A Review of "Techno Army Featuring Gary Numan" by Joey Lindstrom
(who gave it 3 out of 10)
July 16th 1996

If you've made it this far into the Noise Noise section of The World Wide Webb, then the chances are pretty good that you are a committed, hard core fan. Good. Because you'd have to be, to buy this album. This one is for COMPLETISTS only.

This is a rather unique album: a duo named "Techno Army" decides to put out an entire album of Gary Numan songs, but remixed in a techno style. Doesn't sound too bad so far. They even paid Gary £20,000 to come into their studio for two afternoons and re-sing all the vocals. Again, so far so good. But...

This album's main failing is a near-complete inability to live up to its name and promise. With the exception of the final two "Cars" remixes, this album is far from "techno". In fact, it brings to mind a sad image... of a 75-year-old Gary Numan, reduced to playing Vegas lounges three shows a night with a Casio keyboard on his lap. It's sad. It's poorly produced. And it shows a very complete lack of understanding of what Gary's music is all about: some of his darkest songs come off as light and frothy little numbers!

I'll give the producers of this album credit for two things. First, the final two remixes of "Cars" are extremely good and are quite definitely "techno". Second, for having the courage to even try to put together an entire album of Numan covers: Numan's not exactly a household name and you're certainly not going to get rich this way.

But I'm afraid that's the only credit they get. Some of the alleged music on this album is among the very worst I've ever heard, Numan or not. I would have given this album a rating of 2 out of 10 were it not for the very nice cover art.