Customer Reviews

Dramatis Project

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dramatis was essentially the backup band for Gary Numan in the late 70's, early 80's. They released an LP called "For Future Reference" which, if it had not been for the die-hard Numan fans, probably would have gone completely unnoticed (even if it HAD been released in the US, which it wasn't), despite some fun, hook-laden songs ("Oh 2025" for example). This CD will likely only appeal to the Numan fan masses or fans of early 80's synth/new wave material. The material does not really stand the test of time, unlike the bulk of Numan's material (check out "Replicas" or "Telekon" for a truly Numan experience). Numan appears only on the track "Love Needs No Disguise" and yet the CD is marketed as a Tubeway Army/Numan CD billing it as "Project Dramatis" for some inexplicable reason. I wish this had been released in it's original form with, perhaps, some unreleased material that may have been uncovered in the archives. On the plus side, for those of us who were never able to actually FIND the original Dramatis LP, it's a blessing to finally have this material released particularly on CD :)

It's great to have this album finally available on CD, because a lot of Gary's early fans (such as myself) have wanted this collection for over two decades.

If you're a fan of Gary Numan's brand of electronica from the "Telekon" era, you'll probably find this CD interesting, since (as others have pointed out) Dramatis was made up of Gary's backing band from 1980.

The synthesizer work is excellent, and the "orchestration" is quite different from a lot of Gary's work, and in some ways, better (especially on "I Only Find Rewind"). There's a lot of Chris Payne's viola on the album, and I think it adds a appealing quality.

My only quibble is that I wish that this CD included "The Shame," one of Dramatis's best songs.

This CD is actually a re-issue of the 1981 album called "For Future Reference" by a band called Dramatis. They were Gary Numan's backing band during the early part of his career. Numan is only featured on one track, Love Needs No Disguise, which was released as a single and reached No.33 in the UK charts. It is the main highlight here amongst some very ordinary sounding and quite dated material. The only real exception is the rather wonderful "Take Me Home" which is more of an instrumental than a lyrical song, the title being just repeated over at various intervals. However, it does show off the band's good musicianship which is consistently high throughout, even if the other songs lack some songwriting craft and a decent melody. The CD is a shameless and rather transparent attempt to cash in on Numan's name, but considering it's only likely to be of interest to the hardcore Numan completists, I guess that's OK. Apart from having nothing to do with the band Tubeway Army, my only other major complaint is that none of the B sides or other non-album singles by Dramatis are included. Now this CD is out they're unlikely ever to see a CD release which is a pity.

Dramatis was a band formed by Gary Numan's back-up musicians. Their only album, "For Future Reference" was released in the mid 80's with guest vocals by Numan on one track, "Love Needs No Disguise". The rest of the album, whose songs were sung mainly by keyboardist Denis Haines and guitarist Rrussell Bell (that's not a typo) was highly creative and masterfully performed and sounded very much like Ultravox in their prime. My personal favorite track is "Human Sacrifice" which has a hard, industrial feel though it predates the movement by a good year or two. Some remixing has been done to the album for the cd release ("I Only Find Rewind" has a different drum machine track and "Turn" and "Take Me Home" no longer fade into eachother as they did on the original vinyl) but these minor changes really don't disturb the overall sound. I was a little disappointed that this album didn't feature the later singles as bonus tracks but either way you can't beat having this classic and long ignored album on CD.