The Art of This, described as “a sequel, a next stage, a companion piece, a subset, a splinter group, an extension to the popular group” of electronic pioneers Art of Noise, made their performance debut featuring founding members of the “anti-group”, JJ Jeczalik, Gary Langan and Paul Morley, alongside visualiser Ian Peel, who was also manager for ZTT, the record label run by their producer Trevor Horn. Art of Noise observed the 40th anniversary of their debut studio album this year, ‘Who’s Afraid of the Art of Noise?’, not by doing a nostalgia show but instead more progressively releasing a 7-inch vinyl of new material released under this new formation.
Utilising the performative space of this most DIY of venues, they had a 360-degree rotunda stage (unfortunately not revolving) with spatial soundsystem and a d&b soundscape in which each member stood between four screens displaying visuals including taken from the archive footage used by the original group. Morley began proceedings on his spoken work narrative “A is for…”, listing connotations of the performance including “the Art of This”. He continued to read while there was a solarised burn of ‘Manifesto (Introduction to a Group)’, one of the new 7-inch tracks, pacing around the circumference of the stage as he spoke.
Morley then moved onto the letter B…”B is for Beat Box”, introducing that Art of Noise 1983 debut single performed as one with ‘Legs’ and ‘Backbeat’: a 9-min treadmill of hopping, boxy breakdancing, glassy and synthesising beats featuring their famous car ignition sample; revolutionary tracks for their time as produced using the Fairlight sampler as sampled dance music was first emerging. These tracks were accompanied by NASA archive footage of astronaut training aboard the International Space Station, and animations of computer generated character Max Headroom in the Art of Noise single ‘Paranoimia’ that followed the humming synths of ‘Relax’ by Frankie Goes to Hollywood, a band also signed to Horn’s ZTT label and who Morley said members of this group were behind the scenes for.
After quite a long ramble about “moments” by Morley in ‘In a Moment (Introduction to a Song)’, Art of This performed Art of Noise’s 1985 transcendental single ‘Moments in Love’ from their debut album as well as a new mix known as ‘Deal with This’ dedicated to Luís Jardim: a percussion based loop and sample of Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’. More unreleased material arrived in the way of industrialised tribal beats, radio frequencies and airplane noise against the dark, organ-rich, bass piano tumbles of ‘Sense of Doubt’; a Bowie cover. Morley then declared, “We don’t do encores so this isn’t fake…this is not an encore – true fact” announcing two new tracks: ‘True Facts’ – which contained a Feargal Sharkey vocal sample and is based on ‘A Day at the Races’ from their third studio album ‘In No Sense? Nonsense!’ – and a cinematic soundtrack styled piece called ‘A Descendant’; albeit relatively short. They finished their set on Art of Noise’s chart hit and award winning 1984 single ‘Close (to the Edit)’, sounding more updated and with its well known “Hey!” vocal sample.
18/10/25: Art of This @ The ICA.
Photos © Ayisha Khan.
© Ayisha Khan.