When I was about 11 years old, the USA Network started airing a program on Fridays and Saturdays called "Night Flight." For awhile this was the ONLY place I could watch music videos as MTV was not yet available in my area . However, this show wasn't just about music videos. They aired old movies like "Reefer Madness" and W.C. Fields classics mixed in with experimental short films and full length concerts. This was also the first time I realized that there was new music that wasn't being played on my local Top 40 station. And some if it was actually good.
One of the first videos that caught my eye was called "Close (To The Edit)" by something called The Art of Noise. The music (as well as the unique imagery) was unlike anything I'd ever heard up to that point in my short life. The group made their sounds by sampling voices, musical instruments and and everyday natural and machine made sounds and then 'manipulating' them through a new device called a Fairlight synthesizer. I've been a huge fan ever since.
Their second album, 1986's "In Visible Silence" has just been re-released in deluxe edition form. I'd listened to their first album , 1984's"Who's Afraid of The Art of Noise?" so many times that kids my age covered their ears in fear every time I brought my boom box on the school bus for road trips.
Since I was used to new music from my favorite artists arriving every year, I thought this group had broken up since it took them two years to make second album. It was much later that I learned that founding member Trevor Horn had left the rest of the group and there was a bit of mess in that divorce.
However, I loved the second album just as much as the first (at least at the time). They had even decided to cover an old classic in "Peter Gunn" (which was already a live staple for Emerson Lake and Palmer) and invited guitar legend Duane Eddy to play on it. This would be the first time I would actually hear one of their songs on my local Top 40 radio station. And it wouldn't be the last. Just a few months later they re-worked one of the albums' tracks "Paranoimia", adding some spoken word computer generated magic from Max Headroom (voiced by Matt Frewer). This version would be their first US Top 40 single.
This new deluxe edition contains several remixes of their singles and also B-sides and other rarities. It's only available as an import and I wouldn't hold your breath waiting on a stateside release so if you're an AON fan, get it while you can.
