’s tomorrow they send me singing, ‘I am an American,’” looking out, it asks us…