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THE (ST)ART OF NOISE
 The Art of Noise were formed after Gary Langan and J.J. Jeczalik started to sample a drum riff that had been scrapped by Yes. The two of them were working with Trevor Horn on the Yes album 90125. It was the first time that an entire drum riff had been sampled on a Fairlight sampler using the then new Page R that allowed the programmer to sequence anything that had been sampled. Langan then played what they had done to Horn who thought it was fantastic before Anne Dudley got roped in to provide the melodies after Langan and Jeczalik started things off. They recorded things in their spare time as they all had day jobs, Langan – a producer/engineer & Horn’s right hand man, Jeczalik – a computer programmer, Dudley – an arranger/keyboard player and Horn – a producer. They were all part of Horn's production team and had all worked together the previous year on Malcolm McLaren’s Duck Rock album as well as on ABC’s classic masterpiece The Lexicon Of Love.
They had all learnt a lot from McLaren’s attitude of ignoring the rules of music and mixing stuff up and seeing what happened. It was at this time that Horn was setting up a record label with his wife Jill Sinclair and ex-New Musical Express journalist Paul Morley. Morley became the fifth member of the group although not as a musical member, his role was to inject ideas, write sleeve notes, and name the tracks. He originally named them the Art of Noises taking the English translation of name L’arte Dei Rumori from the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo’s manifesto. However it was Jeczalik who actually named the group the Art of Noise as he decided to drop the ‘s’. From another Italian Futurist, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Morley took the title of his sound poem Zang Tumb Tuum (ZTT) and used it as the name for the new record label.
After the manager of Yes told Horn that the band weren’t happy with the mixes for the album, he began going through the demo tapes of what the Art of Noise had recorded so far. With the help of Bob Kraushaar he complied the nine track EP Into Battle With The Art Of Noise that became the Art of Noise’s debut release as well as being the first ever release by ZTT in September 1983. A decision was made that the Art of Noise should become a faceless outfit although this led to confusion in the USA when they were awarded Best Black Act of 1984. Beat Box was the track that everyone went crazy over and boosted the EP to number one in the dance charts in the USA. Moments In Love made it’s first appearance on that record too, along with The Army Now that sampled the Andrews Sisters. Nobody had ever heard a record that had been created using cut and paste techniques before or an instrumental love song with the sound of hammers being hit instead of the sound of a drum. Art of Noise soon gained a huge cult following in the USA that has remained to this very day.
1984
Beat Box (Diversions One and Two) [UK: #92] was issued in March in the UK. An edited version of Beat Box (Diversion Two) was issued in the USA as Close (To The Edit) in May of the same year. The single was accompanied by an award winning video directed by Zbigniew Rybczynski that was regarded as too violent by some as it showed traditional instruments being smashed up and cut up with chainsaws. The infamous intro to Beat Box (Diversion Two) & Close (To The Edit) came about after Jeczalik had asked some people to ride their horses past his home so that he could record them. After he & Langan had listened to the tapes the sound that got their attention was his neighbour’s Volkswagen Golf stalling and restarting. In June the debut Art of Noise album was released entitled (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art Of Noise! [UK: #27], four months before it was released in the UK. It featured Beat Box (Diversion One), the US 12” of Close (To The Edit) along with the full length version of Moments In Love. A Time For Fear (Who’s Afraid) opened the album and sampled the story of the US invasion of Grenada (pre-dating Paul Hardcastle’s hit 19), Who’s Afraid Of (The Art Of Noise) featured doors slamming and the sound of rulers being twanged. In November a second version of Close (To The Edit) [UK: #8] appeared with a new animated video directed by Andy Morahan.
1985
It was around that time that the idea of the Art of Noise being a faceless outfit began to fade. The second 1984 video of Beat Box had Morley introduce the video and showed Horn behind a turntable. The Japanese issues of Into Battle With The Art Of Noise and (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art Of Noise! included a large picture of Horn. The media began to credit everything to Horn and Morley, which began to cause tensions within the group as Morley was responsible for all the press releases and marketed the group as a concept. With only two days notice, Dudley, Jeczalik & Langan appeared on the cult Channel 4 music series The Tube and were left to perform their set behind their masks with Morley being interviewed by Jools Holland. When it came to Top Of The Pops, Jeczalik, Dudley and Langan removed their masks to perform Close (To The Edit), they also appeared in the third video version of the Close (To The Edit) and in the video for Moments In Love [UK: #51]. Things came to ahead when nobody at ZTT noticed that the Art of Noise’s contract had expired. Dudley, Langan and Jeczalik decided not to appear at the ZTT Ambassador’s Theatre shows as there wasn’t enough time to prepare, leaving Morley to improvise on stage and announced that they had been shot.
 After that Dudley, Jeczalik & Langan signed to Derek Green’s label China Records where they would go on to have greater success leaving Horn, Morley & ZTT behind. Work began on a new album and in October their first single for China Records, Legs [UK: #69] was released with a track that wouldn’t appear on the album, Hoops And Mallets. It was from that moment on that the media began to realise that Horn and Morley weren’t the Art of Noise, only a part of it and began to give Langan, Jeczalik and Dudley the credit they deserved.
1986
March saw the release of Peter Gunn [UK: #8], and featured their first guest artist, legendary American guitarist Duane Eddy who had already had a hit with the Henry Mancini composition in 1959. This new version was recorded in Dudley’s living room (according to Langan in a radio interview conducted in 2006), and entered the UK singles chart on 22nd March, remaining there for nine weeks. Like their previous single, Peter Gunn featured a track that wasn’t included on their then forthcoming album. Jeczalik told Mark Jenkins in Melody Maker how Something Always Happens came to be: “On the B-side of the 7-inch we were just kicking ideas around and we heard that the Space Shuttle had blown up and it became a very sad, laconic piece. That was chance, the intervention of fate, it wasn’t meant to be like that, but we were very happy with it in the end because it summed up what we felt at the time.” That interview was conducted while Jeczalik & Dudley were preparing for their appearance on The Tube. On the show they performed Peter Gunn with Eddy along with a live band, minus Langan who was producing a Spandau Ballet album. In addition to that they also performed two other tracks Opus 4 and Paranoimia from the upcoming album. The promotional video for the Peter Gunn single was directed by Matt Forrest, produced by Nina Robbins, edited by Nick Robson, Chris Stone and featured comedy actor Rik Mayall in the lead role as a private detective.
Their second album In Visible Silence was released in April and reached number eighteen in the UK charts, nine places higher than their debut album on ZTT. The album was more melodic and structured than its predecessor. The opening track Opus 4 was based around a poem called November by Thomas Hood in which lines of the poem were repeated into a vocal rhythm before being accompanied by keyboards, the closing track Beatback, a reprise of Backbeat, rounded off the album in an energetic way. Like their previous album, this one also contained three singles, Legs, Peter Gunn and Paranoimia, which would later be released as an entirely different version to that on the album. The remaining tracks on the album: Eye Of A Needle, Slip Of The Tongue, Instruments Of Darkness, a powerful piece highlighting apartheid in South Africa, Camilla – The Old, Old Story, an ambient house masterpiece and The Chameleon’s Dish were all highlights in their own right.
On 21st June, a new version of Paranoimia entered the UK singles chart with Max Headroom as guest vocalist. The single enjoyed a nine-week chart run, peaking at number twelve and was accompanied by one of the Art of Noise’s most memorable videos directed by Matt Forrest featuring Max Headroom on a hospital trolley. This collaboration with Max Headroom came about after the Art of Noise were commissioned to come up with a new theme tune for the second series of The Max Headroom Show. In the USA the album In Visible Silence was deleted and replaced with an updated version with the original version of Paranoimia being replaced with the extended version featuring Max Headroom. Again the single contained a track not included on In Visible Silence entitled Why Me? on all formats and yet another entitled A Nation Rejects on the 12” singles. As well as providing the new theme tune for The Max Headroom Show, Art of Noise also provided a new theme tune for the long running show The Krypton Factor before heading off on tour of the USA, Japan and ending at the Hammersmith Odeon in London.
Late October saw the release of the single Legacy [UK: #95]. It was a re-working of their 1985 single Legs with a slower tempo and a heavy bass line which transformed the track into a continuation of the original track rather than a remix. It became a hit in the USA, reaching number forty five in the Hot Dance Club Play charts. The video featured footage recorded from the show at the Hammersmith Odeon. The single was taken from the album Re-Works Of Art Of Noise that was issued in the UK as a bonus LP with In Visible Silence in early December, and issued as a separate album in other countries. The album also featured the single of Paranoimia along with the extended version of Peter Gunn along with three live tracks Legs, Paranoimia and Hammersmith To Tokyo And Back that were also taken from the show at the Hammersmith Odeon. Also in December, ZTT issued “Daft” an expanded edition of (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art Of Noise! with tracks taken from their debut release Into Battle With The Art Of Noise along with tracks from the Moments In Love 12”.
1987
 Art of Noise were reduced to just Dudley & Jeczalik and on the 24th February they were awarded Best Rock Instrumental Performance at the 29th Grammy Awards in the USA, where they and Eddy accepted the award for smash hit Peter Gunn. After that a video of the Hammersmith Odeon show entitled In Visible Silence was released. It included all the hits from Close (To The Edit) to Paranoimia along with Instruments Of Darkness, Opus 4 and Backbeat. The video was produced and directed by Mike Mansfield with visual enhancements by George Snow & J.eczalik The video showcased how diverse the Art of Noise were, adapting themselves from their studio environment to becoming a live band featuring the talents of Dave Bronze (bass), Simon Moreton (percussion) and Paul Robinson (drums) and featuring Katie Humble, Pepe Lemer & Linda Taylor (backing vocals).
The Art of Noise played a key-role in two Hollywood movies of that year. The first was Disorderlies that starred the Fat Boys, where they composed, performed & produced the films entire music score. The other was the Dan Aykroyd, Alan Zweibel and Tom Mankiewicz penned box-office blockbuster Dragnet, based upon the 50’s & 60’s television series of the same name. This time they performed & produced the theme tune for the movie entitled Dragnet consisting of Dragnet March and Danger Ahead the film, but most noticeable version was the movie’s title sequence that featured the Arthur Baker remix. To tie-in with the film Dragnet was released as a single but failed to make an impact on the US charts, the UK single had the Arthur Baker mix as the A-side instead of the Art of Noise mix. The single entered the UK singles chart on 18th July for four weeks peaking at number sixty, however the single did far better in the Swiss charts peaking at number twenty nine. It was issued just one month after ZTT re-released the single Moments In Love [#90].
In the USA Eddy released a single entitled Spies that he performed with the Art of Noise. The B-side included Lost Innocence (a re-working of A Nation Rejects). Both tracks were written & produced by the Art of Noise, and were taken from Eddy’s album Duane Eddy.
September saw the release of the third Art of Noise album entitled In · No · Sense? Nonsense! [UK: #55]. Roger Dudley, Stuart Breed, Ted Hayton and Bob Kraushaar filled Langan’s role as engineer. It was a complete departure to the previous two albums as each track flowed into the other, contained some of Anne’s orchestral & choral arrangements along with sounds of aeroplanes, trains, helicopters and other sounds linking it all together. Galleons Of Stone opened the album leading into Dragnet that led into Fin Du Temps that led into How Rapid? and so on until the end track One Earth. Only Dragnet was released as a single from the album although a four track promotional EP entitled No Nonsense featured E.F.L., One Earth, A Day At The Races and Ode To Don Jose that were all highlights from the album was issued. Also included were two tracks that sounded very familiar, Roundabout 727 was a cut down version of A Nation Rejects along with Crusoe that resembled the melody of Krypton Factor theme, but the actual sound of both tracks were worlds apart.
1988
The year was a quiet year for the Art of Noise. February saw the release of Dragnet (The ’88 Mix) [UK: #97] that came out at the same time as the UK release of the Dragnet film but failed to chart higher than the original UK single. Dudley scored the music for the British movie Buster that starred Phil Collins and Julie Walters before she and Jeczalik teamed up with Welsh singing legend Tom Jones on a cover version of Prince’s 1986 hit Kiss [UK: #5]. The single entered the UK singles chart on the 29th October and re-launched Jones’s career bringing him a new legion of younger fans. Kiss was taken from The Best Of The Art Of Noise [UK: #55] that came out in three different versions in the UK. The LP contained the 7” versions, the cassette, 7” versions with Peter Gunn, Paranoimia and Kiss being replaced by 12” versions and the CD contained the 12” versions. There were no less than seven different versions of the album released around the world from the 1988 release until it was deleted in 1992.
1989
The year started off with Kiss being nominated for Best British Single at the Brit Awards in February. In March the Art of Noise released Paranoimia ’89 [UK: #90], a remix by Ben Liebrand of the In Visible Silence album version, rather than remixing the single version that featured Max Headroom almost three years earlier. Dudley & Jeczalik teamed up with South African group Mahlathini and The Mahotella Queens led by the late Simon Mahlathini Nkabinde on the hit Yebo! [UK: #63] taken from the album Below The Waste. The album included another two tracks that featured Mahlathini and The Mahotella Queens entitled Chain Gang and Spit. It was more laid back than the previous albums and saw Dudley & Jeczalik composing more material on their own. Engineer Ted Hayton was also credited as co-writer on some of the tracks as well as being credited as producing the album with Dudley & Jeczalik. The cassette and CD included two bonus tracks, Robinson Crusoe and the James Bond Theme. Dan Dare, Catwalk and Island were the other main highlights of the album along with those tracks already mentioned. The last track was entitled Finale and in many ways indicated that after six years the Art of Noise was now done, as what they had pioneered had now become commonplace in the music business as almost every record being made in 1989 featured samples.
1990
Dudley & Jeczalik announced that the Art of Noise had officially ended, and helped to promote the single Art Of Love [UK: #67] and The Ambient Collection remix album was subtly remixed by Youth before they parted company to move onto other things. The album included tracks such as Camilla, Opus For 4, Eye Of The Needle, Crusoe and Island taken from the three albums recorded for China Records.
REMIXES AND COMPILATIONS
In 1991 China Records released a second remix album entitled The FON Mixes that included the hits Instruments Of Darkness (All Of Us Are One People) (The Prodigy Mix) [UK #45] and Shades Of Paranoimia (The Carl Cox Mix) [UK: #53]. The whole album was an album of techno mixes from the likes of Graham Massey, L.F.O., The Ground, Mark Broydon along with Liam Howlet and Carl Cox. A film entitled Motorway was made by George Snow to accompany the album, using it as the film’s soundtrack. The promotional videos for Instruments Of Darkness (All Of Us Are One People) and Shades Of Paranoimia were both taken from that very film.
Following the interest in the album Jeczalik told Outside World, a ZTT fanzine, that he and Langan had travelled to Cuba to find source material after they had both discussed reforming the group with Dudley, but in the end nothing ever became of it.
After the licensing of the ZTT recordings had expired on The Best Of The Art Of Noise, China Records decided to replace the tracks Beat Box, Moments In Love, Close (To The Edit) with Yebo!, Instruments Of Darkness (All Of Us Are One People) and Robinson Crusoe and issued a new The Best Of The Art Of Noise album in 1992. The CD and cassette was around 33 minutes long as non of the 12” versions were included, except for a limited edition containing both 7” & 12” versions. In the same year yet another compilation was issued in Germany, The Best Of The Art Of Noise – The Art Of Love, that was more or less The Ambient Collection with some tracks removed and replaced with other tracks like One Earth & E.F.L. March 1995 saw China Records issue another remix, Yebo (Ollie J and Arkarna Remixes) before reissuing Kiss with different B-sides. The following year China Records issued another remix album entitled The Drum And Bass Collection. The only tracks on the album that were recognisable as Art of Noise were Something Always Happens and Camilla, the rest of it was a complete mess and was aimed at the drum and bass fraternity. Yet again another compilation was issued by China Records in the form of State Of The Art containing The Ambient Collection, The FON Mixes and The Drum And Bass Collection. China Records issued no other Art of Noise items after that release.
THE SEDUCTION OF THE ART OF NOISE
 In 1997, Dudley, Horn and Morley reformed the Art of Noise with Lol Creme, Jeczalik and Langan didn’t take part in the reformation of the group. Work began on a project that was based around the music of Claude Debussy for ZTT and tested the waters with a 12” promo only entitled Dream On With The Art Of Noise All Mixed Up In Bed With Way Out West in 1998. The following year saw the first proper Art of Noise single for ten years entitled Metaforce [UK: #53] with rap legend Rakim just prior to the release of the album The Seduction Of Claude Debussy. The album featured actor John Hurt as the narrator with vocalists Sally Bradshaw, Donna Lewis, Carol Kenyon and Rakim. Hurt’s narration told the story of Claude Debussy in a similar way to Richard Burton’s narration on Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds, with Debussy's music being incorporated into drum and bass rhythms. It was very different from what had gone before as the album was produced by Horn along with various co-producers. Dreaming: Colour Red, another promo only 12” was issued, like Dream On With The Art Of Noise, it was made up of remixes of Dreaming In Colour that appeared on the album. Dudley, Horn, Morley & Creme played live in the USA before playing live in London where they performed most of The Seduction Of Claude Debussy along with Beat Box, Moments In Love and Peter Gunn, the only track from the China Records period. A remix album entitled Reduction was released, packaged with The Seduction Of Claude Debussy and later available as a separate item before it was deleted. Once again Art of Noise had gone their separate ways until 2004 where Dudley, Horn, Creme and Paul Robinson along with Alan White from Yes performed Close (To The Edit) at the Prince’s Trust Concert – Produced By Trevor Horn.
In 2006 ZTT released a 4CD box set entitled And What Have You Done With My Body, God?, compiled of demos and unreleased versions that made up their debut album (Who’s Afraid Of?) The Art Of Noise! That set also included a book with interviews from Jeczalik, Langan, Dudley, Horn and Morley. In addition to that the first ZTT podcast was produced entitled Episode One - The Art Of Noise in early 2007 containing the original interviews that were used in the boxset book and featured an exclusive version of Moments In Love.
April 2009 saw three of members of the Art of Noise appear at the Royal Albert Hall as ABC performed their classic album The Lexicon Of Love. At the event Dudley conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra, Horn introduced and played on some of the tracks with Langan in charge of the sound. The show was a great success and the second half was also broadcast on BBC Radio 2.
Over twenty five years have past since Into Battle With The Art Of Noise was released, the Art of Noise continue to inspire much of today’s music and will continue to do so. In 2004 a tribute album of classic Art of Noise cover versions was released entitled The Abduction Of The Art Of Noise featuring Chi2, Trafik feat. Rachel Lambert, BitTonic & si-cuut.db and Art of Silence (Jeczalik) with a new version of Beat Box. There has never been a group like them since and we may never hear another, some have tried to copy them, but of them have never managed to achieve what Art of Noise did, change the face of music and how records are made.
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