ART OF NOISE: grin and wear it?
ART OF NOISE
'Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise?' (ZTT I Q2)**1/2
NOT ME. Snails crush easily under-foot and I used to eat them until I
discovered vegetables, and buy such greens I’m not refering to that
bunch of shadowy people The Art Of Noise but the use they have been
making of their time, which I don’t have because this review is wanted
in exactly five minutes.
That the genesis of erratic genius
should go hand in hand with the will to exploit a gullible public is not
shocking, it’s the ulcer in the stomach of their label ZTT.
The trouble is as a collective
enterprise these people are knowing enough to manipulate and play games
with the media and in the process of breaking the unwritten rule amass a
fair amount of pleasure and profit.
They are one of the few genuine
laughs to be had left in an indescribably dull business. But at heart
they are still a greedy bunch of bastards.
Leaving aside the possibility
that Art Of Noise could actually be constructing a totally new grammar
in the language of pop, I find it damn insulting that a group of
physically unlikely pioneers should decide to devote a substantial
section of their debut album to a couple of music objects which have
already appeared in one form or another. It simply gets on my tits.
The pair of thorns creating static –
as in stationary – hiss in the grooves are both personal favourites of
mine, namely the rhythmic collision of textures known as ‘Beatbox’ and
the ‘Je T’aime’ of the decade ‘Moments In Love’.
What gets doubly on my tits, for I have two of them, is that these are by far the most realised pieces on the album.
The rest are amusing in a conceptual
sense which would take too long to describe here, but they are
continually undercut by the joke being on us: i.e. what am I doing
listening to this shit when I could be doing drugs. Eating snails, or
even cooking vegetables.
JACK BARRON
