Monday 18 November 2019

Broken


Song 1 (If You Had Seen) / 2015 Pledge Demo 

Album Version
Reworked Edit

Live with the Skaparis Orchestra 2018

An artist’s early work is often self-contained, the songs are pared-down to one-shot characterisations whose stories expire within a few moments of runtime and storylines are fragmented and partial if at all. The Tubeway Army albums are transitional documents, songs inhabit the same world as one another; the likes of ‘The Machman’ and ‘Down In The Park’ are both primarily about androids and humanity’s obsolescence, but one builds on the previous track. In ‘The Machman’, the titular character is a faceless drone who requests “please come with me”. The Park of the latter is the endgame “where the Machmen meet / the machines and play ‘kill by numbers’”, the warning from the former’s narrator that “you’ve been there before” going unheeded. 

As the decade continued these storylines would become more abstracted, less focused upon storyline than atmosphere, the likes of ‘Strange Charm’ and ‘Outland’ bear little lyrical affinities with one another but are unified by a sonic palette, both sound like instrumentals for off kilter Blade Runner / Doctor Who knockoffs with large soundscapes limited by ever-decreasing production budgets.



Another future avenue opened up from the success of ‘Cars’ was Gary’s work in providing soundtrack material: the original single’s B-side was the eerie instrumental ‘Asylum’ (anchored by a tolling bell of a rhythm section and with discordant piano skittering around in the mix, it was a track deserving of the title) and the producers liked the track and wanted Gary to rerecord the piece alongside new music for an upcoming film project. Gary recorded the entire soundtrack alongside Michael R. Smith from The Wave Team and the music would be separately released in 1995.
‘The Unborn’ was a low-budget 1991 horror film in the traditional mold; hysterical over-acting and dodgy effects with the topical bent of in-vitro fertilisation. At times lead actor Brooke Adams performs like she’s auditioning for ‘The Langoliers’ or ‘The Tommyknockers’.

While ‘The Unborn’ predictably bombed, what ‘Human’ did was show Gary’s ear for atmospherics. Freed from the trap of searching for a hit single, he displayed deft use of sampling and synth work to create the kind of tracks he’d not include in a conventional album, screams of agony and loops of piano leg strikes being unsurprisingly more suited to a horror movie soundtrack than an industrial funk record.
The indie 2014 film ‘From Inside’ provided another opportunity for Numan to display his ability to create thoroughly unsettling soundscapes. However when compared to ‘Splinter’s palette, ‘From Inside’ was a complementary epilogue to that album’s cinematic leanings.

“When I came here, part of the reason for coming to Los Angeles was, I thought, what I should be doing next is film music. That would be the thing to evolve into. I’m not sure it is anymore. I really want to do writing. And more then anything, the album tour career that I’ve had, I actually want that to last as long as possible.” - Gary Numan to ExtremeTech in 2016.

‘Broken’ emerged as ‘Song 1’ during the Pledge campaigns early sessions in November 2015 as an instrumental demo in the vein of earlier soundtrack work. It was true to Numan form, the vox humana-esque sweep of synthetic strings forming a vocal melody that surely would later be pencilled in over a faster tempo.

At first, the final version looks to be little more than a polishing of the demo. Some gasps and foghorn noises open the final version, perhaps heralding another industrial stomp that Numan has become famous for in his latter career. Instead the introduction continues, other sections are added and slowly build upon the same melodies.
Josh Gray at The Quietus praised ‘Broken’s “widescreen synth vistas … sound like they were recorded to soundtrack a great retro-futuristic RPG in which the future of humanity hangs in the balance.” 


But there’s something off here, the strings are clearly electronic.
Recall the “weird viola part” in the first half of ‘Complex’, one of the few holdovers from the Freerange demos, how it mirrored the lead synth melody, sometimes appearing under it.
Besides structure the two tracks have similar lyrical themes, compare “please keep them away / don’t let them touch me” with “if you had seen / all the things that I’ve seen / you’d scream like I scream”. 
Think back to ‘The Calling’s “almost real strings”, where the section was programmed to match how a live section would be played down to the different sounds produced when a bow is drawn back and pushed. Producer Ade Fenton “spent a great deal of time programming the exact number of hand strokes needed to recreate the exact sound”.
‘Broken’ receives no such treatment, giving the mix a certain flatness. 

The first three minutes are entirely instrumental, punctuated with moans and other found sounds.
With its orchestral leanings ‘Broken’ was a natural candidate for the Skarapis leg and its extensive instrumental opening served as a mid set break, the live strings giving the track a life and depth beyond the album version’s trappings.


‘Broken’ surmises ‘Savage’s overarching concept, the last of the songs from the broken world. Even when the songs snaps out of cinematic mode the tone is that of a funeral march. Electronically boosted drums beat away as if trying to will the track into life but instead settling for a mechanised lurch.
Earlier apocalyptic tracks had a fullness and life to them; in ‘Down In The Park’ restaurants and rape machines were listed one after the other as if Gary was going through a Burroughsian shopping list. ‘Berserker’s reversed guitar solos and processed sonic base gave it an urgency beyond its pop leanings.
‘Broken’ does as it’s namesake suggests and shows a landscape beyond repair using uncomplicated language. The curtain drops, the world ends not with a bang but a whimper.

‘I’ve seen the sky on fire
Seen the oceans dry
Seen the mountains fall
Seen the whole world die’

Top: ‘Apocalypse’ by Wildlife Terry, 2017. “One from my recent trip to Wales. I wouldn't have been surprised to see 4 Red Dragons flying out of the clouds at sunset.”
Picture is public domain. 

Middle: Still from ‘The Unborn’. Directed by Rodman Flender and presented by Califilm and Concorde-New Horizons, 1991.

Bottom: ‘Going Nowhere’ by Marc Cooper, 2015. “Near Mojave, CA.” 
Picture is public domain.


A large section about fan interaction was cut from this post and will appear in a later entry as I felt this one had enough tangents already. I ended up having more to say about this track than I thought I would. As the first track from the sessions I thought it was alright at the time but not quite as emotional as anything off ‘Splinter’ but that might be a part of some later stuff.
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