Art of Noise

Two years into my career at Hampshire College, and I went back at Interlochen to begin work on my final project – my thesis, if you will (or my Div III, if you won’t). It was the 25th anniversary of the Interlochen Arts Academy and, through a lucky combination of cajones and timing, I managed to talk the powers that be into funding a documentary of the Academy, and to putting me up for the entire academic year it took to shoot it. I had managed to convince them partly because of my pedigree. Having lived on campus for ten years, I still knew most of the faculty and staff and, having been a camper, a day student, a boarding student, the son of a faculty member and a staff member (I worked in the cafeteria for a couple of summers and painted cabins for a third), I knew Interlochen in a way few others could. Which got me the job, but then threw me into an odd social group when I arrived on campus with my video camera and cases of tape. I was too old to mingle seamlessly with the students, and I wasn’t really on the faculty or a staff member. Although it would have been perfectly appropriate for me to hang with the faculty, most of them were considerably older than I was and many of them had been my teachers and were good friends of my folks, who had just left a couple of years before, so I didn’t feel at ease with them in the same way as I would have with my peers. If I had any.

Fortunately, there was Ramon, the piano accompanist for the dance department and a true mad musical genius. He lived in the duplex next door and the two of us staked out our own irreverent territory on campus, each saving the other from the brutal cabin fever that could easily happen out there in the north woods, buried under feet of snow for months at a time. A horny Buddhist from Chula Vista (which apparently translates into “okay view”), Ramon was painfully funny and whip-smart. He could make up bawdy Elizabethan madrigals on the spot and had such an infectious joi-de-vivre that it was hard not to get swept up in his enthusiasm for life. He and I were inseparable that year, confiding about the students we lusted after, complaining about the faculty and administration, running all night film festivals for each other. Although his energy level could be daunting and his spiritual beliefs sometimes intrusive, he was a brilliant, hysterical, mad musical genius and was single-handedly responsible for maintaining my sanity during those long, dark winter months.

I also, reluctantly (but excitingly), got involved briefly with a student. Achingly beautiful, she took a fancy to me, probably enticed more by my age (22 to her 16) then to anything else about me. I’m sure she was hoping for an exciting and illicit tryst with an experienced older man, but she was infinitely more experienced than I was, which was (and continues to be) a badge of shame for me. I had had a few disastrous attempts at intimacy and was rapidly becoming the world’s oldest virgin, and my brief dalliance with this dancer didn’t help matters one bit. I wrote off my physical failures to my fears about inappropriate contact (not to mention jail time and her father, a reputed mobster), but the seeds of doubt that had been planted years before sprouted into a thick, tangled vine that year, one that wrapped its thorns around my battered heart. In order to come to grips with what I feared facing, I worked on an abstract music video illustrating my conflicting desire for and fear of intimacy. When the mood struck me, I pulled out the video camera and shot footage of flowers burning, or me crying, or relics from my career as a dancer, whatever visuals I could find that resonated with my emotional state. It was my sustaining secret that year, and I quietly filled up six tapes worth of footage to be molded the next year when I got back to Hampshire and could begin editing.

After spending months poring over my official footage the next year and starting to carve it together into one large semi-coherent piece, I pulled my secret tapes out of storage, grabbed Who’s Afraid of the Art of Noise, and went into the editing bay. Six hours went by in a blur (part of the reason I became an editor) and I emerged with Moment, the music video of my fearful heart set to the improbably appropriate Moments in Love. I nervously showed it to my advisor right before Christmas break, and he was blown away, saying it qualified by itself as my Division III and, as far as he was concerned, I could graduate right then and there. But, since I had already promised Interlochen a finished tape and still had five months to work on it with no pesky classes to get in the way, I soldiered on.

I also showed the video to a new friend of mine, Christine. Smart, funny, and impassioned, with short brown hair (cut in that unfortunate shelf-at-the-back-of-the-neck thing that was popular at the time) and beautiful hazel eyes that changed color with the weather (mood eyes), she was many things that I was not. She was strongly idealistic, and optimistic about her ability to make the world a better place. She was fiercely liberal, she never backed down from an argument (much to the chagrin of her family), and would articulately and accurately dismember any opposing viewpoints. Despite, or perhaps because of, our differences, we found comfort in each other’s company. Although we had been in many of the same classes and had done a lot of the same things at the same times, we didn’t get to be friends until our final year at Hampshire (she was also an F84). Once we found each other, however, we started spending all our time together, and, although the threat of romance colored our relationship, I staunchly denied it, afraid to disappoint and be disappointed once again.

On the night before Christmas break, I held my breath and unspooled Moment for her. And she hated it. She hated the cliché images, the predictable cutting, the lack of media subversion (Hampshire was big on deconstruction at the time). Although Hampshire was the right school for me in many ways, I was at odds with much of the video department because I wanted to make pretty pictures, and the official Hampshire line at the time was to storm the gallery/studio/theatre, rip the offending pretty pictures/films/books from the elitist walls/pages/screen, and trample them underfoot, exposing the rampant sexism/racism/whateverism that the evil purveyors of media used to sway the uncritical masses and poison their minds with glossy propaganda. Or something like that. Christine later confessed that the blatant longing and sexuality of Moment freaked her out, making her think things about me she was trying not to think about, but I don’t know. I think she hated it because she thought it sucked. I was dissapointed by her reaction, but it was the only negative reaction I had received for it, and I knew that it did what I wanted it to, even if nobody else wanted it to do those things. Whatever her true feelings about Moment, they didn’t stop her from marrying me four years later.

After In Visible Silence, the Art of Noise continued with the forced pun album titles (In No Sense? Nonsense! and Below the Waste) and with their hyperkinetic covers of old spy tunes (Dragnet and James Bond) and surprising guest stars (the Fat Boys’ Human Beatbox sputtering over Roller 1 or Tom Jones singing Prince’s Kiss). Although there is much of merit on these later albums, their admittedly fun but ultimately ill-advised gimmicky tracks pigeon-holed them as a novelty act, at least to the wider public. Budding electronica fans, however, digested everything they had to offer and, by the mid-90s, after they had disbanded, they were widely recognized as one of the most important and influential electronica acts ever – even getting the reverential remix-disc treatment three separate times (an ambient version – by far the best of the bunch – and a disc of straight-up techno remixes and a disc of drum and bass remixes).

The arc of Art of Noise can be seen as going away from noise and towards art, with later albums utilizing boy’s choirs and full orchestras. By the last track on their final album, the transformation was complete. The appropriately titled Finale is a straight-up string orchestra piece, with no visible electronics whatsoever and, having finished the evolution (or de-evolution, depending on who you talk to), the Art of Noise disbanded.

Anne Dudley had the most visibly successful career after they broke up, going on to score films both significant (The Crying Game) and not (Disorderlies), eventually winning an Academy Award for her score to the sleeper hit, The Full Monty. She also collaborated with Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman for a surprising disc of revamped Arabic instrumentals, called Songs from the Victorious City. And released an album of sleepy chamber music called Ancient and Modern.

Much to my surprise, the Art of Noise reformed at the end of the millennium to make a tribute disc to Claude Debussy. Widely regarded as the father of modern music, Debussy once claimed that the century of the airplane should have its own music, and he set about creating it. Debussy’s shadow looms large over the century of airplanes, and relics can be found sprinkled throughout this collection. The Seduction of Claude Debussy was an album-long paean to the visionary Frenchman, and also a bold statement as to the Art of Noise’s own influence, taking Debussy’s airplanes and hurtling them into outer space. Trevor was invited back, and JJ was either left off the guest list or chose not to attend, having produced his own miserable Art of Silence disc in the interim.

Throughout their career, the Art of Noise did an admirable job living up to its name. Carefully balancing art and noise, the intellect and the soul, the head, the heart, and the feet, Art of Noise was a true pioneer, absorbing the cultural detritus of the 20th century and spitting it back out in inventive and compelling commentaries and critiques, set to a maddeningly catchy beat. Truly one of a kind, they freely mixed high- and low-brow culture to create an exciting hybrid. They may not have been very popular in their day, but their footsteps continue to reverberate through the long halls of electronica. Who’s afraid of the Art of Noise? Not me. Bring it on.