About this Art of Noise
Part studio experiment, part pop group, part time, part play, part considerate,part pioneers, part theory, part science, part art.
Art of Noise first appeared to appear in 1983 with a song in their heart, a beat in their soul, and an ignition key in their hand. Formed at a time when the reverberations of punk, post-punk and new wave could still be felt, they were determined to be a different kind of group, a group that set themselves outside the then currents of fashion and style, a group that were the missing link between The Monkees and Talking Heads, ABBA and Kraftwerk, Frank Zappa and The Archies.
They took their name, like all the best pop groups from Soft Machine to The Velvet Underground, from a book. A book about Italian futurism. Influenced by the likes of Kraftwerk, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Terry Riley, Miles Davis, Todd Rundgren, Marvin Gaye and Tangerine Dream, they considered themselves futurists in the sense that they were interested in the future, in making the future a better place, in the technology of the future, in turning up in the future, in sounding like they belonged in the future. At their first group meeting on February 2nd 1983 they decided that: they would never appear in their videos, they would not have a lead singer, they would never officially finish off a track, they would use technology to liberate the imagination, and they would be represented in photographs by spanners, roses and Sigmund Freud. Read into that what you will.
Canon
1983: Into Battle with the Art of Noise
1983: Beat Box
1984: Close (to the Edit)
1984: Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise?
1985: Moments in Love
1985: Legs
1986: In Visible Silence
1986: Peter Gunn, with Duane Eddy
1986: Paranoimia, with Max Headroom
1987: Dragnet, with Arthur Baker
1987: In No Sense? Nonsense!
1988: Kiss, with Tom Jones
1989: Yebo!, with Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens
1989: Below the Waste
1991: Instruments of Darkness, with The Prodigy
1999: Metaforce, with Rakim
1999: The Seduction of Claude Debussy
2000: The Reduction of Claude Debussy
2006: And What Have You Done with My Body, God?
2010: The Art of Noise Influence
2014: Art of Noise Live at the End of a Century
2015: Art of Noise at the End of a Century