Telekon (45th Anniversary Expanded Edition)

Gary Numan’s second studio album TELEKON was released in 1980 and was his third successive #1 album in the UK. Gary refers to this album, along with its two predecessors, Tubeway Army’s Replicas and his debut solo album The Pleasure Principle, as the “machine” phase of his career. While it was hard to follow up the previous releases, Telekon proved to be hugely influential. Unlike its predecessors, Telekon had plenty of guitars, along with strings and lush synthesizer textures. Trent Reznor claimed to have listened to it every day during the making of Pretty Hate Machine.

Earlier this year, a visit to Gary’s archive allowed for a deep dig, and amongst all the treasures, unreleased Telekon material was found. We are thrilled to include four unreleased tracks on this expanded edition of Telekon. “Like A B-Film” is a completely unreleased, not quite finished track from the album’s sessions. The other three tracks are previously unreleased early versions of “Please Push No More”, “Aircrash Bureau” and “I’m An Agent”. Pressed onto double rainbow sparkle black vinyl, the album has been remastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road and includes revised artwork by Michael Speed at Beggars, who has frequently collaborated with Gary on his Beggars reissues. It also includes a replica of the original 1980 12-page Telekon tour booklet.

“Telekon has always held a rather warm place for me whenever I look back at the early years. I was very proud of it. I thought the production had moved up a gear for one thing. I was also proud of the fact that I’d not gone the commercial route and tried to repeat the formula and sound of “Cars” and “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” I was still trying to move forward, find new sounds. It was a reasonably bold stance I think, to not follow a safer, more formulaic path, as I suddenly had a lot to lose after the success of the year before.” – Gary Numan