A single that could be played on MTV and, heh I’m showing my age here, The Max Headroom Show. ‘Close (To The Edit)’ was a distillation of ‘Beat Box’ into a single format. It’s 80s credentials exemplified by the knowledge that Madonna walked down the aisle to it when she married Sean Penn. ‘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. ‘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. ‘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. Of the nine tracks here, three key ones – ‘Beat Box (Diversion One)’, ‘Close (To The Edit)’ and ‘Moments In Love’ stand out. Demented giddy anything-can-go excitement. It was also a key album for anyone interested in making music but couldn’t sing or because guitars hurt your hands. 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.Īrt 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 an extraordinary moment in pop music in general. 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. ![]() There was no front-person, no lead singer to focus your attention on. The fivesome were initially keen to be a non-group, hence the pictures of statues and the press shots with masks in scrap yards. 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. Thrillingly inventive, reasonably danceable and full of interesting bits to laugh, love and dance to. Most of them had already worked together on Yes’ 90125, ABC’s The Lexicon Of Love and Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock. 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). A manifesto (they were named after a 1913 Futurist manifesto). 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. This was what The Future was going to sound like: Fragments of the past chopped up, played about with, thrown into new forms. This future sounded nice, interesting, a bit mad – all good. Until we’re left looking and listening to – at what was very much at the time – The Future. Every, say, five of those years becomes an anniversary. The past turns into a succession of years. ![]() ![]() The Art of Noise: Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise (1984)Ī History of The Future.
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