Classic_Pop_Issue_30_July_2017

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D

ecades before

Deadmau5 and Daft

Punk, (The) Art Of

Noise were mask-

wearing Fairlight-pop

avengers, comprising

arranger Anne Dudley,

engineer Gary Langan,

programmer JJ Jeczalik,

producer Trevor Horn

and journalist Paul Morley.

After issuing 1983’s epochal

Into Battle EP and 1984’s debut

album (Who’s Afraid Of?) The

Art Of Noise for ZTT, Morley and

Horn – the brainiac wing, aka

the Lennon of the piece – split,

leaving the tuneful axis alias the

McCartney to soldier on as a de

facto Wings for China Records.

They may have lost their

cerebral dimension, but they

certainly enjoyed a commercially

successful afterlife via their 1986

album In Visible Silence, which

included two hits – No.12 single

Paranoimia and Peter Gunn

featuring Duane Eddy, a Top 10

UK entry and Grammy winner –

the latter sold a million copies.

On this 2CD version of AON’s

second long-player you get the

album plus rare mixes as well as

edits and previously unreleased

material – no fewer than 26 extra

tracks beyond the original vinyl

LP. Remastering sessions were

overseen by Dudley, Jeczalik and

Langan, who recently reformed

briefl y at Liverpool Sound City for

a live ‘reboot’ of the album.

Post-Morley/Horn, AON were

less conceptual art terrorists than

novelty technoid popsters. The

music remains less forbidding

and probably more fun albeit not

quite as groundbreaking.

It’s musique concrète you can

move to, all found sounds and

taped voices used as keyboard

notes – technology employed

in the service of bright, catchy

melodies. Highlights include Peter

Gunn, which marvellously marries

the ancient and modern, Eye Of

A Needle, with its reconfi gured

crooner vocal, Backbeat with its

chopped-up snippet of Chic’s Le

Freak, the reworking of Beat Box

that is Legs and Camilla – The

Old, Old Story’s seven minutes of

sighing and synth trills, essentially

Moments In Love revisited.

Of the rarities from the

China vaults, amid the

(per)versions of Peter Gunn, Legs

and Paranoimia, there are several

goodies. Hoops And Mallets

is pop as a series of dextrously

deployed abstract effects,

Something Always Happens

features the child’s plaint, “The

Art Of Noise is weird”, and Why

Me? is all big electric bassline

and merry clatter. As Ian Peel

says in the sleevenotes, The First

Leg is “the sound of this AON

coming out of the shadow of that

AON.” Happy Harry’s High Club

is busy and bustling, like Robert

Palmer’s Looking For Clues on

steroids. Chameleon 4 is a catchy

cavalcade of beats and hooks,

Beddoo-Bedoo is infuriatingly

infectious, Trumpton Boogie is

would-be wacky kids’ TV music

and Panic is metalbashing meets

pop, like Einsturzende Neubaten

having a row with The Archies.

It’s not all non-stop lunacy: A

Nation Rejects is three minutes

of twinkling loveliness, ending a

collection of perkily synthetic –

and danceable – robotronica.

Paul Lester

THE ART OF NOISE

IN VISIBLE SILENCE

WARNER MUSIC

THE SOPHOMORE STUDIO ALBUM FROM SEMINAL CUT-AND-PASTE SYNTH-POPPERS GETS THE

BELLS AND WHISTLES REISSUE TREATMENT INCLUDING RARITIES AND REMIXES

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REISSUES

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