Gary Numan was an experimental electronic music and gothic pioneer back in the 80s. He arrived like a pitch-black meteor onto the UK music scene, bringing with him a wave of influence and playful, performative darkness, and became one of the most influential and entirely unique acts this country has produced. Recently, Numan released the 45th Anniversary Expanded Edition of his 1980 album Telekon, and embarked on a huge anniversary tour, bringing along his daughter Raven Numan and her band to support. We joined the tour at the legendary Rock City...
Imagine Gary Numan if he’d grown up grown up in the 2000s with the emo and post-hardcore scene and the mass influence of gothic music from the likes of The Cure... and was female. That’s how I’d sum up Raven Numan.
Her sound feels like an exact mix of her father’s brand of electronica and goth music, fused with a modern rock feel and layout. She’s joined by an excellent four-piece band, with guitar, bass, keys/synth and drums. One thing that’s very impressive from the get-go is her vocals. Despite being somewhat deep in the mix, they are resounding and powerful and whole, drawing off the slow, gothic-coded instrumentals and really going for it in all respects. For reference, her band are all in one line at the front of the stage, which in my opinion is really interesting and definitely adds something to the set, providing a clear view of everyone, especially the drummer, who uses a drum machine for some really interesting segments of songs. There was also a platform at the back, which originally I thought was just for Gary’s set (due to the fact that most of the time at Rock City the support take everything off stage for the headliner to play), but was wrong as Raven used it at many points, turning around and taking to the platform, using it to look down on the crowd in a performative haze, adding a dark, enigmatic and overall mysterious feel to the set.
The highlight was the closing song, Here for Me, which boasted rather sad and potent lyrics and a vibrant, striking and subtly violent, passive aggressive performance style. Overall, this was a very enjoyable set and a fun lead up to her father’s set.
Gary Numan opens with the darkly atmospheric This Wreckage, kicking off this mammoth anniversary celebration with on huge bang. The song has an expertly crafted disjointed energy to it, pairing offbeat, loud, abrasive synths with haunting aggressive vocals and striking dissonant guitar parts. Gary as a songwriter is very good at combining parts that normally wouldn’t work together by thrusting them into his abstract vocal and performance style, crafting a unique yet brand-able and very recognisable sound that stands very consistent across the set. In fact, the translation of these earlier songs from his vast discography is really impressive, the mixes fill the room and the instrumentation and arrangements really stand out; it's impressive to hear.
Now, even though it was only his second song in, Remind Me To Smile completely caught me off guard and easily proved itself to be a strong and powerful highlight of the set. The song’s beginning is layered and fairly simple, but towards the end an absolute fantastic chorus part comes in, with Gary setting up a call-and-response chant with the bassist and guitarist. It's very simple yet effective: loud, punchy, and most of all, striking. Gary and his band have this brilliant tendency to really be in sync with each other, and this version of the song was simply brilliant to witness and hear live.
After that, Gary tears into I Dream of Wires, and claims he can’t remember writing it... It's hard to tell if he’s joking or not. He has this way about him where you can never really tell if he’s playing an elaborately whimsical and bizarre character. or if the version we perceive on stage musically is really him or just a fragment. It's this ambiguity and this slight distance from reality that makes Gary and his musical world and energy so compelling; Gary Numan feels and sounds like a myriad of contrasts that fuse to make this dark gothic being that moves around with strange vigour across the stage.
Shortly after this song, he breaks down into tears on stage, and that feels wholly real yet so distanced from his music; again, these contrasts all combine and combine into his stage show. It's a masterful collision of darkness and sound and raw humanity at its core, far removed from the presumptions one makes when hearing his music.
He ends the show and then returns for a very intriguing and extremely surprising encore in the form of four songs from his band The Tubeaway Army, taken from the late 70s. Now, it might not be the expected encore of his biggest songs, such as Cars and ME, which aren’t taken off Telekon yet completely define his sound and ideologies and are both hugely iconic tunes, yet it was very welcome and brilliant, definitely seeping into the rockier territories of his sound.
Overall, this was a fantastic evening despite the lack of flagship tunes and a complete reliance on Telekon, and really solidifies Gary Numan as a true pioneer of gothic electronica. I really recommend going to see him, especially if you like Telekon.
Gary Numan performed at Rock City on 25th November 2025.
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