Gary Numan & Ade Fenton: A Perfect Circle

Gary Numan and Ade Fenton 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.

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."

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. 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."

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."