Human (Gary Numan album)

Human is a 1995 instrumental album released by British musician Gary Numan and music producer Michael R. Smith. It consists of 36 tracks from the 75 that had been written for, but were largely unused in, the low-budget 1991 horror/science-fiction movie The Unborn.

Human
Studio album by
Gary Numan and Michael R. Smith
Released1995
RecordedOutland studios, England
GenreSynthpop, electronic music
Length62:48
LabelNuma
NUMACD 1013
ProducerMichael R. Smith
Gary Numan
Gary Numan chronology
Sacrifice
(1994)		 Human
(1995)		 Random
(1997)

Background

Numan recorded the music when he was signed with IRS Records, but that label refused to release it (ironically, in 1988, IRS asked Numan to record an instrumental album to be titled No Speak). In his autobiography, Numan described how the Unborn project came about:

The director of the film, Rodman Flender, was a fan of an old B-side, 'Asylum,' which he felt evoked exactly the right mood for the movie. Mike [Smith] and I saw it as a 'door opening' opportunity, as writing music for films was something I'd long wanted to do. We wrote well over a hundred pieces of music which we would regularly send off to Rodman in California. At first we didn't even have a script, so we just wrote things that we thought sounded a bit creepy. Then we got a very rough cut of the film, which helped a lot. Finally, Rodman came over and stayed for a while and helped us shape the final pieces of the music. The film was released later that year and came to the UK on video about a year or so later. I was very proud of the music and I was surprised IRS didn't seem the slightest bit interested in releasing it.[1]

Numan and Smith's music for The Unborn, written in early 1991, was later released as the album Human in 1995, through Numan's label Numa Records (it was the last commercially available release from Numa; Numan subsequently signed with Eagle Records in 1997).

Numan has described Human as "an hour-long collection of musical ideas, each with a specific mood or atmosphere in mind, not a conventional instrumental album."[2] Parts of some of the tracks have subsequently been used in later work by Numan.[3] "A Little Lost Soul" is a semi-instrumental version of the Outland track "Soul Protection"; "Embryo" became the Sacrifice track "The Seed of a Lie"; "Big Alien" and "Mother" are instrumental versions of the Outland track "Heart"; "Tidal Wave" became the Outland track "From Russia Infected"; and "Needles" became the Sacrifice track "Pray".

Track listing

All tracks written by Gary Numan and Michael R. Smith.

  1. "Navigators" – 2.12
  2. "Bombay" – 2.29
  3. "We Fold Space" – 1.10
  4. "A Cry in the Dark" – 2.45
  5. "Manic" – 1.36
  6. "Empire" – 2.19
  7. "A Little Lost Soul" – 2.41
  8. "The Visitor" – 1.09
  9. "Magician" – 2.12
  10. "Undercover" – 1.27
  11. "Halloween" – 1.13
  12. "Embryo" – 1.38
  13. "Elm Street" – 1.26
  14. "Harmonos" – 2.20
  15. "Big Alien" – 1.47
  16. "Blind Faith" – 1.09
  17. "New Life" – 4.01
  18. "Fairy Tales" – 2.52
  19. "Disease" – 2.22
  20. "Tidal Wave" – 1.21
  21. "Alone and Afraid" – 1.19
  22. "Sahara" – 1.34
  23. "Cold" – 1.41
  24. "Do You Wonder" – 1.31
  25. "Betrayal" – 1.01
  26. "Suspicion" – 1.03
  27. "The Unborn" – 1.59
  28. "Lethal Injection" – 1.43
  29. "Frantic" – 1.04
  30. "Mother" – 0.57
  31. "Black Heart" – 1.42
  32. "Thunder Road" – 0.34
  33. "Law and Order" – 2.02
  34. "Needles" – 2.27
  35. "Climax" – 0.35
  36. "Inferno" – 0.48

The 1994 CD release of Images - Eleven features clips of several unreleased tracks, namely:

  1. "Intro 4" – 0.31
  2. "Waiting" – 0.35
  3. "Chaser 1" – 0.30
  4. "Funeral" – 1.14
  5. "Sexomania" – 2.09
  6. "Asylum 2" – 2.26
gollark: Yes.
gollark: This is actually by LOC the biggest bit of potatOS. I don't actually understand most of the code at this point.
gollark: Do you not like the code?
gollark: https://pastebin.com/wKdMTPwQ L922-991 if you're curious.
gollark: It's all in with the rest of the metatable logic derived from but entirely incompatible with Ale's Hell Superset.

References
  1. Praying to the Aliens: An Autobiography by Gary Numan with Steve Malins. (1997, André Deutsch Limited), p.228
  2. Praying to the Aliens: An Autobiography by Gary Numan with Steve Malins. (1997, André Deutsch Limited), p.255
  3. Album liner notes
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