Customer Reviews

Exile

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thought the man was a joke. That was after only knowing him for "Cars" and before I tripped over this one at CDNOW. And I call myself a music freak? I should be slapped. I was just browsing and sampling there one day, noticed Gary Numan. Then I noticed the man has a catalogue comparable to that of Tangerine Dream or Frank Zappa. Insane. The page is huge. Guess he did more than "Cars". What clued me in on this record was the instant connection I made to "Dark" with the movie preview for "Dark City." They used the backbeat of the song in the preview for the movie. Holy god, after sampling all the tracks, I knew this was a winner. I have searched for the perfect sound ever since my first music purchase, and this is as close to my ear as it will ever come. Buy this album, just buy it. I have no words for the mastery this record possesses of dark tranquility. Musically, it's dark in a different way. It's not darkness that I'm used to hearing. Don't expect Slayer or Sepultura. This is darkness that has such a deeper definition. It just sounds dark. Even Numan's voice is such a part of the tone, it's like another instrument. Yeah, there's singers, but then there's this guy who makes his voice sound like a synthetic horrifying presence that just zeroes in on your soul. The man's voice will take out your speakers and he is not screaming at all. He carries such a haunting melody just with his voice. (You must have a decent stereo to enjoy this record fully) I have spun this disk countless times and it never gets old. It's so far beyond anything that's out right now, it's like he's not even from our galaxy. Maybe that's the point. Check out his website for the story behind this masterpiece. Judging from the lyrics, something seriously horrible had to happen to Mr. Numan recently. His latest effort, "Pure" is a bit different, but it's like a continuation of this one. You will have to wait for Exile, no doubt, I had to wait 6 weeks for this title and I ordered it from a respected record store. The US print has an extra (live) track on it that does not fit the rest of the album at all but it's kinda nice to get something extra when you buy something isn't it? I love this album so much, I may write about again later. Just get it. You're friends won't know what it is but I guarantee you, they'll damn sure want you to tell them. I am probably the only person in all of New Mexico that even owns a copy of this, and that is a crime.

Gary Numan. Cars. That's what a majority of consumers and record execs generally know of Numan. That's all I knew about Numan. Last year, someone let me borrow Exile. I didn't want to give it back. This is quite possibly, one of the greatest albums ever made. Sure, many people would love to disagree with me, and that's great. Exile is a continuous journey thru all nine tracks (I don't count the live track, which doesn't belong). Numan sets a tone starting with "Dominion Day" that doesn't let up, all the way thru to the last track, "Exile". The lyrics are amazing. The best he's ever written. The melodies are hook driven. Numan's voice is top notch and blends "frightengly" well with the music. "Sacrafice" and "Pure" are bookends to this masterpiece. Three great albums with the center piece being the meat and shinning light. It's a shame that Numan hasn't gotten more recognition for his work. But then again, this fast food/MTV generation isn't looking for substance or musical genius. If fast food is your thing, stick with TRL. I'll stick with the five star restuarants.

This is perhaps the best album I got last year, though it does have some pretty stiff competition. It was heartening to see Numan's career return from the grave of a decade of tired rehashing and watering down of his original sound. Now, with Exile (and the previous album Sacrifice) Numan has taken a totally new direction, adding a gothic/coldwave element to his music and (hold your breath) actually singing. He ahs a pretty good voice for it, too-- why he spent decades in that monotone schtick I don't know. This album is a concept album, and a fine one at that-- the premise being that God and the Devil, Heaven and Hell are really just the same. Thus, if you're easily offended by strong contrarian religious themes, stay away. This isn't christian rock crap like DC Talk or ooh-I'm-such-a-scary-satanist drivel like Marilyn Manson. This is the real thing, with Numan's lyrics and music better than they've been in years. On a sad note, though, Cleopatra Records botched up the U.S. release (par for the course for them) by hastily slapping a live version of Down In the Park at the end. I know DITP is Numan's most famous (and probably the only remembered) song in America, after having been covered by such crowd-pleasers as Foo Fighters and the aforementioned Marilyn Manson, but the live version isn't anything spectacular, and it totally ruins the flow of the album. But that's nothing too horrific, and the album is so good it makes up for it. I reccomend the extended version of Exile (soon to be released in America) over the regualr version, but that may be because I loved the album and the extended mixes make it 1.5 times as long.

I have eveything Numan has ever done (yet, unfortunately, I forced myself to toss that 80's period when he did the stuff with the saxaphone and female vocals---Human League made a similar mistake on one album as well.) This album is the stuff that all similar music before AND after should judge themselves by. He is not copying anything - He created it in the first place! Numan is emotionally, mentally, and physically in every song, every note - and if you don't see that then sorry kiddo, but you are still in high school....you'll get it when you get older. If some of these songs don't make you cry, they should at least make you hurt. He (Numan) exposes himself like few artists dare to do. He hides nothing - his hatred, sadness, fears, confusion --- all the s**t we all struggle through every day. The songs are beautifully orchestrated and once again prove what a great COMPOSER he is. I only hope he continues with his art, to challenge our intellect, are emotions, and our outlook on this filthy world that we have to make sense of. Bless Numan. Yes, it is solitary-dark-room-alone-with-a-candle-and-a diary-of-jumbled-emotions-made-into-words-nobody-understands-me kind of music. But if you have never had those kinds ofexperiences in your life, you might as well never have lived. Sometimes sorrow = understanding. Peace to all.

"Exile" is a concept album written around a central question, which is, 'what if God and the Devil were the same person and heaven and hell were the same place and it's only our perception that makes them appear to be one or the other?'. Numan at times uses a strong, loud and agressive back drop to put forward his ideas ("Dominion Day", "The Angel Wars") whilst at other times a quieter, sneering, almost nasty hush like quality ("Exile", "Prophesy") is used to convey his misgivings towards 'blind faith'. The album is a brooding, dark and very sombre, almost haunting piece of work. It takes the atmosphere of his previous album ("Sacrifice") and adds a large degree of menace. Many of the songs are immediate in their sonic appeal. Others take a while. Overall, it's vintage Numan twisting and meshing the gothic-rock genre into his own unique style. Class.

Most of Numan's efforts in the last decade have been somewhat musically watered down. The typical observation was that there was maybe two outstanding tracks and the rest was fodder. Exile shows Gary Numan taking the advice "Be true to thine own self". I suspect that Gary needed some time to look critically at what he was doing and get back on track. The thing missing the most on those previous efforts (excepting Sacrifice) was the Numan sound. With others collaborating on his efforts, like the Wave Team programming synths that Gary had no idea how to program, and overbearing guitarists like Kipper all served to effectively water down Gary's sound. With these distracting elements out of the way, he gets down to some serious music writing. Gary plays almost all of the instruments on Exile and has produced, mixed, and engineered the album. The result is an album that is 100% Gary Numan in his best form. The album is descibed as a soundtrack to a horror story in which the concepts of Heaven and Hell, God and Satan, are one and the same. Pretty deep stuff. This album is very strong conceptually and musically, and possibly his best effort to date.

Not HIS roots perhaps,but those of the bands strongly influenced by him.True,this album sounds a LOT like NIN and Depeche Mode,but only because they took Gary's musical elements to shape their music in the first place ! So he's back with a vengeance and believe me,EXILE kicks NIN,DM or any other soundalikes in the @ss by putting the guts and personality those others bands lack ! Bought this a year after I got PURE,for U$5 in a bargain bin at a mom n pop store,can you believe it !?This is the most heaviest bottom end I've ever found on a cd,thanks god for my amp's protection circuitry,every song made it clip at least once !,and general sound is excellent,but I could have used a fullest (oppossed to the frequency trimmed) guitar sound.Two of the songs are a little monotonous for my taste,hence the 4 stars,but hey I'm no goth but an aging punk rocker who was infatuated with Gary's 4 first studio records and that was in 1980,so don't take my opinion to the letter and give this superb record a try;you'll love it !!!!!!!

An interesting affair, this. Numan's music was dark from the beginning, even if the effortless synth hooks made it upbeat and later danceable. But this is something else, a cult artist known for innovation following a trend he is credited as creating to be begin with.

Exile is a continuation of the change Numan made with Sacrifice, when he dropped the female background vocals, dropped the sax after about 10 albums, and went back to making music he wanted to hear. Exile continues into darker territory, sounding like a heavy, grim industrial record with excellent hooks. The combination of Numan's unique voice with the all-electronic, eerie soundscapes is excellent. There is something simpler, even stripped down about this album and the preceding one, after so many albums where it seemed he tried too hard.

One big thing about this album, and in fact, about all of Numan's albums since Sacrifice: the production and the mixing. I don't get it, but there is something off about the mix and mastering. You can hear the tunes are there, but they need some ::oomph:: in the drums and the bass. The drums are kept low and kind of flat when they should be up front and heavier since as the songs call for it. Others have pointed out the mastering, too. You need to tweak your stereo a bit to play this at a decent volume because serious bass distortion starts to creep in. Bizarre, isn't that kind of thing corrected by the engineers?

If it's intentional, I don't get it, except if Numan wanted to introduce some element of discomfort into the album. But somehow, I don't think so, I think it could be due to reduced budgets since the earlier days.

Nevertheless, the tunes are excellent. All of them. This sound seems natural, every song sounds appropriate with little flash. Years after an obsession with horn hits and backing vocals, he gets to what he should have been doing...pioneering this kind of sound. This is a darker album and a step up from Sacrifice, though in a very similar vein (he loves that rumbling little boom from the opening of Blade Runner as as simple/inspiration). The theme is...God, or thereabouts. Yes, much abounds in the atheism department, and it can get to be a bit much, blunt as it is, but it doesn't even kill the music here. Numan was always good at masking dark themes in upbeat, synth-driven songs. This is him going 'goth/industrial' and making it sound very easy, because he has the songs to begin with. It's no wonder he's more or less stayed in this mode musically since. He does NIN just as well, except it's his.

Highly recommended to his new and old fans, it's silly that this album is out of print. The Extended Version is a nice, old fashioned job of simply 'extending' all of the songs, doubling them in length, and lending more to the overall mood of the album. Good stuff.

This album seems to have recieved heaps of generous critical praise. They say its Gary's comeback album, and that here he was true to himself. I think that was not so much this album, as it was his prior album, Sacrifice, that lived up to that assertion. This album does take musical elements from Sacrifice and beefs them up a bit (more guitar, bouncier drums). On his latest, Pure, he beefs them up even more and turns the NIN ingredient way up to the eleventh degree (with mixed results). But where Exile (and Pure for that matter) lack is in the song writing. The Angel Wars and Dominion Day are definitley the stronger tracks, but the problem is that most of the tracks from Exile more or less sound the same. They start and end the same, have the EXACT same bouncy percussion style and tempo, and are more or less in the same key. I actually get a little bored listening to this album because of these problems. Sacrifice had the same dark theme as this album but I feel it was better realized. Definitley more musical variety and ultimatley more emotion and feeling. Though I must say, Sacrifice, Exile and Pure are LIGHT YEARS ahead of his 86-92 period. [....]

Late 80's saw Mr. Numan getting angry lyrically, but not until '94's Sacrifice did that anger really translate musically (we heard some in Machine + Soul, but not enough to deem it an 'angry' album). Unlike most people, I love and embrace every angle and phase of Numan's music, from his early Mean Street punk material to his gothic industrial madness, and everything in between. But for a while I just wouldn't give his latest albums any chance, which was a huge mistake for me. Numan hasn't ever lost his edge as a musical genius.

With that said, this album takes the newfound industrial style of his earlier 90's albums and perfects it. To me, 'Outland', 'Machine+Soul' and 'Sacrifice' were a bit too percussion heavy, not a bad thing, but that side of the albums really show in comparison to this 'Exile'; on this album, Numan embraces his electronic side full force. With the muscular percussion, the wall of industrial synths (which often sound pretty organic at times), electric guitars, and Numan's incredible vocal talents, Numan creates a vision of darkness continued from 'Sacrifice'.

What's best is that every track, unlike Sacrifice, is very unique to each other (once again, the drum machine heavy sound of Sacrifice weakens it a bit), while retaining a shadowy cohesiveness.

Also, while Jagged and Pure are to me a little too strong on the guitar end of things, Exile just has the feel of complete balance. You can hear all the years of Numan's music in here, but doesn't rely on his back catalogue's sound either. Numan has always been an evolver, and this album is probably the biggest proof of that.

I don't have complete praise for the album, however, as I just can't get into 'Dominion Day'; it's a well written song musically and lyrically, but something about it just strays. Maybe it's because it sounds a little imbalanced as compared to the rest of the tracks. But that's just me. I think maybe 'Dark', which was also on the Dark City soundtrack, or 'Dead Heaven' should've been made the one single in Dominion Day's stead, but again that's my opinion.

And don't forget that this is the year where Numan did a few re-workings of older songs: 'Metal', 'Down In The Park', and 'Voix'. These tracks retain the strengths of originals while getting treated to the dark evolution of Exile's sound; great pieces.

Overall, this is a piece not to be missed. It may be 10 years old now, but sure doesn't sound like it. I think this may be one of Numan's more timeless masterpieces.

And if you don't like or think you'll like Numan's dark industrial side, at least give this one a chance; it may change your outlook like it has mine.