Motivated by my latest cassette buying kick, I came across this Gem.
The Art of Noise,
in visible silence. Thinking to myself, "Wow Art Noise from the 80s!! Synthy experimental sounds! I'm there!" So I got the tape and popped it in the boombox at home. Geez I want my $0.49 back.... Most gawd awful General MIDI song quantized crap that I have heard in a while. But I guess some people
rave about this Band
on Amazon calling it their best work ever and saying that it ages well. 2 things can be learned from this:
1. Carry a tape player and batteries all the time. At least the batteries, cause tape players are found all the time at thrift stores so use theirs.
2. Anything that has a title which sounds cool, or looks like it is cool with pictures of robots or computers ( unless it is Kraftwerk) is usually lame, so spare the time and effort.
Motivated by my latest cassette buying kick, I came across this Gem.
The Art of Noise, in visible silence. Thinking to myself, "Wow Art Noise from the 80s!! Synthy experimental sounds! I'm there!" So I got the tape and popped it in the boombox at home. Geez I want my $0.49 back.... Most gawd awful General MIDI song quantized crap that I have heard in a while. But I guess some people rave about this Band
7 Comments:
At 9/21/2005 09:05:29 AM, 6955 said…
Hmmmm. Art of Noise was a pretty important band in the '80's, you might not want to be so quick to say they're crap. They were one of the first "mainstream" acts to use found sounds sampled from real life. "beatbox" was an important breakdance-era track (a *huge* song for me when i was 9 years old), "moments in love" was another important track for modern electronic music. "close to the edit" uses a ton of real-world samples, most noteably the sound of a car turning over.
granted, the tape you found is not the most revolutionary album they made. in fact, it's embarassing to think that i liked it (when i was 12!)
nowadays, their work is pretty dated, but remember: in the early to mid 80's, it was groundbreaking stuff.
check out the wikipedia page for more history and tech info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_Of_Noise
At 9/21/2005 12:41:07 PM, Master said…
Thanks for the post, I will have to give the Art of Noise another listen.
At 9/21/2005 01:00:59 PM, HERR PROF said…
the self titled record is better
seriously
there is a law that only the bands worst record will be found at the local htrift shop. I think it should be named "the gang of four rule governing thrift store crapulence"
At 9/21/2005 01:40:13 PM, solipsistnation said…
uuuuuh, yeah.
that's not their best album, for sure. If you can find the collection "Daft," that's worth picking up. Also their first album.
But they're really an incredibly important band. I'm surprised that somebody who seems to spend so much time doing this sort of electronic music stuff hadn't even heard of them. Most of what you like now, I'm guessing, owes at least a little debt to the Art of Noise.
At 9/22/2005 10:29:19 PM, David Kristian said…
Back then a lot of the Fairlight sounds used on the Art of noise records were quite fresh sounding. I was never a huge fan of their work, but they were one of the few pop bands with hits on the charts that didn't feature vocals.
They were also one of the first bands to sample other people's music, having pilfered the "icy skate stab" noise on "Moments in Love" from Tangerine Dream's Underwater Sunlight album.
The same noise resurfaces a few time on Chris Franke's score for Babylon 5, including the Season 4 main titles music; but that's OK, because he's the one who created it in the first place.
At 9/23/2005 06:47:26 AM, Phillip said…
Did you really think that an experimental art noise group woul have such high quality artwork/packaging, or that their cassette would be released on a major label?
Personally, I credit the Art of Noise with introducing me (in a way) to the Italian Futurists.
At 9/23/2005 11:19:58 AM, Master said…
well, Wendy Carlos' Switched on Bach was released on Columbia so I guess maybe a major record label could've decided to publish something experimental, on one of its subsideraries. However my main point is that what is considered Noise and Experimental Today, is way way way different from what was considered Noise and Experimental 10, 20, 30 years ago. I am not trying to dis Art of Noise by any means, they have accomplished alot more then I ever will just wanted to give everyone my first hand impression listening to it without any background into. Ofcourse I do realize the incredibly hardwork that went into making this album given the tech of the period. Thanks to everyone for awesome comments.
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