I’d heard of the Art of Noise, but only in relation to their song Peter Gunn from 1986. It’s a little surprising to me that Beat Box did so well in the clubs because to me it doesn’t really sound like a danceable song (except maybe for break dancing). I can definitely hear their influence on a lot of what came after them though.
Its popularity in the early hip-hop and breakdance scene is what helped push it to the top of the US dance charts, Mark. That said, I played it quite a bit in my sets back then, with great success. Thanks for reading and for your response.
Loved the Art of Noise from the start and knew some of this history, but it was fun seeing how you broadened it and shared your own discovery of the AoN. I think I saw a video first and that was enough to hook me. And it's kind of funny that the roots of this include Yes.
It really is, I agree. And what makes it even more amusing is how Yes ended up in the story. It still feels like the odd one out when you look at the other productions Trevor Horn was doing at the time. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, Emm. Wishing you a great week ahead!
I think Beat Box worked in the clubs more by accident than design. I appreciate the argument that Horn became a "crucial figure in the evolution of dance music", but I would suggest that what was truly radical about Horn, Morley and the creators of the music known as the Art Of Noise, is that, unlike Pete Waterman for example, none of them had a clue about what was going on in the clubs of the time. I seem to remember an early version of Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood's that went down like a bucket of cold sick amongst dancers; Horn didn't create primarily for the dancefloor and that approach promised a freedom to edit and remix untethered from the slavish demands of the DJ.
The deliberate confusion created by the refusal to define Into Battle as an album, a single or an EP didn't go down well with Gallup, the compilers of the UK charts, and was undoubtly a factor in their decision several years later to limit the length of a 12" single to 20 minutes for it to be eligible for inclusion in the singles chart.
Once the Art Of Noise signed to the China label, it was rather shocking to see how easily they succumbed to being marketed as a novelty act and how relieved the rest of the industry were to return to the old traditional ways of marketing as quickly as possible; I guess, as you say, that in many ways ZTT and in particular Morley were just "a bit too much" for many at the time.
I agree, Paul. It really was more by accident than by design. They only knew it through their distributor, Island Records, and from testing it in a New York club, or at least within the hip hop scene. They did have some prior experience, having just created Duck Rock for Malcolm McLaren, but you’re absolutely right, they didn’t set out to make a dance track. It was more a case of, “let’s see what happens when we load this into the Fairlight CMI.” The additional layers, like the engine starting sound, really underline that experimental approach.
The reason I see Trevor Horn as such a crucial figure is more about his role in shaping the twelve inch format and pushing the technical side of how those records were built. The ZTT Records twelve inches weren’t always DJ favourites, largely because the actual song often only appeared in the final quarter, meaning long build-ups with not always a strong break.
Still, twelve inches by The Art of Noise, Yes, and the one I’ll be covering in a few weeks, ABC, clearly pointed the way forward for many.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, Paul!
Really interesting, reminds me of the nineteen twenties when there was all this experimentation going on with music, dance, and art that deconstructed things and reconstructed them in new ways. Had no clue it was happening like this in the eighties.
I didn’t get into that aspect, Ellen. My pieces tend to run long as it is, so I always have to leave things out.
But there is a clear link to the Italian modernists. Paul Morley built much of his thinking around Art of Noise on those ideas, and you can hear that connection in the music itself.
It’s something I’ll definitely come back to, it’s far too fascinating to leave there.
Thanks for reading and reacting, Ellen. Have a great weekend!
You're challenging me to consider whether I was really alive in the era you are covering or not! I've never heard "Beat Box." However, I recognize its sound on so many other songs from the 80s, especially several hits by Janet Jackson. Always informative and never boring Pe!
Haha… Dan, your reactions are pure gold to me. They really highlight just how big the gap was between certain dancefloors in urban centres like New York City or San Francisco and the rest of the US.
It makes you realise that a number one on the dance charts, without crossover, doesn’t necessarily mean nationwide popularity. It often just reflects what was happening in a handful of clubs in key cities. From a distance, we tend to read “number one in the US” as if it was the biggest thing everywhere, which clearly wasn’t always the case 😁
In Europe, dance music never really became that separated from the rest of the musical landscape. And we didn’t have the same kind of tightly formatted, targeted radio either. Stations could move from big chart hits to jazz, to experimental tracks, to brand new releases without blinking. Dutch radio in particular was incredibly adventurous in that period.
Anyway, thanks for your reaction, Dan. It adds another layer to the picture, once again. Have a great weekend!
Great piece, as always! I always learn so much reading your essays. Trevor Horn is connected to so many of my favorite music projects that he’s probably in the top five people who shaped my taste over my many decades.
I remember sort of when I first heard Art of Noise. I think it was who’s afraid (of the art of noise?) I think it was several years after that when I learned that Trevor Horn was behind the band. I was still in my heavy metal phase when they started out. But I was a big fan of Yes, which I think is what attracted me to them, despite it being a couple of years before I would be fully open minded. I look forward to side B!
You’ve probably come across the twelve-inch of Owner Of A Lonely Heart. If not, it’s well worth looking up on YouTube. It’s the missing link between Beat Box and your favourite band, and it was a staple in pretty much every set I played back then.
I’ll definitely cover it in a future episode, the level of creativity on that record is just incredible.
Thanks for reading and for taking the time to react. Have a great weekend!
Yeah, I'm sure I heard that 12". I did notice (after replaying AON's debut album again today) a couple of samples from 90125.
I was also going to mention that Drama wasn't the only Yes album with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes. I don't know all the details, but for the 2011 album, Fly From Here, Geoff returned to Yes, and with a new vocalist, Benoit David. Trevor Horn produced the album. Benoit David didn't last long. 7 years later, Yes rerecorded the album with Trevor Horn on vocals. It was called Fly From Here -- Return Trip. The super deluxe package version came out last year with both versions.
I haven't done a close listen to either, yet, but I'd like to. I want to say that the song, "Fly From Here" was an old Buggles tune that didn't make the Drama cut.
I’d seen that Geoff Downes had rejoined Yes. For some reason, I always had the impression he’d stayed with the band all along.
Reading Trevor’s recent biography, you get the sense he looks back on his short stint with Yes in the early eighties as one of the low points of his career, something he feels he probably shouldn’t have done.
So hearing that he’s kept the connection alive, even stepping back in as a singer, is quite a surprise 😁
Well, this was 2018 when he remade that Yes album, and he might have been talked into it. So, perhaps it wasn’t his most creatively fertile period. I don’t know when he wrote the biography. I personally love the Drama album, but perhaps it was much more fittingly titled than it should have been. Conflict does often breed great art!
I’d heard of the Art of Noise, but only in relation to their song Peter Gunn from 1986. It’s a little surprising to me that Beat Box did so well in the clubs because to me it doesn’t really sound like a danceable song (except maybe for break dancing). I can definitely hear their influence on a lot of what came after them though.
Its popularity in the early hip-hop and breakdance scene is what helped push it to the top of the US dance charts, Mark. That said, I played it quite a bit in my sets back then, with great success. Thanks for reading and for your response.
Loved the Art of Noise from the start and knew some of this history, but it was fun seeing how you broadened it and shared your own discovery of the AoN. I think I saw a video first and that was enough to hook me. And it's kind of funny that the roots of this include Yes.
It really is, I agree. And what makes it even more amusing is how Yes ended up in the story. It still feels like the odd one out when you look at the other productions Trevor Horn was doing at the time. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, Emm. Wishing you a great week ahead!
I think Beat Box worked in the clubs more by accident than design. I appreciate the argument that Horn became a "crucial figure in the evolution of dance music", but I would suggest that what was truly radical about Horn, Morley and the creators of the music known as the Art Of Noise, is that, unlike Pete Waterman for example, none of them had a clue about what was going on in the clubs of the time. I seem to remember an early version of Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood's that went down like a bucket of cold sick amongst dancers; Horn didn't create primarily for the dancefloor and that approach promised a freedom to edit and remix untethered from the slavish demands of the DJ.
The deliberate confusion created by the refusal to define Into Battle as an album, a single or an EP didn't go down well with Gallup, the compilers of the UK charts, and was undoubtly a factor in their decision several years later to limit the length of a 12" single to 20 minutes for it to be eligible for inclusion in the singles chart.
Once the Art Of Noise signed to the China label, it was rather shocking to see how easily they succumbed to being marketed as a novelty act and how relieved the rest of the industry were to return to the old traditional ways of marketing as quickly as possible; I guess, as you say, that in many ways ZTT and in particular Morley were just "a bit too much" for many at the time.
I agree, Paul. It really was more by accident than by design. They only knew it through their distributor, Island Records, and from testing it in a New York club, or at least within the hip hop scene. They did have some prior experience, having just created Duck Rock for Malcolm McLaren, but you’re absolutely right, they didn’t set out to make a dance track. It was more a case of, “let’s see what happens when we load this into the Fairlight CMI.” The additional layers, like the engine starting sound, really underline that experimental approach.
The reason I see Trevor Horn as such a crucial figure is more about his role in shaping the twelve inch format and pushing the technical side of how those records were built. The ZTT Records twelve inches weren’t always DJ favourites, largely because the actual song often only appeared in the final quarter, meaning long build-ups with not always a strong break.
Still, twelve inches by The Art of Noise, Yes, and the one I’ll be covering in a few weeks, ABC, clearly pointed the way forward for many.
Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts, Paul!
Really interesting, reminds me of the nineteen twenties when there was all this experimentation going on with music, dance, and art that deconstructed things and reconstructed them in new ways. Had no clue it was happening like this in the eighties.
I didn’t get into that aspect, Ellen. My pieces tend to run long as it is, so I always have to leave things out.
But there is a clear link to the Italian modernists. Paul Morley built much of his thinking around Art of Noise on those ideas, and you can hear that connection in the music itself.
It’s something I’ll definitely come back to, it’s far too fascinating to leave there.
Thanks for reading and reacting, Ellen. Have a great weekend!
You're challenging me to consider whether I was really alive in the era you are covering or not! I've never heard "Beat Box." However, I recognize its sound on so many other songs from the 80s, especially several hits by Janet Jackson. Always informative and never boring Pe!
Haha… Dan, your reactions are pure gold to me. They really highlight just how big the gap was between certain dancefloors in urban centres like New York City or San Francisco and the rest of the US.
It makes you realise that a number one on the dance charts, without crossover, doesn’t necessarily mean nationwide popularity. It often just reflects what was happening in a handful of clubs in key cities. From a distance, we tend to read “number one in the US” as if it was the biggest thing everywhere, which clearly wasn’t always the case 😁
In Europe, dance music never really became that separated from the rest of the musical landscape. And we didn’t have the same kind of tightly formatted, targeted radio either. Stations could move from big chart hits to jazz, to experimental tracks, to brand new releases without blinking. Dutch radio in particular was incredibly adventurous in that period.
Anyway, thanks for your reaction, Dan. It adds another layer to the picture, once again. Have a great weekend!
It's always good to hear about these songs though! Definitely broadens my perspective.
Great piece, as always! I always learn so much reading your essays. Trevor Horn is connected to so many of my favorite music projects that he’s probably in the top five people who shaped my taste over my many decades.
I remember sort of when I first heard Art of Noise. I think it was who’s afraid (of the art of noise?) I think it was several years after that when I learned that Trevor Horn was behind the band. I was still in my heavy metal phase when they started out. But I was a big fan of Yes, which I think is what attracted me to them, despite it being a couple of years before I would be fully open minded. I look forward to side B!
Thanks Steve, that’s a great compliment.
You’ve probably come across the twelve-inch of Owner Of A Lonely Heart. If not, it’s well worth looking up on YouTube. It’s the missing link between Beat Box and your favourite band, and it was a staple in pretty much every set I played back then.
I’ll definitely cover it in a future episode, the level of creativity on that record is just incredible.
Thanks for reading and for taking the time to react. Have a great weekend!
Yeah, I'm sure I heard that 12". I did notice (after replaying AON's debut album again today) a couple of samples from 90125.
I was also going to mention that Drama wasn't the only Yes album with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes. I don't know all the details, but for the 2011 album, Fly From Here, Geoff returned to Yes, and with a new vocalist, Benoit David. Trevor Horn produced the album. Benoit David didn't last long. 7 years later, Yes rerecorded the album with Trevor Horn on vocals. It was called Fly From Here -- Return Trip. The super deluxe package version came out last year with both versions.
I haven't done a close listen to either, yet, but I'd like to. I want to say that the song, "Fly From Here" was an old Buggles tune that didn't make the Drama cut.
I’d seen that Geoff Downes had rejoined Yes. For some reason, I always had the impression he’d stayed with the band all along.
Reading Trevor’s recent biography, you get the sense he looks back on his short stint with Yes in the early eighties as one of the low points of his career, something he feels he probably shouldn’t have done.
So hearing that he’s kept the connection alive, even stepping back in as a singer, is quite a surprise 😁
Well, this was 2018 when he remade that Yes album, and he might have been talked into it. So, perhaps it wasn’t his most creatively fertile period. I don’t know when he wrote the biography. I personally love the Drama album, but perhaps it was much more fittingly titled than it should have been. Conflict does often breed great art!
The biography is only a few years old so well after 2018. I can't recall reading about the remake. But he probably mentioned it.