Warriors

Although roughed up at the edges by a mixture of paranoia and agression, Numan's final album for Beggars Banquet is a fluently executed record, warmed by analogue electronics and often arranged to create a soothing, dreamlike ambience.

GARY NUMAN: “I still like a lot of the Warriors stuff and Bill Nelson did a lot of very inventive things on it which, because of our differences, I failed to appreciate at the time. I think the Mad Max image convinced a lot of people, the press especially, that it was a sci-fi album. Much of it though was actually quite autobiographical. Even songs like ‘The Iceman Comes’ and ‘This Prison Moon’ were more to do with what I was going through than anything sci-fi. Lyrically I was already becoming overly focused on the career struggle. Warriors was written, in the main, in a hotel room in Jersey. My girlfriend had just left me, I’d been evicted from the house I was living in and I felt pretty much alone in more ways than one. Despite its surface gloss of futurism it was really very inward looking. To me the image was meant to represent someone fighting for survival as much as anything”

THE GUARDIAN: “The music shows some signs of progression. Chattering synthesisers and good growling bass work from Joe Hubbard lead off into efficient electro-funk pieces like I Am Render and This Prison Moon, or cool, gentle jazzy pieces like The Iceman Comes.”