Art of Noise “How To Kill” from 1984’s Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise?

The Art of Noise (the band) were born out of a group of engineers working on Yes’s 90125 who got frustrated with the perfection demanded by said group. J.J. Jeczalik, Gary Langan, and Anne Dudley started messing around with the, then, brand new sampling synthesizer called the Fairlight. They made a lot of weird loops, sounds, and song snippets in between work. ZTT records’ Paul Morley became interested in this idea of marketing such an anti-group, as did producer (and former Yes frontman) Trevor Horn. A year later, this debut album appeared. Every track was different, ranging from novelty pop to odd and harrowing soundscapes.

For every “Close (To The Edit)” or “Moments In Love”, there was a darker counterpart. “A Time For Fear” was one. And this track, “How To Kill”, was another.

As part of the final trio of short tracks, “How To Kill” was sandwiched in between. In regards to IDM, it was the most accidentally ahead-of-its-time track on the album, especially in regards to the ambient chords and industrial sounding samples.

The samples may sound absurd and funny to most, especially today, but there’s a layer of sadness in this track that’s really hard to crack.

When I was 12, I made the mistake of listening to this track right after my family’s dog had to be put to sleep. “How To Kill” clarified too well what “putting to sleep” was like, and I started freaking out and bawling — the first time I ever cried over a dead pet. I’ll never forget it.

Art of Noise’s “Hoops and Mallets”, the B-side of their 1985 single “Legs”, later from the 1986 album In Visible Silence.

It makes sense to split discussion of the Art of Noise’s history between The ZTT era (1983-1985) and The China/Polydor era (1985-1989) 

The former was a reactionary, anonymous experimental troupe borne from frustration on part of the production team Trevor Horn hired to work on Yes’s 90125 album.  The latter was a settled production team that had achieved greater pop success under the shadows of celebrity frontmen, fictional or not — from Duane Eddy to Max Headroom (played by Matt Frewer) to Tom Jones.

However, the transition was arguably the most interesting period, which had the leftover humor, anger and causticity of the former era (“Legs”, “Slip of the Tongue”, “Instruments of Darkness”) side to side with the more coctail bar / jazzier side of the group hatching out more (“Eye of a Needle”, “Chameleon’s Dish”, “Paranoimia”)

“Legs” is the Art of Noise’s oddest single (not counting the screwed, more demonic sounding followup “Legacy.”), backed by “Hoops and Mallets”, an even stranger song that coincidentally foreshadowed the types of patterns, fragile sample sources, and stuttering rhythms that in the late 90s and early 00s would be classified as “IDM.”  The metronomic, break-filled clopping back by a literally monstrous bass sample gives way to 8-bit sounding ambient jazz synth chords.