for many this is not so much of an album or boxset, as an event.
the boxset comprising of 4 cds packed with music that defies description and categorisation, has been long awaited by the ztt collectors, and until its arrival on the shelves a few weeks ago, disbelieved to actually exist, due to one of the members of the bands love for erasing any such thing as a demo from the tapes. luckily though, a dig in the archives, literally by all accounts, means that these 40+ demos, remixes, and ideas have now been beautifully remastered for the digital age and packaged within a rather splendid book with all manner of nerd thrilling facts.
art of noise were, as has been written about everywhere, an 80s experiment in studio made pop music gone mad.
the various studio boffins involved and one journalist*, had already formed the studio basis for malcolm mclarens classic duck rock album, as well as making prog rock outfit yes palatable for the mtv generation. stepping out of the dayjob, these aural architects took an idea and stretched it until it snapped.
that idea was to use the ‘cutting edge but crunchy‘ fairlight cmi synthesizer and take the machine made noises into new dimensions such as ambient, hip hop, and and downright strange. while this wasn’t exactly a new idea, the way in which the results came together and form music that hit the radio and more importantly the charts, most certainly was.
throughout the music, there is a strong sense of humour as well as seriousness. to help matters, this sonic playground was supplemented by the emergence of the trevor horn associated ztt record label. a label willing to go along with just about anything, as long as it involved baffling the record buyers to the point of despair.
so, we had the constant references to the incidental series numbers littered across the mask adorned sleeves, press adverts, predating the whole pokemon ‘gotta catch’em all’ freakiness, making life hell for completists, and, then there was paul morley who dropped all manner of glorious wordy nonsense into the equation. not to mention the labels love for repackaging the music in slightly different sleeves in order to rob us collector scum of our pocket money once more.
of course in the short lived process the band happened to create 3 genuine modern classics that were to be resampled/recycled and used in tv documentaries until the end of time : moments in love, beat box and the brilliantly named close (to the edit) which appear in many many forms across this set.
the cds are split into various sets – the very start of noise, found sound and field trips, whos afraid .. goodbye, extended.
representing various stages of the studio sessions and even full proper 12″ versions that were sometimes on cassette only (the superb that was close megamix being a personal fave)
much of this boxset has never been heard before and to be honest, hearing the same beat box loops over and over may only be for those hardcore ztt/art of noise people, but for those of us that had the vinyl and cassettes, and can’t transfer the sounds onto our modern world portable music players this release really is manna from heaven.
official : ztt records
more detail : here
and as we know, god is in the detail.
* ann dudley paul morley trevor horn gary langan jj jeczalik