Post-Post-Irony: My Name Is Ruin

“It’s an extreme view of the future . . . from what’s happening now, but only one view. It’s not necessarily the only one I have, the only view I think there could be — it’s possibly the most interesting to write about. It’s what I see around me. I’m obviously very affected by things — the violent side of human nature. Human nature itself is quite interesting to write about, if you take it to its extremes.” - Gary Numan: An Intimate Profile (May 1980)

“Back then my fears were about how technology could potentially destroy the social fabric, the self determination of artificial intelligence, giving AI decision making power that had a direct effect on human life. Now, all of that is still a fear, but now we also have Climate Change, so the world is in a far more precarious place than I’d ever imagined.” - Gary Numan, interview with Audrey Kemp (September 2018)

Gary Numan has rarely written feel-good music. Early pieces under the Tubeway Army moniker featured songs about failed relationships and drug addiction, by the time of ‘Replicas’ the focus broadened to a dystopian sort-of concept album. After 1979’s Touring Principle, the apocalyptic ideas became limited to individual tracks although they would occasionally surface such as in the aesthetics of 1983’s ‘Warriors’ and the gothic hellscapes of 1997’s ‘Exile’. With ‘Savage’, the concept resurfaced.

The idea of electronic music serving as a warning for the future was also held by electronic and avant-garde music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. In 1971 he told writer Jonathon Cott “usually we read about catastrophes that are to come … But I find even talking to very conscious people that they always think in the back of their minds there might be an escape, perhaps they think it’s just words and that the scientists who announce these catastrophes do so as an early warning in order to escape these crises. They think it might not come. But it will come. We have to go through these crises at the end of the century and the beginning of the next … there is no other way.”

The idea that crisis alerts are something to be placed on the back burner, to be addressed a bit later as there’ll always be time to deal with it later continues to permeate the current political landscape. From the UK governments mounting hostility towards “experts” to Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation in 2017, we appear to be doubling down on the same trajectories that we now have empirically proven to be disastrous.

Where once artists like Stockhausen created music intended to herald visitors from another world and envisaged a future of space travel and perpetual growth we are now content to look further inwards, becoming more paranoid and envious of one another. Space travel has become an occasional novelty, the stuff of viral videos and the playroom of eccentric billionaires. Crisis after crisis adorn the headlines, and the search for that escape grows in urgency.

Q - “How do we create a perfect planet?”

A - “Yeah, get rid of us. That’s easy. It would do great without us. My wife says the best thing you can do for Earth is kill everybody. Which seems a bit harsh when you’ve got kids. … What the Earth is doing, or beginning to do at the moment, is it’s own way of getting rid of the problem. Which is us. It will become unlivable for us. But it will survive, it will just adjust. … I find that interesting, the Earth as a living thing is treating us as a virus.” - Gary Numan: Q&A with Bluedot Festival, September 2018

With ‘Savage’ Gary Numan created an album both in step with the current times and in the bloodline of electronic music as a warning of imminent global catastrophe.

‘My Name Is Ruin’ follows a similar structure to one of Numan’s favourite tracks; Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Head Like A Hole’. Both tracks begin in a swirl of industrial noise, Numan’s with a deep throbbing foghorn-like piece and Reznor’s with metronome like ticking.

Numan’s track also features similar call and response style verses (‘God money / I’ll do anything for you’ versus ‘When they called me ruin / I knew’) and a use of multiple choruses after one another. Despite both pieces industrial dressing they display both songwriter’s innate ear for a pop melody.

Reznor’s track was later mashed up with Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ and worked almost seamlessly. Sadly, Numan’s track has yet to receive this kind of treatment.

Parts of the track suggest a revision of previous single ‘Love Hurt Bleed’, the two tracks share a nearly identical faux-Moog riff however where the former’s riff was deployed as a counterpoint to the line “everything bleeds”, the new track reduces the tempo and turns the riff into a stepping stone into the main anthem chorus. ‘Ruin’ like much of ‘Savage’ has a more obviously electronic sound than ‘Splinter’, the track bristles with melodies akin to shuffling a deck of cards.

Numan had experimented with backing vocals throughout his career and his second-eldest daughter Persia provides secondary vocals to this track, adding some further humanity to the album. Contrary to previous attempts where the backing vocals would sometimes eclipse Gary’s own, here he uses Persia’s voice as another instrument and to underline his own voice in the chorus proper.

‘My Name Is Ruin’ is structured as if by algorithm, resetting itself once each cycle is complete. Opening riff leads to verse, then a pre-chorus with Persia’s wordless calls, then the second verse. Numan holds back with dispensing the main synth riff until the two-minute mark, upon which the song progresses into a second pre-chorus with the aforementioned riff and guitar fuzz playing countermelodies between the two Persia sings. It’s almost halfway through before Gary and Persia duet on the first chorus after which the track returns to the opening riff now accompanied by a line of guitar feedback. Gary sings the final verse in the active tense, now “when I called you” instead of “when they called me”. His final lines accompanied by a variation of the beat riddled with static, as if the track is crumbling in one’s ears. Another two pre-choruses play, and the second and final chorus plays before the track ends again. The opening riff returns for a final twenty seconds, like a seemingly dead slasher villain giving the audience one final jumpscare.

True to form for Numan’s recent fare, ‘My Name Is Ruin’ is built around the choruses with carefully constructed builds and breakdowns as he discussed in an interview with Electronic Sound, “I did work quite hard on the choruses, I wanted them to be anthemic, ‘here comes the good bit’ type songs.”

‘My Name Is Ruin’ was edited down from its six-minute plus length for the single, removing most of the instrumental pre-chorus parts.

Numan showed the most of this track prior to the album’s release, how he honed ‘Ruin’ from a pile of riffs into one continuous movement throughout the Pledge campaign. Three demo clips were re-uploaded by a third party channel after Pledge’s demise.

Twenty-six seconds into the first clip what would become the opening riff emerges already fully formed and segues into the verses similarly to the final version. After two minutes and ten seconds of verses the track suddenly shifts into a descending piano melody.

The piano was evidently too great a shift from the more upbeat verses that had gone beforehand and was removed soon after. This piano would be later reused as part of the verse vocals to the bonus track ‘Cold’.

The second clip came out ten months later and showed a more complete mix close to the final version. Numan’s vocal appears to be the final take and the only main difference from the studio release is Persia’s vocals are buried in the mix.

A decision was made to correct this the following the month, where Persia’s wordless cries in the pre-chorus are made more prominent. Some stock tribal grunts were added at this point however they crowded the arrangement and were soon dropped.

The final track was the most commercial offering from the ‘Savage’ sessions and both Numan and his label BMG agreed to release ‘My Name Is Ruin’ as the lead single. Gary would make it a regular fixture of performances including on the one-off anniversary episode of ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ in February 2018 alongside the stalwart ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’

Upon release ‘Ruin’ was accompanied by a cinematic promotional video. In it Numan stalks through the desert clad in military-like garb. The landscape shots mirror and fold in on themselves, reminiscent of recent reality bending pictures ‘Inception’ and ‘Doctor Strange’.

Numan speaks to the camera, walking forward unflinchingly with little emotional giveaways until the final “they knew” upon which he offers a shrug and a smile. His is a figure of inevitability, even those who “called [him] ruin” knew of his persistence. When he finally reaches his target (played by Persia) he tells her much the same and extends his hand to her.

In the context of this track and the broader ‘Savage’ narrative, I’d hazard a guess that Gary’s character is a rogue element cast out of whatever society he was once a part of.

The narrator is denounced as “broken”, “evil” and “ruin”. He in turn begs “forgiveness” (a possible callback to new testament Christianity, recall Numan’s atheistic leanings), “mercy” (old testament) and then “nothing”.

Perhaps he was informed on by Persia’s character (in a possible shout-out to ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Tom Parsons who is sent to the Ministry of Love when his daughter reports him to the Thought Police for allegedly spouting anti-party rhetoric in his sleep) whom he later denounces as “poison”, “evil” and “liar” in the video.

Recent world leaders have worked to cultivate a teflon-like resistance to controversy in part helped by mounting public suspicion of an increasingly partisan press, the idea being reputation no longer matters when you’re playing against an allegedly rigged system.

Current U.S. president Donald Trump spent much of his career cultivating his own controversial media persona. As a result, his administration has thus far proved itself capable of absorbing the kinds of controversies that have brought previous governments to their knees. Even after inauguration Trump would sooner stage a rally than hold a press conference like he was still on the campaign trail. If your name is ruin, why not wear it like a badge of dishonour.

Numan was rightfully proud of ‘My Name Is Ruin’ and performed it during every date of the ‘Savage’ and ‘Revolution’ tours, opening with it during the latter tour. The song was also remixed by Meat Beat Manifesto and given away as a double sided 7-inch vinyl single with issue thirty-three of the ‘Electronic Sound’ magazine. The remix pared ‘Ruin’ down to Gary and Persia’s vocals and combined them with more electronic-sounding instrumentation that highlighted the track’s danceable nature.

‘My Name Is Ruin’ debuted at #93 on the UK iTunes charts on Tuesday July 6th 2017. It climbed no higher and dropped from the charts by the next day. The 4:24 video edit was also released in limited physical quantities to various radio stations.

First, fourth: photographs taken during the same shoot posted to Gary Numan’s Facebook page on June 17th 2017, “Today we are in the desert filming the video for the first single from the Savage album 'My Name Is Ruin'. Persia is in it. Proud Dad :)”

Second, third: photographs taken from the ‘My Name Is Ruin’ video shoot posted to Gary Numan’s Twitter page on June 18th 2017, “Persia finished her first video shoot today for my new 'My Name Is Ruin' single. She was amazing, & she sings on the song. Very proud.”

An invaluable source for this post was David Stubbs’ ‘Mars By 1980: The Story Of Electronic Music’ for the information on Stockhausen and the idea of electronic music being a prophetic warning.

Post-Post-Irony

Tuesday 10 December 2019

My Name Is Ruin

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