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THE ART OF THIS
‘Manifesto (Introduction To A Group)’ /
‘In A Moment (Introduction To A Song)’
Silver vinyl seven-inch
Our latest Reader Offer is an exclusive seven-inch featuring the first two recordings by The Art Of This, the group once known as The Art Of Noise
While it’s tempting to credit this month’s Electronic Sound seven-inch to The Art Of Noise, that wouldn’t be strictly accurate. Instead, the two tracks are the debut recordings by The Art Of This, “a sequel, a next stage, a companion piece, a subset, a splinter group, an extension of the popular music group”.
So says one-time NME journalist turned ZTT spin doctor Paul Morley in ‘What Is This?’, his latest manifesto for what was once The Art Of Noise, the band he co-founded in 1983.
“It’s a new group with bona fide Art Of Noise affiliations – Jeczalik, Langan, Morley – that can be called any one of the following: The Art Of This, Art Of This, and This,” continues the avant-pop provocateur. “It can be any one of those names depending on the usage and the mood of the group. There is also a shadow operation called The Art Of That / Art Of That / That to be used in shadowy ways, as another Art Of project, another splinter group, referring to but independent of The Art Of Noise, which was/is itself a splinter group.”
This isn’t the only manifesto, though. There’s also ‘Manifesto (Introduction To A Group)’ on our seven-inch, a fascinating piece of sound art that morphs from murky to radiant and has Morley’s spoken words front and centre.
“Paul said, ‘I’ve got this idea’,” recalls programmer JJ Jeczalik, another of the original group’s founding members. “We said, ‘OK, record yourself waffling and waxing lyrical and ping everything over’. We started chopping it up, looping it up, and building a new thing.”
“Well, it’s not ‘Peter Gunn’,” chuckles Ian Peel, once ZTT’s label manager and now The Art Of This’ audio-visual mastermind, referring to the band’s Grammy-winning UK Top 10 hit with guitarist Duane Eddy. “It’s this… and I really relish that.”
Confused? You should be. That was always the point. And to emphasise it, Morley also takes a lead role on the somehow simultaneously ominous and soothing ‘In A Moment (Introduction To A Song)’ on the other side of this release. The track developed from a live performance in London last year, billed as ‘The Art Of Noise / Revision / AV Set’, at which his bandmates dared Morley to introduce ‘Moments In Love’, the glorious highlight of ‘Into Battle With The Art Of Noise’, their 1983 debut EP.
“There was no rehearsal,” says producer Gary Langan, who was alongside Jeczalik and Morley at the birth of The Art Of Noise. “There was nothing. It was, ‘We’ll let Paul go out all by himself’. He didn’t want to do it, actually.”
Morley remembers it differently, though.
“I liked the idea of responding to the history of ‘Moments In Love’,” he says. “Not necessarily by remixing it or rearranging it, but simply by talking about it in a way that’s very Art Of Noise, very Art Of This, very Art Of Whatever… in a confessional way, an emotional way, a neutral way, you know?
“What I love about this track is how it just stops. It’s a nice way of coming in askew on something. We do an introduction for one of our greatest hits, but we don’t play the greatest hit. We could have turned ‘Moments In Love’ into an entire musical, but we’ve made it into something about moments, so it’s become about its own moments and what we think about them.”
“That’s kind of where The Art Of This started,” concludes Peel. “We have had lots of conversations and experiences, as well as conversations about experiences, in the months leading up to these two tracks. They’re personally very meaningful to us.”
This is exactly how it’s meant to be. Just like that.
