Gary Numan & Ade Fenton - A Perfect Circle (ONLINE VERSION)

After some phone shuffling from Manager to artist, we're through to the legendary Gary Numan, the most notable cohort on Ade Fenton's first artist album, released nine years after his first techno output, the Coded EP. Before we start however, some congratulations are in order, as Gary and his wife have just had a new baby. "We tried for seven years to have the first one, did IVF, and eventually got an IVF baby, and were told we couldn't have children. Then we popped out two more, before we realised that we seem to be fixed! We ought to be more careful really." In between fathering more children, releasing his Jagged album last year (co-engineered and co-produced by Fenton), and touring, he's contributed vocals to four tracks on Fenton's Artificial Perfect LP.

Gary and Ade have been friends for years, and Gary knew him "long before he was even making music of any kind... when he did get into it, it was more of the DJ / techno side of things; I'm not into all that sort of thing, but I also knew he was succesful at it, and I was impressed by that and proud of him." When Gary began work on last year's Jagged, Ade came to him with demos of what he was calling "his first 'proper' album, no insult intended to techno! But that's how he referred to it, initially." The 'awkward' process of listening to a friend's music ("Nine times out of ten, to be honest, it is rubbish!") began, but while he prepared himself for the excuses, he discovered that he loved what he heard. More tracks followed, and Gary noted that the progression was "incredible, and every time he turned up it was so much better than it was before - he was learning very quickly - the understanding of the technology, the muted structure, which is needed for my sort of music, compared to dance music."

It sounded like the album that Gary had been making for years, and so he gave Ade a few of his own Jagged tracks to experiment with: "These were songs that I'd already worked on with other people, so I had something finished to compare them to, and they really were better. Then my problem was that all the songs that he'd done were so different to the ones done before that, I couldn't get the two different styles to merge at all. I took the decision then to abandon everything that I'd done, and get Ade in to work on the whole album. We started the album again and finished it in six months. It was a very cautious approach to working together, but as soon as it did start to work, it was just fantastic, exciting and very quick."

The perfect marriage of industrial and electronica that sprawls over Jagged and Artificial Perfect is haunted by comparisons to Nine Inch Nails, but what people forget is the circular link between the three groups. Trent Reznor admitted to being "massively influenced" by Numan, and reputedly made The Downward Spiral after listening to Telekon every day for six months. Fenton is in turn influenced by NIN and Numan, and is now producing with Numan to make something which sounds vaguely similar in elements and speed to NIN. As Numan puts it: "We help each other; Trent gets ideas from me, and vice versa, and I think Ade is doing exactly the same thing - to me that's a healthy environment, where we're all listening to each other and enjoying each other's music. It's helping us individually to progress and learn more about how to make music. Everyone wins: the fans win because they're getting constantly evolving music that's pushing forward all the time, and we all win because it's a fairly happy environment, where we all like each other, rather than slagging each other off all the time. I think Jagged stands up as my album, beside anything I would also be a fan of, so that made me proud, and now that Ade's is out, he's done exactly the same thing - it's a very clever and powerful piece of music, and I think he should be proud of it."

The new live CD/DVD of Jagged, which Numan feels is "by far the darkest and heaviest" of his career, is a direction he has been heading in since '94, and one that brings in live instrumentation to fuller effect: "The band made such a massive contribution to songs when we played them live - I just wanted to get as many of them as possible onto the record. It was about trying to make the band feel more involved in what we were doing, and part of the whole Gary Numan thing. We didn't want it to be a totally different album from what fans were gonna buy. I wanted some of it to be the same, but nonetheless, there are things that you can do live, and a certain gratitude that you can give to players that will keep the live performance fairly true to what's on the record. It broadens it slightly, and makes it more exciting, and perhaps even more powerful."

The next album, to be produced by Ade, is touted to be even heavier still, although you may have to wait a little longer as Numan says he's "not written a single note or a single word yet!" Despite the prolific output between the two individuals sprawled across '06 and '07, he remains modest about the workload. "It feels like I've sat on my arse! I've done a lot of touring, but most of my time has been taken with my children, and just trying to find ways of working again when you've got three babies running around the house - I actually feel like I've been a bit lazy."

Just as Numan has stamped his trademark industrial vocals onto Leather Sea, Slide Away, Recall and Healing, he hopes that Fenton will bring equally recognised elements to the table for his next LP: "Power, really - with the Jagged album I really wanted to make it as anthemic as possible, and would like to do even more of that. It's kind of old school I guess, but I love that. I just think it can be more of an aggressive wall of noise, and energetic. I want it to be more varied in tempo - I think some faster tracks wouldn't go amiss." Despite a career that has spanned four decades (yes, four decades!), Numan shows no sign of slowing, or taking a nose dive into the easy-listening section at your local music retailer. "I dont understand people - they do music for a few years, and it's like they run out of ideas or enthusiasm, and start getting mellow and doing ballad albums. What the fuck's that all about? I think I'm writing as good as I've ever done, if not better. The whole aggression and power that is in the music is the most I've ever done, so that makes playing live onstage more exciting and fun then anything else I've done before. It's getting better for me, but I think people maybe just stop enjoying it. They certainly seem to get mellower after a while and start doing greatest hits tours and shit like that."

On the other hand, Fenton has been producing dark, frightening, and frankly, quite disturbing techno for almost a decade, drawing on influences from NIN and Gary Numan, before finding himself in the unique position of being able to work with the latter - what was it like then, to work and produce music with one of your main influences?

"Obviously it's fantastic. I was quite nervous about it to start with, but as soon as we got into the swing of it, and learnt what each other liked, and what each other didn't like, it was really easy. I felt a lot of personal pressure, because as you say, he is someone I am influenced by, and have been a fan of, for a long time."

The collaboration for Artificial started as a trial, with some of the vocals already performed by Helen Tilley (who appears on Everything Changes and Burn), and given to Gary to experiment with; before long, he notched up four appearances on the album. The release comes after three years of on and off work, coming as a relief for Fenton, but still a bit "nerve-wracking." But why the reluctance to produce an LP earlier in his career? "I got into the DJing and the techno stuff I do, and I run a couple of labels, and then working on Gary's album, and then working on my album... it's just a case of balancing everything really, and doing as much work as possible but still trying to maintain my career and my income from the techno side of things, which I've been doing a long time."

The album is vastly different from last year's Atomic Jam EP, and the screeching loops are gone, replaced with dark melodies and grinding industrial electronics. Was this edge always being pushed? "There's a track on the album called Machine, and one called Truth, and I guess they've got sort of techno elements through them, but really this is a kind of complete new departure for me. It almost feels like the shackles are off, because I don't have to concentrate on the dancefloor: it's much easier like that." This may be a glimpse into where Fenton plans to take his career, perhaps further from techno, the genre that built his career. "It depends really, I mean there's only so long I can do the techno. The releases have always been there to support the DJing work - the more techno I put out the more gigs I get in more places. If that continues, then yeah, I'd like to continue releasing some techno, but time is a big issue."

Fenton is unsure if he has a favourite track of the latest addition to his body of work as it changes too often, but he concedes that for the moment that Slide Away, with its heavy rock presence, is up near the top. "I dont particularly listen to the album that much myself, because you're always quite self-critical, but I do like that track." Although it has been an 'industrious' few years for Fenton, he still doesn't see room in his schedule for any breaks yet, which is fine by him as he believes that it's "such a great way to make a living. If I get up tomorrow and I don't feel like going to the studio tomorrow, I won't go to the studio. It's lovely to have a job and have that choice. Having said that, we're having to work to timescales and deadlines, so it just depends, but certainly this year is going to be very, very busy." Don't go thinking that Fenton will be abandoning DJing however! The Atomic Jam residency that he has held for nine years has meant that he is "so affiliated with the club", which is coming up for its 12th Birthday this August, and he still loves the "whole process of getting on a place or whatever, and going to different countries and DJing is still something I really love doing; I don't want to stop doing that at all."

A partnership with a powerful figure within the electronic scene, such as Gary Numan, can only be good for a career, and Fenton has found out some of those advantages first hand: "It exposes you to a new set of fans I guess, and since then quite a lot of work has come in on the back of Jagged - some of which I've taken on, some of which I haven't, so it's been extremely helpful for my own career and that's obviously great as I'm able to reach a new area now, whereas before it was just the techno crowd. They're great and everything, but it's nice to be able to expand into different areas."