ADE FENTON

As Gary Numan’s producer, Ade Fenton can take some credit in the electronic pioneer’s recent return to the top of the album charts. Here, Fenton reveals the process behind this collaboration and the multiple synths in his own setup: “I’m a massive gear whore with a gazillion plugins!”

After what Gary Numan himself calls his wilderness years, he has returned with something of a vengeance in recent years, scoring a hat-trick of top 3 albums – Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind), Savage (Songs From A Broken World) and his most recent release, Intruder. Indeed, Numan now commands the respect of a new generation of musicians and has sealed his status as one of the leading lights and pioneers of electronic music. If there’s one person – aside from Numan himself, of course – who can take some credit for this resurgence, it’s Numan’s right-hand man, Ade Fenton.

Fenton has been Numan’s producer on these recent albums and other releases, and has helped him redefine his previous synth sound to embrace a much rockier edge, albeit one as anthemic and often electronic as any track that Numan released in his 80s heyday. Fenton himself has enjoyed international success as both a solo artist and DJ, but has embraced this more recent production work as the second chapter in his own career. In fact, as Ade reveals, it’s almost destiny that the two started working together in the first place, as Numan influenced him so much in his youth.

“Going right back,” Ade recalls, “Gary Numan was the first music I heard which made me sit up and listen. That must have been when I was around 11 or 12 I think. I saw him on Top Of The Pops and the noises I was hearing were like nothing else. From that point on, all I was interested in was electronic music, even when it went through its rather twee stage in the mid to late 80s.”

The other side of synths

However, the ‘twee’ side of electronic music aside, it would be the second big chapter of electronic music that would really capture Fenton’s imagination.