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.

Torch Song - “Prepare To Energize (12” Version)” from single of same name.

Before William Orbit became a known name later in the 80s, he was one half of Torch Song, the other half being Laurie Mayer. If you remember the 1984 movie Bachelor Party’s infamous donkey-on-drugs scene, this song is somewhat familiar. A much tamer, shorter version of this song was used for that scene.

This is the 12” version, which is mixed much more for the club scene than for the background. The bizarro electro-noise sounds that begin the track and start up at the 3:00 minute mark are quite ahead of their time.

Torch Song are still around today, now featuring former member of The Lines and known remixer and producer Rico Conning.

Mouse On Mars “Distroia” slowed to 33rpm + 6.8%.

This single blew me away when I first got it summer of 1999. It was more caustic and dry than their previous material, as much as I liked it. I was DJing IDM sets then.. “Distroia” fit in very well alongside Meat Beat Manifesto, Aphex Twin, Herbert, Phoenecia, and others.

I discovered later in the year, upon listening to the longer album version on Niun Niggung, that I was supposed to play the track at 45rpm, not 33rpm. This changed the track for me completely. I wasn’t into jungle as much as weird glitchy breaks dance music, so I never wanted to leave the slower “version” behind.

So I decided to bend “Distroia“‘s pitch down so that it simulated a 33rpm play, plus 6.8%, which is where I often pitched it when DJ’ing.

Enjoy!

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.