The restless, 21-year-old technology freak plays all the keyboards and guitars on the album, further developing the fat Mini-Moog sound after the garage electronics of the self-titled debut a few months earlier.

Released in March 1979, the dreamily-epic, proto-industrial "Down In The Park" was the first single to be taken off Replicas, selling 10,000 copies to a new cult audience but failing to chart. Radio One DJ John Peel was very supportive of the track, and in addition to giving "Down In The Park" late night airplay, Tubeway Army recorded a three-track session for him on 10 January. A raw version of the single was featured alongside "Me! I Disconnect From You" and "I Nearly Married A Human."

Numan's commercial breakthrough came in May 1979 with "Are 'Friends' Electric?" which climbed to number one after live appearances on the TV shows Old Grey Whistle Test and Top Of The Pops. The latter was particularly important in turning Numan into a fully-fledged pop star and he planned every aspect of how he was to be seen for the first time by the public. "I told the set designers I didn't want any of their flashing, coloured lights, I just wanted white light, and a lot of it, on the floor to make the presentation stark and different. I wanted everything about the way we presented the song to express its theme, the atmosphere... the cold, alienated stare was as much nerves as image. Whether people loved it or hated it, we did look different."

The compulsive, motorik beat of "Are 'Friends' Electric?" featured on the British charts for a total of 16 weeks, selling a million copies in the UK. The song was later covered by Republica, Moloko, and Belgian pianist An Pierle, amongst others and there have also been remixes by Renegade Soundwave and Liberator DJs. Numan is the first to confess that "Are 'Friends' Electric?" was a complete accident. "It was over five minutes long because it's actually two songs put together. I had the main verse and chorus part but I couldn't think of a suitable middle eight for it. I also had a ballad that I couldn't quite work out a conclusion for. Then I was playing the parts of one and went straight into the other song and was amazed to realise they fitted together perfectly. The main keyboard melody was also different at one point. I was playing it back on my piano, some time before it was recorded, hit a wrong note and thought it sounded much better, so I kept it even though it was actually a bum note."

Although Numan felt the full force of an immediate critical backlash as Replicas joined "Are 'Friends' Electric?" at the top of the charts, there was some sensitive, analytical journalism. One Record Mirror critic accurately summarised the appeal of the album; "Replicas was where things began to gel; it was a world of science, alienation, solitary figures in dark, dull rooms. It was Numan's highly, vaguely personalised feelings locked in a different context - impenetrable, futuristic ideas provoking charges of almost justified pretentiousness... Numan is as personally unstable as he is financially stable. But for all the cold, distant exterior, for all the inverted complexities of his music, the recluse has something. There's no way his work can be branded 'emotionless' - it's just powered by emotions of a very personal, inhibited nature. There's another level, too, and the one which looks like rooting Numan at the top of the tree for some while yet; he's producing some of the most optimistic, forward-facing pop of the '70s."

- excerpted from the liner notes by Steve Malins