About Art of Noise
Art of Noise were a British avant-garde synth-pop group formed in early 1983 by engineer/producer Gary Langan and programmer J. J. Jeczalik, along with keyboardist/arranger Anne Dudley, producer Trevor Horn, and music journalist Paul Morley. The group had international Top 20 hits with its interpretations of "Kiss", featuring Tom Jones, and the instrumental "Peter Gunn", which won a 1986 Grammy Award.
The group's mostly instrumental compositions were novel melodic sound collages based on digital sampler technology, which was new at the time. Inspired by turn-of-the-20th-century revolutions in music, the Art of Noise were initially packaged as a faceless anti- or non-group, blurring the distinction between the art and its creators. The band is noted for innovative use of electronics and computers in pop music, particularly its innovative use of sampling.
The technological impetus for the Art of Noise was the advent of the Fairlight CMI sampler. With the Fairlight, short digital sound recordings called samples could be played using a piano-like keyboard, while a computer processor altered such characteristics as pitch and timbre. Music producer Trevor Horn was among the early adopters of Fairlight. While some musicians were using samples as adornment in their works, Horn and his colleagues saw the potential to craft entire compositions with the sampler.
In 1981, Horn's production team included programmer J. J. Jeczalik, engineer Gary Langan and keyboard player/string arranger Anne Dudley. The team produced ABC's 1982 debut album The Lexicon of Love, increasingly using the Fairlight to tweak live-based elements of performance but also to embellish the compositions with sound effects such as a cash register's bell on "Date Stamp" . The team also worked on Malcolm McLaren's 1982 album Duck Rock and would go on to work with Frankie Goes to Hollywood on what would become the album Welcome to the Pleasuredome .
During January 1983, Horn's team were working on the Yes comeback album 90125 – Horn as producer, Langan as engineer, and Dudley and Jeczalik providing arrangements and keyboard programming. During the sessions, Jeczalik and Langan took a scrapped Alan White drum riff and sampled it into the Fairlight using the device's Page R sequencer . Jeczalik and Langan then added non-musical sounds on top of it, before playing the track to Horn. This in turn resulted in the Red & Blue Mix of Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart" single, which showcased the prototype sound of The Art of Noise.
Seeing further potential in the idea, Horn teamed Jeczalik and Langan with Dudley in February to develop the project and brought in one of his business partners, ex-NME journalist Paul Morley, as a provider of concepts, art direction and marketing ideas. Morley came up with the project name . Much later, in a July 2002 article penned for The Guardian, Morley wrote "I loved the name Art of Noise so much that I forced my way into the group. If over the years people asked me what I did in the group, I replied that I named them, and it was such a great name, that was enough to justify my role. I was the Ringo Starr of Art of Noise. I made the tea. Oh, and I wrote the lyrics to one of the loveliest pieces of pop music ever, Moments in Love." Horn himself joined the new group as production advisor and provider of further ideas. This was the first time that he had been part of a group since parting company with his The Buggles' partner Geoff Downes . It would also be the first and last time that he would enjoy chart success as an artist since the new wave hit in 1979 with "Video Killed the Radio Star" .
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