Electronic Music Introductions..discuss (1 Viewer)

[andrew markworthy]

One more I Love that I do not think has been mentioned is the Art of noise

I think it depends which period of their career you're thinking of. The oringal album ('Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise?') is amazing, but IMHO I thought they got progressivley less interesting with the subsequent albums. Latterly there have been a number of remix albums using their tracks, but to be honest, by that stage I'd lost interest.

One of the leading lights in Art of Noise is Anne Dudley, who of course has had a very good career as a film and TV composer (hard to believe that she could write AoN stuff and the theme tune to Jeeves and Wooster!).

 

[Zen Butler]

I cannot remember the composers name but his sound track of the film the Mission

If you speak of the film The Mission , that was Ennio Morricone , not electronic, but man I love that score also

 

[Andrew Chong]

I love the Art of Noise! I enjoy listening to everything they've released that I'm aware of. It used to amaze me how they could manipulate noise to be in tune with their more conventional instruments. It's a shame they split up (don't know why). J.J. Jeczalik made a bunch of albums after the breakup though I haven't seen them anywhere locally. Anne Dudley had great notoriety for the (non-electronic, non-Art of Noise style) score to "The Full Monty" for which she won the Best Original Score Oscar. I don't know what Trevor Horn or Gary Langan are up to.

Back in the day, the AoN were really gung-ho with the use of sampling keyboards. Included in their kit was, if I recall correctly, the Fairlight C.M.I. (which was an instrument I wish I owned; man, that seems like such a long time ago!) that was used to play car ignition noises and human noises as musical phrases on a keyboard. "Close (to the Edit)" has great examples of the car ignition noise and the vocal "dum" noises and other interesting noises.

They had successful collaborations with Duane Eddy (twanging electric guitarist extraordinaire, "Theme from Peter Gunn"), Tom Jones ("Kiss"), Max Headroom (Matt Frewer) ("Paranoimia" remix), the Fat Boys ("Roller 1", which was also used in the film 'Disorderlies') and the Mahotella Queens (an Afro-Pop singing group, "Yebo!"). John Hurt served as 'narrator' on "The Seduction of Claude Debussy" album.

With each successive release, they seemed to move away from noises played as musical phrases and more toward ambient noises though maintaining the group's spirit of noise within music, their art. I guess they wanted to be more mainstream. Their latest, marking a reunion of sorts, "The Seduction of Claude Debussy" with J.J. absent, has more contemporarily electronic sounds without going so far as to be classified techno.

edit: punctuation