Art of Noise

Arrived on the scene in 1983 and were an unconventional synth pop band at the time. The band was made up of music producers, programmers and journalist. The band consisted of Gary Langan, J J Jeczalik, Trevor Horn, Anne Dudley and Paul Morley.

The group was noted for it's faceless façade and the use of sampling and digital instruments blended into a sound that was made for the dancefloor. The group came to force on Trevor Horn and Paul Morley independent record label ZTT. Horn had worked on Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Propaganda on ZTT and enjoyed great success but now they decided on a new project with the new purchased Fairlight CMI Sampler which could sample at the touch of a keyboard.

They released an EP in late 1983 'Into battle with the Art of Noise' and this produced the instrumental song 'Beat Box' which was a favourite in America amongst the body popping fraternity. They also at the same time provided the theme tune for the then popular ITV programme The Krypton Factor'.

The debut album followed named 'who's afraid of the art of noise?' and this achieved moderate success but the group were to split when Langan, Jeczalik and Dudley left Morley and Horn and took with them the name and moved labels. There was tension regarding the output of the latter so the trio left all together and went in a different direction.

The trio went to China Records and released a second album 'In visible silence' and it featured the Grammy award winning song 'Peter Gunn' with Duane Eddy, the song was huge in America and reached number 2 in the billboard charts. The video promo also featured the comedian Rik Mayall as a private eye detective. Another hit followed with the classic 'paranoimia' which featured the sampling voice of the computer generated presenter Max Headroom. The whole thing although strange did work and the song was hugely successful and again another dancefloor filler.

By now Langan had left the band leaving just two and they released another album 'In no sense Nonsense'  The album was well received by critics but didn't catch the imagination of the public. They did another collaboration with Tom Jones and did a fantastic cover of Prince song 'Kiss' and became there biggest hit in the UK. Interest in the band stoked up again and a new album followed 'below the waste' but commercially the album failed and by 1990 the Art of Noise had disbanded.

During the 1980s the group had released four studio albums with two top 30 albums and they released 13 singles with 4 top 20 singles with Kiss peaking at number 5 in 1988.