Art of Noise And What Have You Done With My Body (2006)

From pitchfork.com

This 4xCD set celebrates the work of Trevor Horn and Paul Morley’s early 1980s collective– a highly conceptual group that used primitive sampling technology to become pioneers of electro, hip-hop, and Latin freestyle and house.

Formed in the early 1980s from a collection of studio musicians (notably whiz producer Trevor Horn) and writer Paul Morley that would coalesce into the ZTT label (and give the world Frankie Goes to Hollywood among other delights), the Art of Noise were an instrumental electronic unit wrapped up in a bow of heavy yet cheeky conceptual art. Leaving aside its manifestos and jokes, which are undoubtedly a key part of the band’s appeal, these pasty English folks were pioneers of electro, hip-hop, and even Latin freestyle and house. (You’ll still catch “Beat Box” on many a U.S. urban station’s “Flashback Lunch” hour.) And What Have You Done With My Body God? is a new 4xCD box that takes pages from the group’s sketchbook of ideas, with something like more than 40 unreleased tracks.

The lead instrument in the Art of Noise was the Fairlight CMI, the first digital sampler. You can hit up Wikipedia for much more detailed info, but suffice to say it was an incredibly expensive instrument. In its final version, the 1985 CMI Series III, it went for about £50,000– all for features that you could get from a $400 yard sale PC today. As a result, it was used mostly by art rockers and big name studio techs and producers. (What’s most amazing is that technology was moving so fast that only a few years later digital samplers would be cheap enough to be democratized, leading to hip-hop and dance music’s sampling golden era.) Even a casual pop listener might recognize some of AON’s tics and noises, the vocal stabs and stuttering hooks it built its name on. (The “hey!” vocal hook off of “Close (To the Edit)” would make the band a little richer when sampled by the Prodigy for “Firestarter”.)

Already built on sampled drum breaks, ghostly choirs of multi-tracked vocals, and string loops, And What Have You Done sounds like the band never, ever left the studio, pushing a small handful of sampled elements into as many different shapes as it possibly could before it got bored or the money ran out. But despite the mad scientist nature of this creative over-abundance, the Art of Noise’s music isn’t cold or forbidding or boringly studio hidebound; it can even be lovely. The group’s masterpiece, “Moments in Love”, is a 10-minute new age make-out track built on floating motes of voice and shiver-up-the-nape-of-your neck strings, the kind of thing Harold Budd might throw in when it’s time to knock boots. It gets three re-workings here– including the 7″ mix on the Into Battle EP– not counting the tracks that feature just a sound or two plucked from it.

Much of And What Have You Done barely qualifies as “songs,” just a few minutes of a beat being fucked with– say, played up and down the octaves of the Fairlight or reversed and put through a filter. (There’s also some seriously creepy circus music, experiments for voice, and solos for keyboard.) And some of is just studio fuck-around stuff that no one’s life would have been any poorer had it stayed in the vault. But the sketchier tracks sound undeniably like first generation IDM– the early records of Plaid and Aphex Twin, winsome keyboard melodies over crunchy hip-hop breakbeats– obviously an important (and unheard until now) bridge between American street-level electro and the bedroom electronic producers of the 90s. As a document of digital creative thrift, four discs of unfinished studio experiments and obsessive self-remixing is amazing and exhausting. And now that computer beats are no longer the strange, alchemical art of pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain types, we’ll never see another band like the Art of Noise, for better or worse.

The Art Of Noise: Into Battle with the Art of Noise / Review (1983)

From superdeluxeedition.com

For a while back in the early ’80s Trevor Horn, Anne Dudley, Gary Langan and J.J. Jeczalik were just another group of musicians messing around with ideas in the studio. When journalist and copywriter Paul Morley (working with their record company ZTT at the time) presented an eight page manifesto defining the band and their guiding principles, The Art of Noise was born.

Morley became a critical part of the The Art of Noise, contributing ideas, song titles and taking control the band’s image and the presentation of the records.

Considering themselves an art-meets-pop project, a ‘hit’ record was not really on the agenda, but that is what happened in May 1984 when Close (to the Edit) hit the UK top ten.

For better or for worse, this adjusted their thinking with regards to the album that was in the planning, and the playful and meandering 18-track album (named ‘Worship’) became the more focussed and arguably more commercial, 9-track (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art of Noise.

ZTT/Salvo have brought together the unreleased Worship album, and the debut EP Into Battle, to form the 27 track compilation called simply Into Battle with the Art of Noise. Worship follows Into Battle on this new release so the running order of both is preserved.

The 9 track Into Battle EP remains essence of Art of Noise. You get a very early incarnation of Beat Box (unofficially known as diversion zero), Moments in Love (the one even Mums and Dads know, from horrible compilations with titles like ‘The Power of Love’) and the excellent Donna.

This is Into Battle‘s first correct presentation on CD, since it was included on the And What Have You Done With My Body God 4CD box set back in 2008. That set was pricey and is now out of print.  Into Battle did come out on CD via German label Repertoire back in 2003, but the wrong version of Beat Box was used rendering the whole exercise redundant.

It should be noted that the original cassette version of Into Battle featured a 5 minute edit of Moments in Love rather than a 10 minute version found on the vinyl. It is the cassette version which is included on this release.

So what of these Worship session tracks? The first thing to point out is that within the booklet is a photo of the original master tapes, with the song titles and running order on the boxes. This is important because it proves (if there was any doubt) that this album really was being prepared for release,  and was considered a coherent and self-contained piece of work.

If you already own their debut album, much of what is here will be very familiar albeit in slighty different form. Also, between Worship and (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art of Noise the band made the artistic decision to rename some tracks. This is not an issue when Worship remained unreleased, but now that it has been dusted down and brought out of the archives, it’s very confusing. Here’s an example: on Worship the track called Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise appears as How to Kill on the Who’s Afraid… album, and just when you thought you were on top of things the track on the debut called A Time For Fear (Who’s Afraid) is almost identical to The Movement Of Desire on the Worship album. Sign of Relief is Snapshot from the debut with 20 seconds of extra sampling at the beginning. And Momento on the debut is an edit of And What Have you Done With My Body God from Worship. Confused? You will be.

It would be easy to be cynical and claim that ZTT/Salvo are are guilty of repackaging the same music under a different moniker. In some ways this is true, but the redeeming aspect is that Worship is actually a remarkably successful collection of tracks that this reviewer enjoyed much more than the selection that became their actual debut album.

So although Into Battle is the headline act with it’s face on the front cover, the Worship album plays a longer set and steels the show.

There is one big caveat – the sticker on the packaging claims that this CD contains 18 previously unrealeased tracks. This is a bit of a joke to be honest, and really does need to be taken with a massive pinch of salt. As previously mentioned not only are some tracks virtually identical to renamed versions on the debut album but those that are ‘new’ in many cases can be found on the aforementioned 4CD Boxset. Diversions 5, Diversions 3, and Comes and Goes to name just three. This is even acknowledged in the CD booklet. Salvo/ZTT are being more than a little cheeky to claim this ‘unreleased’ status. If you do own the box set you will also already have the Into Battle EP too, appearing as it does on Disc 4.

However, the packaging of this release is impressive with due respect paid to XLZTT’s original designs and period photography. Unlike most of the recent ZTT/Salvo releases this is only one disc, so it is packaged slightly differently in a three-panel card sleeve. It’s attractively presented, although there is an unforgivable typo on the cover. Flesh in Armour reads as Flesh in Armous. Compiler and ‘curator’ Ian Peel does a good job in the booklet notes of explaining the timelines and the reasons behind the shelving of the Worship, however the notes are marred slightly by a few factual errors (the cassette edition of Into Battle was CTIS100 and not ZTIS109, for example).

If you do not own the Into Battle EP, or have an old vinyl copy that has seen better days, then you will not be disappointed with Into Battle with the Art of Noise. You get the wonderful EP plus much more. If you are interested primarily for the Worship album then as long as you do not expect something radically different from what you are already familiar with on (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art of Noise you will not be disappointed. It isn’t really that different. But it is better. And more fun. It’s also nicely remastered and competitively priced.

The Art of Noise: Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise (1984)

The quietus.com

A History of The Future. The Future becomes the present. The present becomes past. The past turns into a succession of years. Every, say, five of those years becomes an anniversary. Until we’re left looking and listening to – at what was very much at the time – The Future. This future sounded nice, interesting, a bit mad – all good. It also had a lot of the past re-shaped. This was what The Future was going to sound like: Fragments of the past chopped up, played about with, thrown into new forms. We had become accustomed to shock and wonder over the first half of the 1980s, and here, around about the midway point, was a new album. A manifesto (they were named after a 1913 Futurist manifesto). A new beginning (all the players had done time in showbiz – super-producer Trevor Horn, music journalist and ‘ZTT tea boy’ Paul Morley, composer Anne Dudley, engineer Gary Langan and programmer J J Jeczalik). Most of them had already worked together on Yes’ 90125, ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love and Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock.

Thrillingly inventive, reasonably danceable and full of interesting bits to laugh, love and dance to. Wrapped up in an enigmatic cloak of masks and spanners, essays about art and sculpture – a slightly sinister shroud for the people behind the curtain.

The fivesome were initially keen to be a non-group, hence the pictures of statues and the press shots with masks in scrap yards. There was no front-person, no lead singer to focus your attention on. Essentially the front for new technology, it allowed that old muso adage of letting the music talk for itself (man) and leaves it free of being carbon dated by whatever haircuts or snoods were du jour back then.

It was an extraordinary moment in pop music in general. Few people had harnessed the true potential – or could even afford – the Fairlight synth, with the likes of pop-boffins such as Peter Gabriel, Thomas Dolby, Herbie Hancock and Kate Bush being a handful of the early adopters, however within a matter of months there was cheap home keyboard samplers ahoy that allowed you to say “Bum” and repeat it annoyingly in different keys, and it would also lead to an influx of uses from the likes of the dance set, inspired by the cut-up nature of sampling and before long the like of M/A/R/R/S and S’Express were owning the charts.

Art Of Noise, or in particular, Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise, inspired a whole generation of dance acts that followed in the next decade or so – The Prodigy (who even share a writing credit with the band on ‘Firestarter’ after sampling the “HEY!” off ‘Close (To The Edit)’), Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Leftfield etc. It was also a key album for anyone interested in making music but couldn’t sing or because guitars hurt your hands. This was serious play. Excitement. Demented giddy anything-can-go excitement.

Of the nine tracks here, three key ones – ‘Beat Box (Diversion One)’, ‘Close (To The Edit)’ and ‘Moments In Love’ stand out. ‘Beat Box’ and ‘Moments In Love’ had their origins in the first release by the band, 1983s EP Into Battle With The Art Of Noise. ‘Beat Box’ had been originally recorded around the same time as the team worked on Duck Rock, and its monstrous crushing beat has since gone on to be something of a hip hop touchstone, and the single also claimed the No.1 spot on the American Dance Chart.

‘Moments In Love’ was a sumptuous elegant showpiece for Anne Dudley, engaging her classically trained skills for the least frenetic, but increasingly strange 10 minutes of the whole album. It’s 80s credentials exemplified by the knowledge that Madonna walked down the aisle to it when she married Sean Penn.

‘Close (To The Edit)’ was a distillation of ‘Beat Box’ into a single format. A single that could be played on MTV and, heh I’m showing my age here, The Max Headroom Show. With a repeated sample of the revving up of a neighbour’s VW Golf, and liberal borrowing from previous projects – the title was a play on Yes’ ‘Close To The Edge’ and also features a sample of their ‘Leave It’ tune, and the “To be in England in the Summertime…” was supplied by Jecazlik’s then partner Karen Clayton, who’d also rebuffed Martin Fry in ‘Poison Arrow”s spoken word moment. It reached No.8 in the UK in February 1985, leading the way for Who’s Afraid… to be snapped up by those who listened to the album medley on the b-side of the 7”. The sleeve of that contained a cut out voucher offering a then-colossal 50p off the album.

The rest of the album contains vignettes and tracks that have their origins on the Into Battle… set, mainly incidental music, or mediations of the themes already explored on the key tracks. ‘A Time To Hear (Who’s Listening)’ is more a collage of sounds and voices to enlighten the listener of what’s ahead and ‘Snapshot’ is exactly that.

Coming reissued and remastered, there’s a plethora of bonus features, with excerpts from BBC live sessions from the era, while the second disc is a DVD with short films, the videos to ‘Close’, ‘Beat Box’ and ‘Moments In Love’, some cinema adverts including a fantastic one with Kenneth Williams narrating. There’s also live footage from 1999 and 2000, almost a return back to the band’s post-Who’s Afraid… estrangement from Morley and Horn, when things went a bit tits-up and they started to collaborate with Tom Jones.

Now heading towards its 30th birthday, Who’s Afraid… is a brilliant racket of the then future that would enhance and influence the years ahead. For a band that never really quite got their due – the album hung around for a few weeks in the album charts, never getting higher than No.27 – this reissue re-establishes their aheadness and will continue to grow in stature as a key text of electronic music. Hey!

Art Of Noise Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise (Deluxe Edition 2011) (1984)

From pitchfork.com

The introductory video on the DVD half of this reissue talks about the legacy of the Art of Noise– mentioning Daft Punk, the Chemical Brothers, and Massive Attack. It’s easy to see why the group would be proud of such lustrous descendants, but it actually sells them short.

What’s interesting about Art of Noise– certainly the first phase of their project, which culminated in this debut album– isn’t so much their children but their parents. This was a pop band named after a 1913 art manifesto, deliberately aspiring to inherit the explosion of early 20th century conceptual creativity and make Futurists and Dadaists rub shoulders with b-boys and clubbers. The group’s own arch-conceptualist, music writer Paul Morley, apparently planned an album that would be a grand collage of the century’s sounds– what he actually got was an acrimonious split.

Morley may, in his words, have only “made the tea” in Art of Noise, but he dominates the visual half of this reissue: introducing videos, reading out essays onstage, continually playing the ideas man and provocateur even if his incessant wordplay’s an acquired taste. The group’s videos are proof that this apparent pretension came with a smart payoff. “Beat Box” is recast as the soundtrack to a city with lively, evocative footage of 1980s London cut to its rhythm.

“Moments in Love” mixes dancers and tortoises, grace and absurdity. And most famously “Close (to the Edit)”, the dream-logic realization of the group’s ideals, with a creepy punker kid commanding anonymous wreckers as they smash cellos and pianos to pieces.

“Close (to the Edit)” reminds you that Art of Noise were trying to be funny and sometimes scary– neither of them standard pop ambitions in 1984 or now. In fact, what’s striking about this album is the range of moods and effects it musters, while remaining an intensely playful record. It follows the savage, martial arrangement of Cold War bricolage “A Time for Fear (Who’s Afraid)” with a teasing version of “Beat Box” where the track’s purposeful electro keeps getting diverted by shiny new sounds.

On the title track, a snooty voice asks, “Can I say something?” and the music refuses to let it even say that, gleefully slashing the sample to ribbons. The album flirts with annoyance and even boredom– the way the stately, repetitive beauty of “Moments in Love” lulls you before unwinding itself into stranger places. But they could also be thrilling. Their immediate context was hip-hop, but their kind of funk– best experienced on “Close (to the Edit)”– has a brash rigor to it, calling to mind tireless pistons and marching feet.

“This limited circle of pure sounds must be broken,” Luigi Russolo wrote in the manifesto that inspired the band, “and the infinite variety of noise-sound conquered.” But the technological limits to sampling in 1984 meant that Art of Noise were stuck with a very finite variety of noise-sound, constantly worrying at and reusing snippets of samples.

The only problem with the many reissues of early Art of Noise is the group’s endless recycling of its two key tracks. “Beat Box”– of which “Close (to the Edit)” is a cousin– and “Moments in Love” were on their first EP, then issued as separate singles, appeared on every compilation, dominated this debut album, and now appear– counting the DVD– six times each on this reissue.

For diehard fans, the incessant tinkering is part of the fun– for listeners less caught up in the band’s process, it’s easy to get a little weary with the radio sessions and alternate video edits collected here. Stick with the core album and videos, though, and you realize the reason Art of Noise kept returning to these songs: Both are superb, anchoring a record that’s as sly, stirring, and occasionally infuriating now as it was on release.

Art Of Noise Daft (1984)

From amazon.com

Review With their combination of production wizardry, experimentalism and ability to make a hummable tune out of just about anything.

The Art Of Noise were as pretentious as their name suggests, but a whole lot more fun. This compilation takes in all the essential early stuff the group did on their original label ZTT – not only the whole of their first proper LP “Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise?” but also the pick of their debut EP “Into Battle” and a couple of (excellent) 12″ mixes of the classic “Moments In Love”.

The Fairlight sampler was the group’s instrument of choice (indeed the Art Of Noise were one of the first groups to bring the sampler to public attention) and their use of “found sounds” is ingenious and often surprisingly danceable, particularly on the breakout hits “Close To The Edit” and “Moments In Love”.

The fact that the latter track has appeared on a million “moods”-type compilation albums is testament to its sheer loveliness, but it is all too easy to forget what a brilliantly-constructed piece of music, and of art, it really is.

Hearing it alongside a selection of The Art Of Noise’s other work gives a whole new perspective on it, and reminds you that there is an underlying sinister-ness to it, all clanking prison chains and insistent “now! now! now!” hectoring.

This combination of beauty and cruelty is a common Art Of Noise trick, employed to good effect on tracks like the atmospheric “Realisation” and military-themed “In The Army Now” and “A Time For Fear”. Even their catchiest moment, “Close To The Edit”, misquotes poet Robert Browning’s “Home Thoughts From Abroad” in a distinctly unsettling way.

But lest anyone should think the Art Of Noise were all about darkness, it should be pointed out that there’s a lot of light here too – the joyful “Snapshot” (present in extended form) and the wonderful, endlessly inventive “Beatbox Diversion One” will put a smile on anyone’s face and a tapping in anyone’s feet.

On the down side, this material is nearly 20 years old now, and it shows. The experimental pop noise of yesteryear cannot be expected to still sound state-of-the-Art two decades on. Even so, it’s hard not to marvel at the imagination that went into this music. It may sound a little dated in the 21st century, but the beats still work, and when you hear “Daft” you know that what you’re getting is the true, original article.

Review There has never been another group like the Art of Noise, and all their best work is on this CD.

It includes the whole first album, with the original long versions of “Close To The Edit” and “Beatbox”, as well as the rare EP “Into Battle”, plus the lush remixes of “Moments In Love” that were originally released as a 12″ single. Sadly, the group rapidly went into artistic stagnation from the second album onwards (covering “Peter Gunn” was never going to rock the world), as they merely repeated their unique sound to less effect every time.

Even worse were the techno makeovers of their music in the 90’s, which bore no relation to the original style. Their remarkable and innovative genius is completely showcased in this must-have package.

Review This is an essential for the AoN fans of the older Zang Tumm Tumb days….it is actually a conglomeration of three records: Into Battle, Who’s Afraid, and the Moments In Love maxi-EP containing four versions of the fabled track.

I find it extremely convenient to have all these wonderful and timeless tracks on one CD, but I have one major quibble which prevents me from giving it all five stars: Why the absence of the original Beat Box? Since Into Battle is no longer available in the states, it is quite difficult to find the original version of Beat Box, and are left instead with the silly and long-winded “Diversion One” which is found on damn near every AoN compilation I’ve seen.

Luckily I have Into Battle on vinyl, but it would have been nice to have this one on digital. Overall, a must-have for the conniseur of fine electronic music and art-rock. The Art Of Noise meddle…the Art Of Noise bang and clang….. Between Jest And Earnest….between love and war….between now and then……Hummmmm along with the AoN!

Art Of Noise Drum And Bass Collection (1996) & The Fon Mixes (1997)the

From westnet.com

The Art of Noise are one of the most sampled bands in music history. Pieces of their work are found in some of the most popular music of the past 13 years (The Prodigy’s “Firestarter” comes to mind among many many others). Their beginnings in 1983 saw them as a faceless studio-bound vehicle for Trevor Horn, and their body of work created “…the blueprint for new styles of hip-hop and electro-rhythms” and became “…a crystal ball of hardcore technology”.

Now we come to the stage where the very people who were moved by AON’s early works to create on their own, come “home” and put their spin on the work of their mentors.

The FON Mixes are the hardcore’s response to their historical influences. Each original Art Of Noise track is re-mixed with a burst of energy from noted mixers like Mark Gamble, Youth and Richard H. Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire (using the pseudonym Sweet Exorcist).

On the FON CD “Peter Gunn” is mixed with “Dragnet”. It gets really campy and exaggerated using vintage Art Of Noise echoes and backbeat as it lumbers along. This Mark Gamble mix of “Peter Gunn” is as right-on representation of the original track, as his mix of “Yebo” is abstract. With its ominous beginning, and its blend of African chants with mechanized beats, there is not much of the original to be heard in this mix, which runs just short of two minutes.

“The Art of Slow Love” is brilliantly re-done by Youth starting off a bit like Primal Scream’s “Loaded” easing into a long, slow, sexy groove. Samples of “Moments In Love” are sprinkled throughout the track, seemingly reminiscing about the original AON track.

The Drum and Bass Collection tackles many of the same songs, but with a more textured approach. This collection features mixes from ILS, Flyright, Lemon D (from Metalhedz) and Lightfoot among others. I was not readily familiar with the work of these mixers, as many Americans will not be, but their work on this CD speaks volumes.

Flyright tackles “Peter Gunn” in a way that is diametrically opposed to Gamble’s (from FON). Completely unrecognizable as “Peter Gunn”, this track speeds along at a breakneck pace. There is no exact pattern or reason to this mix of the track, but that is what grabs your attention, and keeps it to the end.

The bassy meandering of Lightfoot’s almost-six-minute version of “Yebo” makes its numerous tempo changes with low-key grace. The levity with which ILS attacks “The Art of Love” is not at all like Youth’s ‘Slow’ version. It owes more to break-beat in the beginning, and its tempo changes plateau at an ambient groove.

The Art Of Noise has contributed a great deal to the music we all listen to. Getting your music from the very source of this genre will show you how it has developed over the years, and will allow you to pick out samples from this often credited group. Using the old AON albums as reference points and comparing the mixes is as enlightening as listening gets.

Art Of Noise In No Sense? Nonsense? (1987)

From starling.rinet.ru

Now this is not fair already. I loved them when they were hilarious and composition-oriented. I liked them when they were serious and composition-oriented. But now that they’re serious and oddbit-oriented, I find it damn hard to tolerate them. If Who’s Afraid was a gamble that actually paid off, then Nonsense! is a bluff so obvious that I find myself reaching for the candlestick.

They picked a Thickasabrickish approach with this one, streamlining all the tracks with practically no breaks between them (and the ones that are there are pretty blurry anyway), which essentially means that either you’re gonna have to attentively sit through this stuff several times with the track listing in your hands or you’re just gonna have to abandon hope and let it all stick together. I honestly chose the latter way after making the decision that I’d rather spend my time sorting out a few unclear click efflux correspondences between North Khoisan and South Khoisan dialects in the lateral/alveolar series – that is, doing at least something truly constructive. So excuse me if I only mention one or two titles here.

And excuse me if I put forward the hypothesis that choosing this particular approach for an album of sampling/techno experimentation was not a particularly sapient idea. Because, in the end, they got what they wanted. Is this record adequate? Yes. They took a big bunch of noises, samples, snippets of melody, added one or two “finished” tracks, and called it Nonsense. Because it is nonsense. It makes no pretense of making sense. But it’s not really the kind of nonsense that holds up well over the years.

It’s outrageously dated nonsense. It doesn’t do anything. You don’t dance to it, you don’t laugh to it, you don’t cry to it, you can’t even scream “Wow! Now that’s weird!’ at the top of your lungs because it ain’t any more weird than [insert the title of your favourite weird album here]. It’s just there. It’s that kind of modern art which comes up to you and says, ‘Hi! They say that as of today, I’m Art, nice to meet you!’, and you go ‘Uh-huh. Say, you got any idea where the restroom is?’ and you probably never meet again for the rest of your life, but at least you didn’t punch each other in the face or anything.

As usual, there is the obligatory one “classic” on here – the band’s reworking of the ‘Dragnet’ movie theme, which is, indeed, a fairly infectious electronic dance-pop number, although nowhere near as inventive as ‘Close To The Edit’ or gimmicky as ‘Peter Gunn’ (no Duane Eddy here to bridge the gap between the Old Guard and the New Por… err, Experimentators). When it jumps out at you after the one-minute sequence of lonely pipe sounds, it’s really a great Leap for Artofnoisekind, but, unfortunately, the only one. The tune goes on for three minutes, and once it’s over, you enter this twisted, complex jungle of whatchamacallits mixed with thingamajigs, and you never get out until thirty five minutes later.

Lemme make a quick check which might rev me (or you) up… so there’s a bunch of people loudly going somewhere… now there’s this loud sci-fi onslaught with annoying percussion booms… now there’s a bunch of Bach-like organ notes… the percussion onslaught is back again – what’s this, Mars attack?… ah, there it is, all quiet, somebody laughing in the background… hmm, sounds like the repetition of an orchestra… here comes something gloomy and unnerving, with a scary, but lazy bassline… what’s this, ethnic beats? bongos? stupid synth pattern, really… quiet again… something vaguely industrial chunking and bunking in the background… now there’s something cohesive – the orchestra actually starts to play… good… keep it up… that’s definitely not Art Of Noise, but I like it… classical music lovers please help me identify this… hmm, looks like they got the opening ‘Dragnet’ bit performed by the orchestra as well… somebody screaming and whooing… more of their trademark dum-dum-dumming and their favourite sound (starting up!)… now, maybe we can dance to this at least?.. nah, way too slow and the bongos are too quiet… plus, it’s got adult contemporary synth background… wait, now it actually starts to grow… still unclear if it’s a moody ballad or dance music… probably both… the piano sounds pretty good… they stopped… there they go again… false alarm… stopped again… started… wait, no, they let it slide… new rhythm… this one’s definitely danceable, but the melody sucks… the car starts up again… somebody please tell them there are other interesting sounds to be sampled apart from motors being revved up… nice bassline… sucky synths… slows down… end of side one… wait a minute..end of side one? I’m still waiting for something to happen!

Well, actually, side 2 is a bit better. I do like ‘Ode To Don Jose’ with its freaky synth melody and great idea of sampling (Dudley’s?) laughter several times before passing it through a “vocal grinder” for the last time. I’m also quite partial to ‘Roller 1’ which really does roll along, with a great pumping bassline and a “driving” synth melody which, in its own perverted way, actually rocks or, at least, gives the impression of going somewhere. (There’s also a few really cool bits of “generic” Eighties pop-metal guitar that’s given a mean wolfish howl in this setting).

And the last track, ‘One Earth’, with its crude, but working mix of insane yodelling with Eastern overtones and ethnic beats, gives us a glimpse at Art of Noise’s future dabblings in “world music”, as well as stands pretty well on its own as a cool moody interlude. But even these three tunes are still islands in a sea of noodling – sometimes crappy, sometimes tolerable, but always forgettable.

I do award them one extra point for the conception. On a purely ‘intellectual’ level, this variegated puzzle does look interesting, and even if most of its components were nothing new by 1987, the idea of glueing them together in this monolithic way was still fresh – most experimental people were still thinking in terms of individual compositions. And In No Sense does work better as a whole than as a sum of its parts; unfortunately, mostly because the parts themselves are so bloody weak. Or maybe I’m just imagining things and it would have worked better as a row of self-sustainable compositions, meaning that this ‘mosaics-like’ organisation principle is unsuitable for experimental music. But nah, I think they could have worked it out fine. What’s good for Jethro Tull could have been good for Art Of Noise. At least it’s way better than whatever Tull themselves were releasing that year. I’d much rather listen to ‘Dragnet’ than to ‘Steel Monkey’!

Art Of Noise In Visible Silence (1986)

From starling.rinet.ru

No Trevor Horn? Well, what’s in a name but a little-known Yes member who couldn’t even turn an album like Drama into a timeless masterpiece.

Turns out that Dudley & Co. can function as a functional function even without their spiritual mentor. There have been made subtle changes, though. And the subtlest change is the most painful: they don’t sound nearly as.. uhh… juvenile on this record. It’s darker and denser and at times, it’s fuckin’ serious. And it’s just not as captivating to hear an avantgarde record that takes itself seriously as hearing an avantgarde record that just goofs around with you.

If only for the reason that there’s way too many records that fall into the former category and way too few that fall into the latter. Still, it’s a good album, and as every good album, it grows on you from the minute you have firmly established that this just might be a good album. The big temptation about it was the single ‘Peter Gunn’, released at the same time and featuring Duane Eddy himself on guitar. Actually playing, not just sampled, unless I’ve got something wrong.

It was, of course, an excellent choice, and today, along with ‘Close To The Edit’, it just might be the most “quotable” AON track of all time. Eddy’s basic guitar riff is, of course, used as the spine for all the usual AON gimmicks – synth loops, electronic drums, sampled effects a-plenty and hilarious dum-dum-dumming vocals. Perhaps the most telling moment is when they actually try to reproduce the melody with a sequence of their favourite sound – that of the automobile engine revving up! That moment just got to be heard. And for the diehards, this new CD edition that I am reviewing actually adds an extended six-minute version of the track as a bonus (with Eddie muttering ‘oh you don’t think I should do one more?’ midway through).

However, great fun as it is, ‘Peter Gunn’ just isn’t very typical of the rest of this album – in terms of atmosphere, it hearkens back to the debut, and the only thing that it has in common with the rest of In Visible Silence is that it’s much more of a compact musical performance than any of the early numbers. Only the opening track – ‘Opus 4’ – is “anti-musical” (just a bunch of overdubbed Dudley vocals sounding occasionally not unlike a stoned Beach Boys outtake from the Smile sessions); most of the rest not only have rhythms, but actually melodies. And they’re much more openly danceable, too. In fact, ‘Paranoimia’ definitely has a disco glitz to it, although, of course, a weird one.

Keeping up with the tradition, much of the album’s second side is given over to ‘Camilla – The Old Old Story’, a moody, half-ambient (but rhythmic) instrumental that looks like the yonger sister of ‘Moments In Love’. In fact, it’s almost as good as ‘Moments In Love’, but lacks the major hook of that monster, and the 10cc/’I’m Not In Love’ connection turns out way too strong (those deep hushed vocals singing gibberish I can’t decipher are hardly a coincidence).

And then there’s ‘Instruments Of Darkness’, another huge epic that more or less matches its name – it is dark, starting from the ominous overdubbed political commentary throughout and ending with the sometimes almost Wagnerian “orchestral” whomps and swooshes. Maybe a ‘Hey! Hey!’ or a ‘can I say something?’ would help somehow alleviate the atmosphere, but instead of that, we only get proto-Rammstein yells of ‘come on!’.

If we prefer to speak in terms of catchiness, the best song after ‘Peter Gunn’ would have to be ‘Legs’ – an almost mainstreamish synth-popper… then again, wait a minute, I keep forgetting that at this time Art Of Noise pretty much were mainstream, right? Weren’t they supposed to be selling out the electronic underground and all? Well, on ‘Legs’ they’re doing it nifty fine, and it’s a terrible pity that so few Eighties’ synth-poppers bothered to study their approach – with numerous overdubs, diverse keyboard tones, and repetitiveness based on cyclic development rather than on… well, on repetitiveness.

There’s a whole slew of catchy moments on ‘Legs’, and the biggest problem is you’re gonna have to fish them out, just like you have to fish out the best 10cc hooks off their classic records – there’s just so many of them they can’t bring themselves to repeat them more than a couple times.

‘Backbeat’, in the meantime, rises to almost epic heights at times – it’s definitely ambitious, what with all the Quadrophenia-like synthesizers giving the track epic (or mock-epic) majesty it probably doesn’t deserve, but, to give them their due, they never really sound pretentious. You know, after all, that it’s all just one big quote, and that if sometimes the synthesizers swirl around in pseudo-violin phrases that really belong on ‘Love Reign O’er Me’, this is totally intentional. (The band’s Who fetish is pretty interesting, actually – remember the ‘Baba O’Riley’ sample? Hmm, could it be a masked tribute to Pete Townshend as one of the big “electronic sample” innovators of the early Seventies?).

All in all, the “Hornless band” are still going strong, but whereas that earlier 12 was afforded by me out of true inner devotion, this here 11 is afforded rather out of respect and curiosity (plus there’s ‘Peter Gunn’). That said, I can see where serious fans of AON and similar music could prefer this over the debut – provided they actually respect their idols more when they’re serious. Because, honestly, these are no longer naughty kids messing around with their dad’s electronic toys.

These are stern conceptual artists making some kind of point (although it’s hard to tell exactly what kind of point). And since I honestly believe that this kind of music is at its best when it’s openly silly, well, you get me drift here. ‘Peter Gunn’ is silly, so I love it. ‘Instruments Of Darkness’ ain’t silly, so I… uhh… feel it’s sorta respectable.

But really, this is a good album.

Art Of Noise Into Battle With The Art Of Noise (1983)

From amazon.com

Into Battle with the Art of Noise is the latest installment (No. 16, to be precise) in ZTT’s fine Element Series of reissues via the Salvo label. As with the Claudia Brücken collection Combined, the disc is packaged in a miniature gatefold LP sleeve.

The astute listener will notice that both the front and booklet covers contain a typo, with “Flesh in Armour” listed as “Flesh in Armous”. This is unfortunate, but perhaps this can be fixed with subsequent printings. On the other hand, the artwork is crisp and clean, unlike the 1999/2000 ZTT reissues through Universal, which had to rely on already printed material because, if I recall correctly, the original artwork for most of the early ZTT albums was lost to fire.

The re-created album artwork aside, the obvious point of comparison for this edition would be the 20th anniversary reissue released in 2003 by Repertoire. By most measures, the Element Edition (as the ZTT web site refers to it) of Into Battle is an improvement.

For starters, the original version of “Beat Box” has been restored to the running order, whereas the 20th anniversary edition contained “Beat Box (Diversion 1)” in its place.

The sound quality is much improved, in my opinion. The 20th anniversary edition was mastered at hotter levels, which, while not carried out to extremes utilized, did not exactly make for repeated listening. The Element Edition is mastered at more reasonable levels, and is consistent with other releases in ZTT’s Element Series.

Some folks will grumble, perhaps rightly so, that the cassette version of “Moments in Love” is used here instead of the full 10-minute version. However, the liner notes indicate that this is to avoid duplication with the forthcoming deluxe reissue of Who’s Afraid of The Art of Noise, which will include the full version.

Speaking of Who’s Afraid of The Art of Noise, that LP was apparently the result of changes made (to appeal more to a mainstream audience) after the unexpected single success of “Close (to the edit)”. Before that single became a hit, The Art of Noise had put together an album called Worship. That previously unreleased album is included here.

I was always somewhat disappointed in Who’s Afraid of The Art of Noise, particularly since I already had “Beat Box (Diversion One)”, “Close (to the edit)” (which sprang forth from “Beat Box (Diversion Two)”), and “Moments in Love” on other releases, and the new material included was mostly too short and not very interesting.

Worship, on the other hand, contains more new material, more varied material, and is both longer and more interesting. The interludes “One Finger of Love”, “Two Fingers of Love”, and “Three Fingers of Love” (which is *not* the same as the track on “daft” listed as “(Three Fingers of) Love”) are jazzy pieces dominated by strings, sax, and piano, and would have been quite unexpected from the group at that point in time. And “Confession” is actually kind of funky, relatively speaking. But we do still get more “Beat Box” – in the form of “Close (to the edit)” and Diversions 1, 3, and 5 (not in that order).

If Who’s Afraid of The Art of Noise was monochrome (as suggested by its sleeve art), then Worship is its more colorful counterpart. I assume that the album never got as far as the sleeve design, since the only related images shown in the booklet are the track listings from the master tape boxes.

The inclusion of Worship is a smart move on the part of ZTT, since Into Battle as presented here is also included in the 2006 box set, And What Have You Done with My Body, God? About a half-dozen tracks from Worship are also part of that set (though, as the liner notes point out, not yet placed in the context of Worship), but that still leaves 12 tracks that owners of said box will not already have. Since this edition of Into Battle is a single disc, that means the cost of those 12 tracks is not terribly outrageous.

In short, better sound, new liner notes, crisp artwork, and an album’s worth of extra material. Hard to go wrong with this one.

Art Of Noise Below The Waste (1989)

From starling.rinet.ru

Judging by the few bits of information I’ve managed to gather on this album, it’s not exactly occupying any of the top slots on the “Best of AON” list by any of their admirers, and it’s not difficult to see why.

If Who’s Afraid? represented the band in the days of their hooliganish youth, In Visible Silence saw them as slightly more responsible twenty-plus-year olds, and In No Sense presented them as almost ridiculously mature, ultra-serious philosophers of avant-pop culture, then Below The Waste is senility at work. Restrained, free from excesses, heavily influenced by both world music and the ever-growing ambient scene, it is the quintessential antithesis to everything that was Who’s Afraid?.

But goddammit, I like it – to the point of declaring it my second favourite AON record. If you’re looking for innovation and revolution, start looking elsewhere; and, come to think of it, it would be hard to imagine AON achieving anything truly revolutionary after shaking our worlds with their debut. They did try, that’s for sure, but it was nowhere near as funny or as exciting. On Below The Waste, they don’t even try.

Yet calling this record a disillusioned or uninspired sequel to the overblown In No Sense wouldn’t be exactly right either; this is not an “obligatory” sequel, nor do I feel any particular lack of inspiration. What I do feel is a sense of ‘getting back to normal’. From challenging, but essentially meaningless (both intellectually and emotionally) collages, Dudley & Co. move back to a more basic style of musicmaking, where each composition, be it innovative or conservative, is supposed to serve some particular purpose. And they stay there.

And it’s not a magnificent record, but it’s a well done one. The single here was ‘Yebo!’, an anthemic techno-meets-African-beat stomper on which they actually collaborated with African musicians; personally I find it as solid as anything they’d done earlier. Danceable, catchy, and – to our uncivilized European ears – quite funny. As far as its spirituality is concerned, hey, I’ll leave that up to your personal taste; my impression is that AON’s proto-techno noises don’t detract from the African essence one bit, nor do the moderately used generic Eighties’ metallic guitars. Later on, world music makes a return in the three minute ‘Chang Gang’, which is actually more techno than ethnic, but still manages to make sense.

What makes it hard to write about this stuff is that most of it is just ‘mood music’, not necessarily ambient, but very practical-oriented, if you know what I mean. ‘Yebo!’ might just be the only track on here displaying any kind of ambition. Elsewhere, ‘Catwalk’ merges a bit of ethnic chanting with a – for the most part – discofied backing track (disco bass, funky guitar, orchestration a la Saturday Night Fever, all the necessary requirements), meaning it’s totally inessential; but it does have a good melody. ‘Dan Dare’ looks like it wants to sound anthemic and universalistic, but never really takes off the ground or presents the listener with a glorious climax – instead, it just works as something you can comfortably relax to on a quiet sunny morning while sipping your Martinis on the front porch of your cozy little villa outside Honolulu, with the waves quietly rolling upon the golden beach and all… uh, sorry, wrong contingent here. Never mind.

I still have no idea why they decided to cover the James Bond theme – maybe the relative success of ‘Dragnet’ convinced them the trick was worth repeating. Well… on a certain level of perception, there’s nothing wrong with it. I likes me the James Bond theme, and if it comes to actually owning it on a non-Bond related soundtrack, Art of Noise certainly qualify as a good choice for performing the shit.

Again, there’s always the question of artistic integrity: obviously, you don’t need to be The Art Of Noise in order to cover the James Bond theme, especially not when you’re doing it in such a perfunctory and almost by-the-book way, with not even a single “can I say something?” along the way. But remember, we have already agreed to accept that this band here has nothing to do with the ‘classic’ Art of Noise, haven’t we? That it’s just a bunch of solid entertainers making intricate and entertaining, but hardly challenging music? Right? What do you mean, we haven’t? Just how much attention are you willing to spare whilst reading these reviews?

The only other track that got them some attention was ‘Island’, a sprawling New Age-y instrumental with lotsa soothing orchestration and pianos that sounded like it belonged in some sappy, but stylish sentimental drama along the lines of Sleepless In Seattle or whatever the equivalent of that movie was in 1989. Heck, this whole album sounds like a goddamn soundtrack, and I guess had it been a real soundtrack, it would have been received with a little bit more warmth. But I’ve always treated soundtracks with justice, I think (that is, every time I actually allowed myself to review a soundtrack, I mean), and this pseudo-soundtrack should make no exception.

In particular, I quite like ‘Island’. And I can even directly name one of the main reasons why I like ‘Island’: its stripped-down atmosphere. Yes, it’s sappy muzak, but it boasts none of these hoo-haaing “angelic” synthesizers that are the main plague of adult contemporary, and the main soft-jazzy piano theme is so fresh and so pretty I don’t see why I shouldn’t be aesthetically pleased with it.

Finally, if we’re gonna build our case on diversity, let’s not forget the “brutal” menace of ‘Back To Back’, with its gruff metallic riffs and pompous orchestral punches. Ain’t really memorable either, but in between the ethno-techno ‘Chang Gang’ and the Caribbean-flavoured ‘Spit’, it really works. As does the lightweight waltz of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ (!). Tee hee. In short, hey, I like this record. In fact, I can’t imagine how an album like this, with modest goals like these, could sound any better.

And it was an unremarkable, but honest way for the band to go out – after all, where are you supposed to be headed for after you’ve reached the senility stage?