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Art of Noise

Started by 23 Daves, March 21, 2006, 01:46:43 PM

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23 Daves

Is anyone else on here a fan of the Art Of Noise?

The sad thing about appreciating their work is, of course, that there is a definite cut-off point where the material slides from superb to just plain mediocre, and the existing "Best Of" compilations aren't anything like picky enough.  It would take an absurd or just plain argumentative person to say that their first proper album "Who's Afraid Of...?" wasn't their best.  Inspired by the Futurist manifesto and by the concept that slamming doors, car engines and other random noises could be as much "music" as anything else, most of it still sounds marvellous today.  "Beatbox" to me is still a startling piece of work, fantastically energetic and just overflowing with ideas, and side two is flooded with strangely sinister, disturbing pieces of instrumental work that combine church organs with the sound of wounded men, cries of alarm and flocks of birds.  I'm fairly sure even Michael Jackson whooping is there somewhere mixed in with it all (then again, for a brief period when I first got the album I actually mistook one of the samples for my Dad yelling up the stairs, so this is probably unlikely.)

The presentation of the album was/is wonderful as well, with daft dada-ist poetry and prose all over the inner sleeve.  As Paul Morley wrote it there's a temptation to say he was being deadly serious, but it's far too jovial for all that.  Then there were the famous shots of the drama masks, and publicity shots of spanners, taken because "a spanner is infinitely more interesting than Howard Jones".

This really is their best work, and (to my mind at least) is actually a bridge between Kraftwerk and the KLF, taking the electronic experiments of the former (only this time on a Fairlight) and nudging towards the sample-frenzy leg-pulling nature of the latter, though I don't think the Art Of Noise actually sampled anything that landed them in legal hot water.  The Residents-style presentation of the band was fairly akin to the KLF's later stylings as well.

After Trevor Horn and Paul Morley were pushed out of the project, standards took a tumble with In Visible Silence, though that album is still good enough to warrant further investigation.  There's some wonderful work on it, like the oddly jazzy "Eye of a Needle", and the (slightly dated) "Instruments of Darkness", but somehow it all seems a tiny bit too much as if a sense of adventure has been lost – as if the blueprint has been established, and they now want to stick rigidly to it rather than exploring new paths.  Solo bits of mournful piano passages even make a return to the tail end of "Instruments of Darkness" in a very similar fashion to the fade of "Beatbox".  It's still a pleasure to listen to, though.

In No Sense? Nonsense is sodding dire in places, "Roller" being the total trough of their career – it sounds as if it belongs as backing music on "Out Run".  Someone might find some amusing eighties kitsch value in it, though... By this album they seemed to have forgotten what they formed for.  The samples are few and far between, and their ambitions appeared to lie much more in film soundtrack work.  Choirs and orchestras worked their way in, and it all went very eighties noo age.

Below The Waste is equally inessential. They worked with African musicians on this one and produced one fairly good Westernised African pop single in "Yebo!" but nothing much else worthy of mention.  The Ambient Collection is just a collection of their more credible recordings on China Records segued together by Youth, though isn't a strong starting point.

I must confess I haven't listened to their comeback album yet, but I do think their earliest work is strangely neglected and under-referenced these days, possibly because people have more of a tendency to remember their later rather embarrassing singles.  Oh, and Anne Dudley probably shot whatever credibility she might have had by happily working with Phil Collins and whoever else would hire her... I still think she's brilliant, though.

Moments In Love I really liked for a short while when I heard it, but I never managed to appreciate anything else by them. I like the idea of found sounds but because of the nature of electronic music it's been done to death much better since. Maybe I'm approaching them from the wrong angle (I am also very underwhelmed by Kraftwerk) but basically if it doesn't click with me, I'm not going to bang my head against the wall.

I think I just don't dig mid-tempo electronic music with really default synths and drum sounds. So shoot me.

sproggy

Ha, that reminds me of Mrs sproglette and I's smootchy wedding dance song, which was Three Fingers of Love.

I can still picture the WTF? expression on the guest's faces.

I remember they got back together a few years ago with the strange line-up of Paul Morley, Trevor Horn, Lol Creme and Anne Dudley. They even toured (what Morley did on stage, fuck knows)

What was that damn record they put out??????? I was tempted to buy it till I saw the shitty reviews.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Tonight on Radio 2 at 10pm:

Anne Dudley: Close to the Edit

1/3. Buffalo Gals

Anne Dudley had always been keen on music, with eclectic tastes. She discusses the music she loved when she was young, such as The Ugly Duckling and Anything You Can Do (from Annie, Get Your Gun). A student of the Royal College of Music, Dudley began her pop career as a session keyboardist with producer Trevor Horn.

Part one explores Anne's key role in the 80s, from Dollar to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, with Horn here commenting on working with Anne in the studio: "She'd come on a long way from being a quiet, serious girl that I first met. Anne's more of a daytime person than I am, and she never used to like working past six, six-thirty in the evening. She used to get grumpy."

Dudley provided string arrangements for ABC's classic album, The Lexicon of Love, and in the programme, she gives examples at the piano of The Look of Love and her keyboard introduction on Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Two Tribes. She also discusses her contribution on Malcolm McLaren's Buffalo Gals, an innovative early hip-hop record.

Anne Dudley sums up her career in the 80s:

"I think of the 80s, as quite an experimental time. We were striving to make each record sound amazing, completely original. Using sounds that had never been used before, to be groundbreaking."

23 Daves

Quote from: "The Boston Crab"

I think I just don't dig mid-tempo electronic music with really default synths and drum sounds. So shoot me.

I'll pass on the gun carnage, thank you.  Too messy.

I think the issue with electronic music is that a lot of the older stuff does get dismissed for being too slow (or "mid tempo", as you put it) or too cliched, but you don't tend to get people saying that kind of thing on here about comedy or rock music.  Elder statesmen of both those areas seem to be afforded respect either for the foundations they laid or just for the quality of the material itself.  So... the lack of willing some people have to listen to the Art of Noise, early Coldcut, and even some Acid House is something I find confusing.  Not frustratingly so, I never get annoyed when people don't share my tastes, but nonetheless I do find it peculiar.

For myself, I actually prefer a lot of eighties and early nineties electronic stuff, probably because there was a lot more of a conventional song structure in a lot of it than there is now.  Really, in all genres I tend to be a bit of a pop kid, looking for a fluent melody somewhere, or enough chops and changes to keep me interested.

If you don't like it though, fair enough I s'pose.  I don't much like Boards of Canada.  So shoot me.

As for the new album, TPP, I think it was called "The Seduction of Debussy".  I didn't buy it even when I saw it on offer in Selectadisc for #3.99, though, because I've already wasted enough cash on dud late period Art of Noise albums for one lifetime.  And yes, most of the reviews were dreadful.  I might try to download it at some point, though.

Almost Yearly

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"Tonight on Radio 2 at 10pm:

Anne Dudley: Close to the Edit
Good programme that. Listen again.

The Mumbler

The first album is phenomenally good, and I don't think it's overstating it to say I had a minor obsession with it when I was about 14.  I was enough of a fan to buy all the second album stuff too in 1985-86, but as early as the Legs single (the first material without Horn and Morley), I knew something was amiss.  The Peter Gunn single was fun, but it wasn't the same.   By the Max Headroom collaboration, I'd tuned out.  Diminishing returns after that - 23 Daves has already pointed out the formula that was followed from In Visible Silence onwards (Camilla - The Old, Old Story is a more soporific, less witty reheating of Moments in Love).  The fact that Lionel Nimrod's Krypton Factor parody used Close (To The Edit) rather than the AON's actual theme, spoke volumes.

Interestingly, Neil Tennant, reviewing Close (To The Edit) for Smash Hits in November 1984, regarded it as "tame" and a "big disappointment" after Beatbox and Into Battle.  It was my way in, though - especially the limited edition remixes (Close Up) that seem to end with Chris Barrie doing a Jim Callaghan impression ("Who's afraid of the Art of Noise...And I want to make this quite clear"), and another mix (Close Up (Hop)) that consists of mad screaming and clattering percussion.  I've even got the cassette single somewhere (Diversion Eight!).

Quote from: "23 Daves"
Quote from: "The Boston Crab"

I think I just don't dig mid-tempo electronic music with really default synths and drum sounds. So shoot me.

I think the issue with electronic music is that a lot of the older stuff does get dismissed for being too slow (or "mid tempo", as you put it) or too cliched, but you don't tend to get people saying that kind of thing on here about comedy or rock music.  Elder statesmen of both those areas seem to be afforded respect either for the foundations they laid or just for the quality of the material itself.  So... the lack of willing some people have to listen to the Art of Noise, early Coldcut, and even some Acid House is something I find confusing.

I'll stick my neck out: it's harder to infuse character into electronic music because by default it's more precise and WYSIWYG. It's easier to break down and pull apart piece by piece. I love a great deal of electronic music but much of it is about the thrill of hearing something genuinely new.

Since I started messing about 'making music' myself, I mostly just managed to shatter the mystique around some of my favourite house/hip-hop records, for example. When you find where the sample comes from, you can knock up an identikit copy in minutes (as long as you've got some beefy hardware and you can master it). I did however develop quite an appreciation for the likes of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, because, to put it bluntly: I don't know how they did it. (Boards of Canada, I also find mind-numbing, in a bad way)

In the end I'm similar to you in that I like a good tune to carry things along so if a track is very simple but effective, ok, it'll get my vote for a while but I don't expect to be listening to it in ten years. The oly thing in dance music which keeps me coming back really is a genuinely unique sound. For this reason, I've always been in love with the whole French house guys. All of their records, whether they be bassy discofied plodders or screeching abrasive techno trax, have a certain warmth which I can't resist. Everything bounces in just the right way, at just the right frequency to tickle my brain. I'm sure if I spent a day or two in the studio with Daft Punk or whoever it'd ruin part of it for me, it's mostly about getting the right settings! Even on a duff album like Human After All, I can still listen to almost all the tracks at any time, just because their sounds are so addictive.

Ok, gotta get brekkie.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Who did the 'Dum dum' vocals on Close to the Edit? As a child I had Morley's face in my head, but it obviously isn't him.

And is it Dudley who does the 'Hey' bits?

I loved that record anyway - a typical mid-80s 'What the fuck is this?' single.

I loved the fucking video of Close to the edit. To me, the video sums a lot of that 80s angst up.

Can't say I'm a fan of The Art of Noise but I found their work interesting. By the 90s, with the emerging talent and followers, Art of Noise really became redundant, although their early stuff still pisses on a lot of modern artists.

I've always had this fantasy that when/if I buy my first Bang and Olafsen hi-fi, I'll christen it with Close to the edit. Maybe not, it just makes me sound like some yuppie wanker.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

I was disappointed by the R2 doc - I'd hoped Dudley would be going back to old mastertapes, for a start.

I love the deconstruction of music, even though I don't really understand it - her description of changing the inversions on the Poison Arrow chords was fascinating, even though I have no idea what inversions are. Musicians playing well-known tracks on pianos and explaining why they work is one of my favourite things in the world. But there wasn't enough of that, really.

Ambient Sheep

Art of Noise?  Oh God, where do I start?  I have just about everything they ever did on ZTT - no mean feat, it wasn't until the early 90s that, in a Glastonbury second-hand record shop, I finally tracked down the last of the remixes of "Close-Up".  (By the way Mumbler, if you have any way of encoding a copy of Diversion Eight, I'd love to get my hands on it, as mine got partly eaten by an errant Walkman.)

A nice documentary that, even though I knew quite a lot of it; pity it wasn't longer.  Although I didn't know that the car was Gary Langan's, nor that Anne did the intro piano to Two Tribes though, but I should have guessed that.  Was really spooky hearing her playing those old songs "live" like that on her piano.  The other thing she didn't mention about the Fairlight was that it was only 8-bit sampling, so not only was it treble-cut by the sample-rate, but it all came out a bit graunchy as well.  They even said themselves - when doing "In VIsible Silence" - that the newer Fairlight Mark III (16-bit) sounded way too clean.

Any chance that someone could capture that show please?  

"In Visible Silence" was OK, but as has been said, it was mainly a retread (Camilla = Moments, Instruments of Darkness = A Time for Fear (Who's Afraid)).  I've often wondered though, if the title of "Camilla (the old old story)" was an undercover reference to Prince Charles' dalliances, years before the rest of us got to hear about them.

Quote from: "23 Daves"In No Sense? Nonsense is sodding dire in places
You're not kidding.  I've only managed to listen to it twice, and the second time was simply because I couldn't believe how bad it was the first time.  I gave up on them after that, and never even gave "Below the Waste" a try, although I hear that it's slightly better.

As for "The Seduction of Claude Debussy", forget it.  A friend lent it to me, and I turned it off halfway through.


Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"Who did the 'Dum dum' vocals on Close to the Edit? As a child I had Morley's face in my head, but it obviously isn't him.

And is it Dudley who does the 'Hey' bits?
I always assumed that they were both Dudley.  In fact I'm sure the "Dum"s are, I read an interview once that said that.  I always thought the "Hey"s were, until someone in GD cast doubt on that a few weeks ago.

Amusingly enough, though, until I heard that radio programme, I always thought the "Ah"s on "Moments in Love" were just a standard sample off the PPG Wave (which things like the main melody line in Into Battle's "Donna" and the soaring melody line about halfway through "Close (to the Edit)" were), rather than Dudley herself.

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"I loved that record anyway - a typical mid-80s 'What the fuck is this?' single.
Yeah...the sort of thing you just don't seem to get any more.

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"I love the deconstruction of music, even though I don't really understand it - her description of changing the inversions on the Poison Arrow chords was fascinating, even though I have no idea what inversions are. Musicians playing well-known tracks on pianos and explaining why they work is one of my favourite things in the world. But there wasn't enough of that, really.
No, I agree with all that.  Inversions, though, are fairly simple - it just means that you play the same notes for a given chord, but laid out in a different order up or down the keyboard.

So for a simple C Major chord you play C E G together.  For the first inversion of that, instead of playing the C at the bottom, you play the C an octave above instead... E G C.  For the second inversion you move the E up to get G C E.  Go up one step further, and you're back to C E G, but an octave up from where you started.  If you listen to that Poison Arrow intro again, you can hear her slowly crawling up the keyboard in that fashion.  Well I can, anyway.


Quote from: "Steve Thompson Dance Mix"I loved the fucking video of Close to the edit. To me, the video sums a lot of that 80s angst up.
Which one?  There were at least two (animated dancing masks, and Anne, JJ & Gary cutting up a piano), and I've heard reports of a third, although I think that that might just be the first two cut together.

Quote from: "Steve Thompson Dance Mix"I've always had this fantasy that when/if I buy my first Bang and Olafsen hi-fi, I'll christen it with Close to the edit. Maybe not, it just makes me sound like some yuppie wanker.
Nahhh, don't buy B&O.  Looks good, cool to operate, sounds like shit.  Get some decent seperates, like Rega/NAD/Arcam.


EDIT: Just read Wikipedia's entry, which implies that the "Dum" comes from a Yes track called "Leave It", and was originally a baritone!!

Also..."Four-fifths of The Art of Noise worked on the Yes album 90125, with Trevor Horn producing, Gary Langan engineering, and Anne Dudley and J.J. Jeczalik providing arrangements and keyboard programming. Many of the samples used on that album also appear on Into Battle." - I guess I'm finally going to have to crack and buy a Yes album now, aren't I?  I knew that at least some of them were involved (although not Dudley), but never knew about the samples.

By the way, seeing it mentioned in that Wikipedia entry, I can recommend Anne Dudley & Jaz Coleman's collaboration "Songs from the Victorious City".  Not mega-wonderful, but good stuff.

OH and I didn't know THIS: "The ZTT label continues to reissue old material, such as a remastered Into Battle... on CD (with bonus tracks) and a compilation SACD called Reconstructed. In early 2004, the Iris Light label released an Art of Noise tribute album, containing covers of various tracks, including a new version of "Beat Box" performed by J.J. Jeczalik under his Art of Silence moniker."  Shit...(although I knew about "Reconstructed")...

God, I'd really best stop, or I'll be here all night.  As it is I've seen several websites linked to from that article that I want to investigate...

Gazeuse

Quote from: "Ambient Sheep"Inversions, though, are fairly simple - it just means that you play the same notes for a given chord, but laid out in a different order up or down the keyboard.

So for a simple C Major chord you play C E G together.  For the first inversion of that, instead of playing the C at the bottom, you play the C an octave above instead... E G C.  For the second inversion you move the E up to get G C E.

You should be a harmony toot, Sheepy!!!

There is also the third inversion when you have a discord like C7 where the notes are C E G Bb. The Bb is used as the lowest note in this case. Abba use this in the second chord of 'Waterloo' and they resolve it properly down to the A which is the first inversion of the sub dominant (F).

23 Daves

I was always under the impression that the "heys" on the album were sampled from Paula Yates on The Tube, though don't ask me where I first heard this.  It could also be very wrong, since I have no proof whatsoever.  I just have vague memories of reading that fact somewhere a long time ago.

23 Daves

Oh, and... 23 Daves suddenly realised...

Years ago, I used to have a drummer friend whose tutor was Cosmo Jeczalik, the brother of JJ.  My friend was also an Art of Noise fan and attempted to get as much trivia from him as he possibly could, and amongst the bits I remember are:

* The ambient break on "A Time To Fear" was originally going to be a song in its own right called "Egypt" or "The Egyptian", but for whatever reason the band decided to crowbar it into "A Time To Fear" instead.

* "Snapshot" was manually edited on the album by someone pressing "stop" on the master tape when they decided that enough was enough.  It was apparently felt that the track in its original form was too tedious.  Interestingly though, it appears in its entirety on the compilation "Daft".

* The voice saying "Oh no... oh no I don't believe it" is Anne Dudley complaining wearily about some software malfunction.

Again, can't really verify any of these, but they sound likely.  Don't ask me to get in touch with my old friend to find out more, though - I'd rather not, as he was something of a psychopath who still seems to be under the impression that he has a score to settle with a friend of mine (Drummer?  Psychopath?  Never).

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: "Gazeuse"There is also the third inversion when you have a discord like C7 where the notes are C E G Bb. The Bb is used as the lowest note in this case. Abba use this in the second chord of 'Waterloo' and they resolve it properly down to the A which is the first inversion of the sub dominant (F).
I know...but I didn't want to confuse him.  :-)  I thought that was probably bordering on information overload as it was.


Quote from: "23 Daves"Oh, and... 23 Daves suddenly realised...
:-)  Much as I adore the work of Anne and JJ (and Gary, I suppose, I think of him less often because I never saw him interviewed), I do disagree with their scathing assessment of Paul Morley's contributions.  All that sleeve stuff was wonderful, and absolutely added to their art (as indeed it did to much of ZTT's stuff).

Quote from: "23 Daves"I was always under the impression that the "heys" on the album were sampled from Paula Yates on The Tube, though don't ask me where I first heard this.  It could also be very wrong, since I have no proof whatsoever.  I just have vague memories of reading that fact somewhere a long time ago.
Having now done a search on this, it was actually our very own Mumbler that said this here in SE (not GD) about a month ago, here.  As I said, I always assumed that it was Dudley's "Hey" put onto the Tube theme music, not the other way round, but now that two of you have said this, I'm starting to wonder.

Quote from: "23 Daves"Years ago, I used to have a drummer friend whose tutor was Cosmo Jeczalik, the brother of JJ.  My friend was also an Art of Noise fan and attempted to get as much trivia from him as he possibly could, and amongst the bits I remember are:
Dribble.  Pity you can't get in touch any more, but never mind, these are choice enough bits.

Quote from: "23 Daves"* The ambient break on "A Time To Fear" was originally going to be a song in its own right called "Egypt" or "The Egyptian", but for whatever reason the band decided to crowbar it into "A Time To Fear" instead.
What, the sad PPG Wave tune after the radio guy goes "So what happens now?"  Heh, that song was the soundtrack to the breakup of my first serious relationship.  She told me it was over, and I walked back to my house, Walkman on, with the guy going "So what happens now?" and the sad little tune.  Surprisingly perhaps, the association hasn't really lingered that much and I can listen to it now without pain.  :-)

That's interesting, anyway, especially in the light of the aforementioned "Songs from the Victorious City" which is all Egyptian stuff.

Quote from: "23 Daves"* "Snapshot" was manually edited on the album by someone pressing "stop" on the master tape when they decided that enough was enough.  It was apparently felt that the track in its original form was too tedious.  Interestingly though, it appears in its entirety on the compilation "Daft".
Hehe not surprised - because it does indeed cut off very abruptly, and if you time it (as I used to, for identifying mixes), it lasts one minute exactly.  Mind you, the full length version only lasts something like 1m20s, I forget exactly.  I didn't realise that "Daft" had the full-length version, but it wouldn't surprise me.  I first heard the longer version - under another name that I forget - on a Janice Long Radio One session (which I have somewhere on a VERY badly-recorded tape (bad reception)), which also had "Donna" and "Beatbox (Diversion Five[I think?])".  Before you get too excited, Diversion Five(?) was simply Diversion Zero (i.e. the Into Battle version) with a few extraneous noises.  Very little different.

Anyone ever heard Diversions Three, Four, Six or Seven?  I know I haven't, at least not knowingly.  Perhaps one of them is the Close Up (Edited) picture disc version (and that has to be one of the prettiest picture discs in the world, does it not?) - or come to that the other 12" mixes, Close Up, Close Up (Hop), Closely Closely (Enough's Enough).  Hey(!), that would make up the numbers, wouldn't it?!

EDIT: Um, then again, I remember a Diversion Ten, but I can't remember where I heard it or what it's like.  Can anyone jog my memory?  Was that on the singlette (Morley: "Anyone who calls this a cassingle will be shot.") too perhaps?  :TIDE

Talking of Close (to the Edit), aside from all those Close Up mixes, I also absolutely adore the 7" (and some 12"s) B-side "A Time to Hear (Who's Listening)" with the excerpts from the album.  In fact I remember being slightly disappointed when the album finally came along, because half the stuff in that track wasn't on it...

Quote from: "23 Daves"* The voice saying "Oh no... oh no I don't believe it" is Anne Dudley complaining wearily about some software malfunction.
Ah now that's not the story I heard.  I read a different version in an interview with JJ (conducted by Adrian <spit> Deevoy, I think), which went something like this, heavily paraphrased from memory:
QuoteAD: "Oh no, oh no I don't believe it." - so what does Anne not believe?
JJ: She was sitting at the piano, waiting to play, and Gary in the control room started playing back the loop of her saying "It stopped" [from "How to Kill"] in her headphones...and that was her response.
So there you go.  However AoN were well-known for arseing about in interviews, so I wouldn't treat that as gospel either.  I well remember when IMRW (International Musician & Recording World, RIP) magazine proudly presented their tech feature on how "Close (to the Edit)" was recorded.  Every month they'd do a breakdown of how some famous track was recorded, including interviews, and the multi-track listing sheet from the session.  As you can imagine, I was keen to read this (to put it mildly!) but the whole thing was a spoof (very unusual in that very serious magazine), the tracksheet contained patently ridiculous items, the only one of which I can remember now being two tracks marked "Satellite bounce delay return" or something like that.  Funny yes, but also infuriatingly frustrating.

Anyway, both stories could be true, perhaps - I'd always assumed the "It stopped" sample was an old one that Gary had just dug out, but maybe he'd just that moment recorded it after she'd said it regarding the aforesaid technical malfunction, then looped it and played it back at her.

Actually, if you listen very VERY carefully after the single piano note (an F, if I remember correctly!) you can hear some very faint talkback over her headphones before she says it.  And although you can't quite make it out, it doesn't sound like a loop of "It Stopped" to me, which lends credence to your version.  When I first got "Daft" I eagerly whacked up the CD volume, hoping to hear it...but sadly it seems lost in the quantisation noise...it was easier to hear on the vinyl version...must try it again with my decent headphones though (all in boxes, my life is lived out of fucking boxes).

On the subject of samples, apparently the footsteps in "Memento" are Anne Dudley walking across the stone floor of the church they recorded the organ in for that piece.  They went to the church with the idea of recording all this organ music, but the sound of her steps was so much more interesting, that they ended up just mostly recording those instead.  That's from the same interview, mind.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Am I right in thinking the single of Close to the Edit had a sound-dip right in the middle? I always wondered if it was deliberate, since it isn't present on Who's Afraid.

Some twat in Saturday's Guardian was grumbling about the Dudley doc, by the way, saying she was 'too nice' and talked about the music the way Delia Smith talks about eggs. I'll see if I can dig it out.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

Saturday March 18, 2006
The Guardian

Getting away with it

David Stubbs respects nice, but wants it shot anyway

Anne Dudley's favourite piece of music that she's worked on is Getting Away With It, by Electronic. This is ironic since, compared with the glamorous litany of artists with whom she's collaborated, including Malcolm McLaren, ABC, Pulp and the Pet Shop Boys, Anne Dudley has been doing precisely the opposite. Indeed, her accomplished arrangements and classically-trained playing have lent these artists an aura of finesse they could never have achieved alone. Without Anne Dudley, ABC's The Look Of Love would be a mundane sequence of chords plodding up a keyboard in search of a flourish. Without Anne Dudley, Buffalo Gals would consist of little more than Malcolm McLaren standing on a chair in a barn, clapping his hands.

"Unassuming" is the epithet attached to Dudley in Close To The Edit, a three-part profile on Radio 2 (Wed, 10pm), and unassuming she is. Giving the lie to the notion of women in pop pushed up front to add sexy sizzle but little substance, she's worked in the back rooms for over 20 years, revered by musicians but unheard of by many. Dudley's break came in the 1980s, when she met ZTT's Trevor Horn and became integral to his often Pygmalion-like production jobs on the likes of Frankie Goes To Hollywood. She cofounded Art Of Noise, whose experiments with early samplers, though they sound a bit boxy and primitive today, were a blueprint for contemporary pop, referenced directly by the Prodigy on Firestarter.

In 1984, Art Of Noise's avant funk saw them erroneously voted Best New Black Act by Billboard magazine. Dudley is one of the 10 least black people on the planet. On Close To The Edit, she discusses her formidable body of work in tones as flat and English as the Fens, like Delia Smith explaining how to make a souffle.

Dudley's mumsiness extends to her getting her pop history muddled up - claiming (modestly, naturally) she helped pave the way for Spandau Ballet. She also complains, in discussing her film soundtrack work, how loud movie helicopters and slamming doors are - did she not read the futurist manifesto from which Art Of Noise takes its name, extolling the enjoyment to be derived from "the noises of trams, backfiring motors and carriages"?

Dudley's status as unsung midwife of 1980s innovation is undoubted. Yet, come the cultural revolution, she will be up before the firing squad. Why? She's too nice. Too nice to say "no" to Tom Jones, and helping rehabilitate his bad joke of a career, arranging his version of Kiss. Or the makers of The Full Monty, a film she says "sounded awful" when it was first mooted to her. It was awful, Anne! Or Will Young, or any Tom, Dick or George Michael to whom she's lent her talents and prestige over the years like spray-on validation. Execution it is, then - though I doubt even the most hardened revolutionary would have the heart to pull the trigger.?

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"Am I right in thinking the single of Close to the Edit had a sound-dip right in the middle? I always wondered if it was deliberate, since it isn't present on Who's Afraid.
Not that I can remember!  Where were you thinking?  It's a different mix though to both the Who's Afraid mix and "Beatbox (Diversion Two)" from the original Beatbox 12".  The latter two are very similar, and people often think they're the same version, but they're not - one of them (I forget which, probably the album version) has an extra repeated section or two.  (I used to make breakdowns of how the various mixes fitted together, such was my obsession!)

Quote from: "Emergency Lalla Ward Ten"Some twat in Saturday's Guardian was grumbling about the Dudley doc, by the way, saying she was 'too nice' and talked about the music the way Delia Smith talks about eggs. I'll see if i an dig it out.
Gah, I wish you hadn't done that, I'll have to read it now, and it'll only make me very very cross.

EDIT: Ah, not as bad as I thought.  But my hitherto-immense respect for David Stubbs has just taken a bit of a nosedive, especially as I thought (although I could be wrong) that he championed early AoN.  He's right about Tom Jones though.

EDIT again: No, actually he's not (more nosediving) - because if he'd listened to the fucking documentary he'd learn that she asked him, not the other way round.  So she wasn't "too nice to say no to him", you arsehole, Stubbs.  Although if anything, she was worse, by actually asking him in the first place.

Gazeuse

Quote from: "Ambient Sheep"
Quote from: "Gazeuse"Dull harmonic info.
I know.
I thought you would...Like I said, you should be a toot!!! :-)

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: "Gazeuse"I thought you would...Like I said, you should be a toot!!! :-)
Just to clarify, I meant I knew what a third inversion was - I didn't know the stuff about "Waterloo", which was interesting, ta.  Abba music is very clever stuff, I'm not surprised some bloke managed to do a PhD on it.

The Mumbler

Quote from: "Ambient Sheep"Art of Noise?  Oh God, where do I start?  I have just about everything they ever did on ZTT - no mean feat, it wasn't until the early 90s that, in a Glastonbury second-hand record shop, I finally tracked down the last of the remixes of "Close-Up".  (By the way Mumbler, if you have any way of encoding a copy of Diversion Eight, I'd love to get my hands on it, as mine got partly eaten by an errant Walkman.)

As a ZTT collector, you will know this, but a remix 12" would often have the same cover and cat. no. as another one.  Close Up was the first 12" I bought, and I was slightly disappointed to find that it wasn't a straight extended version of Close (To The Edit).  A couple of days later, my friend Rob picked up a copy of Close Up, and found that the A-side was called Closely Closely.  Exactly the same sleeve, exactly the same cat. no.  

Then when I bought Beat Box (Diversions 1 & 2) a few weeks later, what's Diversion 2?  Close (To The Edit)'s first 12" mix.  (Which had about a minute shaved off for the Who's Afraid LP version.)

The cassette single of Close is at my mum's house, and lying around there as well somewhere is the cassette single of Moments in Love/Beat Box.


Quote from: "Ambient Sheep"OH and I didn't know THIS: "The ZTT label continues to reissue old material, such as a remastered Into Battle... on CD (with bonus tracks) and a compilation SACD called Reconstructed.

A word of warning about that: apparently, the version of Beat Box on there isn't the very first version from the original 12".  It's Diversion One, for some reason.

The Mumbler

Quote from: "23 Daves"The ambient break on "A Time To Fear" was originally going to be a song in its own right called "Egypt" or "The Egyptian", but for whatever reason the band decided to crowbar it into "A Time To Fear" instead.

A-ha.  ZTT's mid-price sampler album Sampled was released in October 1985.  I'm sure most people bought it for the unreleased Frankie track Disneyland.  Personally, I wanted it for the Beta remix of Propaganda's P:Machinery, but there's an excerpt from the Art Of Noise live performance at the Ambassador's Theatre in June 1985, where they're playing that very section from A Time To Fear, over which Paul Morley is talking about how "a spanner is intrinsically more interesting than the lead singer of Tears For Fears" (whereupon four people in the audience laugh).  The track only lasts fifty seconds.  It's called Egypt.

Incidentally, a Smash Hits review of the Ambassadors shows (all ZTT artists bar Frankie were involved) was critical of an "unfunny comedian", linking the show, who at one point threw sausages at the audience.  I have recently discovered it was none other than Chris Langham.

The Mumbler

Quote from: "23 Daves""Snapshot" was manually edited on the album by someone pressing "stop" on the master tape when they decided that enough was enough.  It was apparently felt that the track in its original form was too tedious.  Interestingly though, it appears in its entirety on the compilation "Daft".

Indeed it does.  The first version on Who's Afraid lasts exactly one minute.  And as my friend Rob said right away, it sounds like Baba O'Riley.

The Mumbler

Quote from: "Ambient Sheep"Snapshot: Hehe not surprised - because it does indeed cut off very abruptly, and if you time it (as I used to, for identifying mixes), it lasts one minute exactly.  Mind you, the full length version only lasts something like 1m20s, I forget exactly.  

I have the Daft CD here, and it lasts 2'32".

[/quote]
Anyone ever heard Diversions Three, Four, Six or Seven?  I know I haven't, at least not knowingly.  Perhaps one of them is the Close Up (Edited) picture disc version (and that has to be one of the prettiest picture discs in the world, does it not?) - or come to that the other 12" mixes, Close Up, Close Up (Hop), Closely Closely (Enough's Enough).  Hey(!), that would make up the numbers, wouldn't it?! [/quote]

Close Up (about 7'40" long) has got an absolutely brilliant piano solo by Dudley in the middle of it, and you can tell right away that it's a very different version from the opening, which is the car-starting sample with a lot of reverb.  Closely Closely is a much more faithful treatment of Edit, lasting 7'15", essentially being another extended version.  

[/quote] EDIT: Um, then again, I remember a Diversion Ten, but I can't remember where I heard it or what it's like.  Can anyone jog my memory?  Was that on the singlette (Morley: "Anyone who calls this a cassingle will be shot.") too perhaps?  :TIDE  [/quote]

Beat Box Diversion Ten was released as a double-A-sided single with Moments In Love on April Fool's Day 1985.   It's essentially an edited version of Diversion One.  Which starts with the piano F-key, and then edits down Dudley's intro to "Oh no, oh no I don't believe it" (the pause is cut down too).  At around the 3'30" mark, it cuts off abruptly, whereupon someone (not Morley, not Dudley, not Horn) says something like:

"Diversion 10.  I don't know if we can use some kind of scat thing...I don't know why we should just use words..."

Whereupon Dudley says something unintelligible (it's drowned in echo), and we cut to the Three Fingers of Love version of Moments in Love (which doesn't fade in).

[/quote] Talking of Close (to the Edit), aside from all those Close Up mixes, I also absolutely adore the 7" (and some 12"s) B-side "A Time to Hear (Who's Listening)" with the excerpts from the album.  In fact I remember being slightly disappointed when the album finally came along, because half the stuff in that track wasn't on it...[/quote]

Ah yes, A Time To Hear.  For the uninitiated this consisted of excerpts of Snapshot, Beatbox and Close (To The Edit), linked by some extremely peculiar vocal samples (didn't one of them go "ciao ciao cia-ciao"?!)

23 Daves

The thing with the facts I've quoted is they're typical Internet facts really... from a mate who had music lessons off a bloke who was the brother of a member.  Which I've then quoted here years down the line.  So it's possible they're flawed, and they should probably be treated with a pinch of salt.

It did occur to me when someone put those MI5/spy radio broadcast samples up in GD that they sounded like something that could have fitted between excerpts on "A Time To Hear (Who's Listening)?" as well.  Obviously that wasn't what they used, but it would have fitted the package oddly well.

Ambient Sheep

I'll bang in a quick reply to this here to get my next post on the dark-blue background, you'll see why in a moment.

Quote from: "The Mumbler"
Quote from: "23 Daves"The ambient break on "A Time To Fear" was originally going to be a song in its own right called "Egypt"...
A-ha.  ZTT's mid-price sampler album Sampled was released in October 1985.  I'm sure most people bought it for the unreleased Frankie track Disneyland.  Personally, I wanted it for the Beta remix of Propaganda's P:Machinery, but there's an excerpt from the Art Of Noise live performance at the Ambassador's Theatre in June 1985, where they're playing that very section from A Time To Fear, over which Paul Morley is talking about how "a spanner is intrinsically more interesting than the lead singer of Tears For Fears" (whereupon four people in the audience laugh).  The track only lasts fifty seconds.  It's called Egypt.
AHA indeed!!!  Nice spot, Mumbler!  Very nice spot indeed.  Yeah, I didn't buy it for "Disneyland", either.

By the way, I *am* one of those four people, as I recently revealed here.  You can hear a 20-year-old me, honking away.  Would now be a good time to say "Sorry for Laughing" <winky>...?

Quote from: "The Mumbler"Incidentally, a Smash Hits review of the Ambassadors shows (all ZTT artists bar Frankie were involved) was critical of an "unfunny comedian", linking the show, who at one point threw sausages at the audience.  I have recently discovered it was none other than Chris Langham.
Indeed it was.  "The Zangster" (as the compére was known) was supposed to be Chris Langham the first week, and John Sessions the second.  In fact it turned out to be Chris Langham throughout, Sessions having pulled out.  I bought tickets for the first and last nights, which were identical (not just Chris, but all of it).  I thought he was pretty good, myself, although some other bugger who'd obviously gone in both weeks too moaned "Oh no, not YOU again" when he first came on stage at the start of the evening.  There was quite a bit of heckling on the last night actually - when Langham announced "The Art of Noise" someone yelled "You mean Paul Morley".

Would now also be a good time to reveal that I still have my bootleg of one of those shows?  (Oddly, I can't remember which night.)  All on two SA-X90s as I recall, and probably not too difficult to find.  My only problem now is that I don't have a cassette-player...arrrrrgggghhhh...

Considerably more buried is the official programme.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: "The Mumbler"As a ZTT collector, you will know this, but a remix 12" would often have the same cover and cat. no. as another one.
Oh absolutely.  Although at least the labels changed between mixes - Propaganda's "Dr. Mabuse" didn't even do THAT as a rule, a total nightmare, you had to look at the matrix numbers to work out which mix you had.  Same with some (but not all) of the early FGTH "Relax" 12-inchers.  I became the bane of Parrot Records' existence, asking to see each bit of ZTT vinyl before I bought it!  "Nope, got that one."  "Yup, got that one too."  "AH!  Thank you, I'll have that one, thanks."

Quote from: "The Mumbler"Close Up was the first 12" I bought, and I was slightly disappointed to find that it wasn't a straight extended version of Close (To The Edit).  A couple of days later, my friend Rob picked up a copy of Close Up, and found that the A-side was called Closely Closely.  Exactly the same sleeve, exactly the same cat. no.
Initially I shared your disappoinment with Close-Up, before learning to love it.  Just for the record, here are all the Close-Up 12" singles I have, which I *believe* is the lot:
    A: 12 ZTPS 01 A-1U-1-1-3 = CLOSE-UP
nearly diversion two, nearly close (to the edit) but not really
B: 12 ZTPS 01 B-1U-1-1-2 = CLOSE-UP (HOP) really...
(On my copy at least, this version has a slightly-less glossy sleeve than the later ones, almost matte.)


A: 12 ZTPS 01 A-2U-1-1- = CLOSE-UP nearly diversion two, nearly close (to the edit) but not really
B: 12 ZTPS 01 B-2U-1-1- = CLOSE-UP (HOP) / CLOSE (TO THE EDIT) really...
(This is the one that I found in the early 90s, previously I'd only ever heard of its existence.  It came shrinkwrapped as a double with a "FREE" copy of "Beatbox (Diversions One and Two)" with the latter in a plain ZTT house sleeve.  Note that unlike the two "Closely Closely" versions, the A-side has had a new master made for it (2U rather than 1U).)


A: 12 ZTPS-01.A-3 THE TWO PENCIL MIX
B: 12 ZTPS-01.B-3
(A white label in a ZTT house sleeve, stamped on the A-side only with "The ART OF NOISE.  Extended Remixes o Close to the edit, Moments in Love, &A Time to Hear. 12 ZTPS 1".  From what I remember, it's simply "Closely Closely (Enough's Enough)" on the A-side and "A Time To Hear" and "Moments in Love" on the B-side, i.e. the same as the #4 version immediately below.  "THE TWO PENCIL MIX" was, like the matrix number, handwritten onto the vinyl.)


A: 12 ZTPS 01 A-4U-1-2- = CLOSELY CLOSELY (ENOUGH'S ENOUGH) 7.15 nearly whatever you want but never quite . . .
B: 12 ZTPS 01 B-4U-1-1- = MOMENT IN LOVE / THE TIME TO HEAR (YOU'RE LISTENING) 13.46 nearly whatever you think but never quite . . .
(However the B-side tracks are in the opposite order to the label, as indeed they are on the white-label version, and despite the title, "Moment in Love" is the full 10-minute version.  Quite disappointing - when I first saw the inter-track gap on the vinyl about 1/4 the way through, I assumed it was going to be the 5-minute "Into Battle" version - which I'm sure I've seen called "Moment in Love" somewhere (the cassette single of "Into Battle"?) - followed by a super-long remix of "A Time To Hear".  Ah well.)


A: 12 ZTPS 01 A-4U-1-1- = CLOSELY CLOSELY (ENOUGH'S ENOUGH) 7.15 nearly whatever you want but never quite . . .
B: 12 ZTP S 01 B-5U-1-1- = CLOSE-UP (HOP) 5.10 / A TIME TO HEAR (WHO'S LISTENING?) 3.32 nearly whatever you think but never quite . . .
(I actually have two copies of this, one bought more recently second-hand, and that has 12 ZTPS 01 A-4U-1-2- as the A-side matrix, which presumably just means a newer pressing from the same original.)


A: 12 PZTPS+01+A = EDITED Oh to be never the same as... daft as a brush (hush)
B: 12 PZTPS+01+B = A TIME TO CLEAR (IT UP) a concentrate of Who's Afraid of the Art of Noise it's a little beauty
(The picture disc, identified as 12PZTPSO1 (that's a letter "O" not a "0", presumably a typo) on the printing; the above were the (handwritten) matrix numbers.  If you haven't heard it, the A-side is yet ANOTHER "Diversion 2" / album-version / "Closely-Closely" style remix of "Close (to the Edit)", with a sort of fade-in synth intro, and the odd extra sample chucked in.  Mildly interesting, but not essential except to completists like me.  The B-side was simply "A Time to Hear" under another name as usual. :-) )


A: 13SI-277A 1 1 1 * = CLOSE-UP nearly diversion two, nearly close(to the edit) but not really
B: 13SI-277B 1 1 1 * = CLOSE-UP (HOP) / CLOSE (TO THE EDIT) really...
(A Japanese pressing, which, despite being on a plain Island label, retains all the amusing Morleyisms on the label, as you can see.  The same track-listing as UK version #2.  Sleeve the same but with the usual "lyric sheet" insert that you get on Jap releases.)[/list]Anyone know of any others?

Quote from: "The Mumbler"Then when I bought Beat Box (Diversions 1 & 2) a few weeks later, what's Diversion 2?  Close (To The Edit)'s first 12" mix.  (Which had about a minute shaved off for the Who's Afraid LP version.)
Yup.  I had the advantage of buying that first, so I wasn't so surprised.  Initially, by the way, I was told by my local very-well-informed record shop assistant that ZTT had said in no uncertain terms that there wouldn't be a 12" single of "Close (to the Edit)" due to "Beatbox (Diversions One and Two)" already being out there.  And they kept repeating that line until "Close-Up" suddenly came out.

Quote from: "The Mumbler"The cassette single of Close is at my mum's house, and lying around there as well somewhere is the cassette single of Moments in Love/Beat Box.
Yup, I've got that one (unmangled, I think).  I suppose I should try "other means" for getting "Close" first, before bothering you.

Quote from: "The Mumbler"
Quote from: "Ambient Sheep"OH and I didn't know THIS: "The ZTT label continues to reissue old material, such as a remastered Into Battle... on CD (with bonus tracks) and a compilation SACD called Reconstructed.
A word of warning about that: apparently, the version of Beat Box on there isn't the very first version from the original 12".  It's Diversion One, for some reason.
Yes, after I wrote that, I followed a Wikipedia trail to its entry.  Contrary to the main Wikipedia article, there don't seem to be any bonus tracks on the CD, and they warn about Beatbox not being "Diversion Zero" as they call it (heh, I used to call it "Diversion Nought" myself, great minds think nearly alike).

I think I need a little lie-down now.  That took me so long to do (in Notepad) that I got logged out of here in the meantime.  I'll be back to tackle the Moments in Love 12-inchers later, I think I've just discovered something interesting...


elephants are very big

Ambient Sheep

Heh, looking at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sean.cranham/aon/1984.htm he has two promos that I don't have:

Quote12 ZTPS 1
Close To The Edit
Moments In Love
A Time To Hear

ZTT/Island Records
(Promo)
Note "12 ZTPS 1" not "12 ZTPS 01".  This combination never made it onto any of the main releases.  And...

Quote12 ZTPS 1
Close-Up
Close-Up (Hop)

ZTT/Island Records
(Green Label Promo)
Which was obviously for 12 ZTPS 01 version 1U.

In his list of the main releases, he only has the 5U and 2U versions (listed in that order), not the 4U version or the 3 white-label of it.

By the way, the story behind the many mixes was - so I heard - that people indeed got upset that they bought the 12" 1U of "Close (to the Edit)" and didn't get anybody going "Dum".  Hence the inclusion of the 7" on the 2U version.  However that still didn't go down well, hence the invention of "Closely Closely" for the 3/4U version, which also had "Moments in Love" on the B-side.  Then they decided that they'd be putting out the latter as the next single, so 4U was hurriedly withdrawn and replaced by 5U that had "Close-Up (Hop)" instead...ta-dah!


EDIT: My GOD, I've just found this and I think my head is about to explode...before I really do stop looking at this thread for tonight (so "Moments in Love" will have to wait, I'm sorry), just a few linkys from that...

http://www.discogs.com/release/532334 - 1U
http://www.discogs.com/release/609262 - 4U
http://www.discogs.com/release/29003 - 5U
http://www.discogs.com/release/201838 - Picture Disc (which says that the B-side also has "Close-Up (Hop)" on it , which it does, I forgot).
http://www.discogs.com/release/373582 - Japanese

But again no 2U version apart from this Portuguese version - seems no wonder it took me ten years to find a copy!

And yeah, it is on "Into Battle" (both vinyl and cassette) that you can find a 1m25s version called "Moment in Love" - that's what I thought was on the 4U disc of "Close-Up" at first.

Wow...look at this, a 1983 USA release of "Moments in Love", with two versions at 7m00s and 4m40s (neither any version I know of!) and two of Beatbox (3m51s, 5m41s).  Dribble...

And how about THIS - an ALTERNATIVE UK 7" of Beatbox, that clears up so many things in one paragraph:
QuoteThis record has the same catalog number as the 12" single containing Diversions One and Two. Diversion Six is the same as Diversion Ten; it is a radio edit of Diversion One. Diversion Seven is an edit of Diversion Two, but is slightly different from the mixes that were released as "Close (To The Edit)". It is completely different than the live remix of the Into Battle version that was introduced by Paul Morley as "Beat Box (Diversion Seven)" during a 1984 appearance on BBC Radio 1.
Wow.  I knew that the original Beatbox 7" (here) was the one thing definitely missing from my collection, but I'd never heard of THAT one before...

...that just leaves us with Diversions Three, Four & Five.  And me with a large headache (seriously, from eyestrain).  Paracetamol and off the 'puter for a while, I think...