Art Of Noise Archive

There’s a telling moment during the bonus material included on this long-overdue reissue of Art of Noise’s 1984 debut where, interviewed by the BBC’s Richard Skinner during a live session, Paul Morley, the band’s director, advises his colleague Anne Dudley: “Don’t tell the truth!”

Art of Noise were all about mystery: the five-piece, normally photographed behind masks, were formed as an ‘abstract’ group by ZTT masterminds Trevor Horn and journalist Morley (credited as playing “paper”) alongside ZTT studio mainstays Anne Dudley, JJ Jeczalik and Gary Langan. Their music was essentially a collection of sound collages built from samples processed by the brand new Fairlight synthesiser, including such diverse sources as Horn’s former band Yes and recordings of a car engine. The artwork they employed – the ZTT aesthetic taken to its extreme – was also deliberately bewildering, with, for example, lyrics included for what is essentially an album of instrumentals. With Art of Noise, you see, the magic wasn’t in who made the music, or how they did it: the magic was in the not knowing.

Remarkably, this debut was accessible enough to spawn hit singles, including Close (To the Edit) – arguably the only record ever to include the sound of a VW Golf stalling as its central motif – and Moments in Love, soon afterwards employed by Madonna for her wedding to Sean Penn. Both still sound remarkable: the synth tones may be overly familiar, but the bravado of Close (To the Edit) remains intact, as does the strange allure of its disembodied vocal samples; and Moments in Love – in all its 10-minute splendour – may be one of the most romantic tracks of the 1980s (rather than, as Morley describes it, “the sex song of the 20th century”).

Beat Box, too, had proven influential in the development of hip hop when released in its original form a year earlier, but elsewhere Who’s Afraid… was a fascinating but dizzying rush of ideas and noises adorning a largely familiar pop framework, a smuggling of avant-garde ideas and technology into the mainstream. Richard Skinner’s enthusiastic questioning underlines just how inventive it was for the times, and one can only wonder what contemporary pop-pickers, lured into Art of Noise’s world, can have made of the frenzied cut-and-paste of the title-track or the deeply atmospheric How to Kill, built around little more than sound effects and a voice repeatedly intoning “It’s stopped”. A bonus DVD confirms the brazen attempts at disorientation extended beyond the records themselves, with different versions of promotional videos, Morley’s attempt at a live performance to compensate for Dudley, Jeczalik, and Langan’s departure from the ‘band’ two weeks earlier, and Kenneth Williams providing voiceovers for TV advertisements. It’s provocative and playful, even a quarter of a century later. After all, who needs truth when you have the Art of Noise?

Wyndham Wallace

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. Originally published on BBC Music.

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Weirdomusic Review: Art of Noise – Influence
Buy Art of Noise CDs from Amazon.com
Art of Noise – Official Website
Art of Noise @ Wikipedia
Art of Noise @ Last.fm

Art of Noise. If ever there was a band/concept/thing that was so completely brilliant in its essence, and reached its apogee with its first album, it’s them/it. Their debut, Who’s Afraid of the Art of Noise, encapsulated everything in its nine tracks. If they’d vanished immediately afterwards, it would’ve been a Never Mind the Bollocks-style statement of when hip hop met Dadaism and rammed the Fairlight centre stage while japing around with masks and spanners. It spoke of the beginning of a whole new world during the mid-80s, during the period between the post new-pop fall-out and seriousface issues-based stadiumness. It was of its time and yet still way ahead of it.

Influence sees the band – who were essentially composer Anne Dudley, multi-instrumentalists JJ Jeczalik and Gary Langan, along with producer Trevor Horn and journalist/ZTT minister of information and spin Paul Morley, and later Lol Crème – chart their journey through their hits on disc one and throw up bits and bobs from their cupboard of rare things on disc two. Naturally, the early hits are all here: Close (To the Edit), Moments in Love and Beat Box, and then it proceeds consecutively through difficult second album In Visible Silence with the previously-never-on-CD Legs getting an airing and the impressive Duane Eddy hook-up of Peter Gunn. Then it gets a bit sticky; Paranoimia with vocals from Max Headroom is none-more-80s, and the less said about the reanimating of Tom Jones for a version of Prince’s Kiss – taking it from a subtle saucy funk to a blustery strip-night horror should’ve been punishable by death – the better. They did recover some form with the Rakim-assisted Metaforce and its accompanying album The Seduction of Claude Debussy, but the early magic wasn’t quite there anymore.

The second disc, with its unreleased mixes, experimental scraps, John Hurt narrations and doodahs, is pleasant enough, but you do sense that a lot of incredible stuff has been left off due to either being lost to time or – hopefully – because it’s being saved for a colossal repackage of the debut. However, let’s not dwell on the negatives: this is a handy overview of an amazing yet frustrating band, and there’s more genius on display in its first few tracks than some acts manage in a lifetime. If that encourages today’s pop generation to explore and develop new music, then Influence will have done its job.

Ian Wade

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. Originally published on BBC Music.

Back to reviews
Weirdomusic Review: Art of Noise – (Who’s Afraid Of) The Art of Noise (Deluxe Edition)
Buy Art of Noise CDs from Amazon.com
Art of Noise – Official Website
Art of Noise @ Wikipedia
Art of Noise @ Last.fm