The Art of Noise, Who’s afraid of the Art of Noise
Trevor Horn. Genius. I’m pretty damn sure he was involved in Yes, he was the functioning side of The Buggles (and I know how shameful both of those bands are but I rather love them both, regardless of pitying/contemptuous looks I may receive in Fopp), he had a lot to do with Hounds of Love by Kate Bush and he produced the recent Pet Shop Boys album. I’m fully aware of how camp a lot of my musical taste is but dammit, the man’s doing SOMETHING right. Alternatives: Red Hot Chilli Peppers? U2? REM? COLDPLAY? RAZORLIGHT?! I rest my case among musical wallpaper. Beethoven, Side 1, Track 1…

Anne Dudley. She wot wrote the lovely music for that old TV series of Jeeves and Wooster. When I played bass flute in the Bolton Flute Choir all those many moons ago, Maxine the conductor always wished aloud that she could find an arrangement of the piece and never could. It had all those great muted trumpets and plucked double bass in it. And like “Get Happy” (sung by Judy Garland, I have no idea who wrote it); it’s one of those pieces where you can see the bones of the song, all matchsticks and Perspex - like my adolescent nightmares of the house I lived in, and my current adult thoughts around relationships - and the science of the song unfolds itself simply, like one of Mondrian’s boogie-woogie pieces, or a paint-by-numbers without implying factory assembly.

Trevor Horn and Anne Dudley both have an awful lot to do with the Art of Noise you see. This was another cheap vinyl discovery, and when I was with Jon, he and I listened to this an awful lot. The music he wrote was very tech-y and bleepy, and this seemed to fit into his aesthetic. He wrote amazing music. Anyway, this is a vinyl, and it crackles satisfyingly as I begin to play it. The initial beats are so awkward; then they become some monstrous futurist march (witness the label is Zang Tuumb Tuumb)…no-one put this on to be cool, right? It’s difficult to imagine house parties going on to this, but then again it was 1983-84 that this album was done, and we all know what the world was like then…THIS IS IT! The 1980s as such a scary time and all that reflecting itself so perfectly in the music…how much of the 80s music is GENUINELY radical, rather than the “I wear flares therefore…” rhetoric of the 1960s? Oh yes there’s a lot of stuff going on either way that’s completely proving and disproving me either way (that being the beauty of existence n all…); something in me is obviously attuned to the nightmarish early 80s. I understand fully why people would panic and break out into a rash of pinstripes, and my beloved Patrick Bateman is the epitome of all that. Where have I said it that Patrick Bateman is Holden Caulfield who came into his parent’s money? Don’t let’s forget that the Caulfields were a moneyed lot. Bateman is completely aware of how hideous existence can be.

I like the Art of Noise. They are warm and cold in all the correct places. All the joy of technology used properly, none of that burning here. Those synth voices that were everywhere at this time sound so strange now, although I remember as a child in the late 80s how they seemed filled and fuelled by some power one couldn’t quite point to precisely.

I remember when learning about Sonata form and Symphonic structure that I felt an impatience with these forms – I felt more tuned into Romantic pieces, all yer Mussorgskys and Borodins and the like. I’m sure I wrote something about preferring an episodic structure to music, rather than a formalised one. I’ve begun to really appreciate formulised “arguments” within music…is it something to do with growing up a little? Or being able to understand it? You can’t like what you don’t know, and while I’m not saying that if you don’t like it therefore you don’t understand it, I’m aware of how my increasing understanding of musical theory has increased my appreciation of music…and also applying musical theory outside of music…seeing where a ternary or rondo form may fit into a pub conversation, or seeing a concerto in a cyclist winding their way through the traffic.

To say “think outside the box” or whatever it is they say implies a box of some kind and sets up things to be defined and defied. It’s too simplistic to say “just think” (because with thinking entails non-thinking…bugger me this thinking is difficult) people seem to worry too much about “what” they’re thinking, or what genre it fits into…I remember a girl I knew briefly in Edinburgh who told me that the best thing I could do for my “musical career” would be to perform at a folk festival. I believe I wrinkled my nose. She said “Oh, are you more rock/pop?” Ugh. I shudder at the memory. TWELVE WESTERN-DEFINED NOTES PEOPLE!! That’s all! Millions in-between and as Cage and La Monte Young proved, not playing is playing in itself…sorry, I’m reading about existentialist social work just now. Which means in years to come then I will be able to visit people experiencing horrible problems and say “Not having a problem is, of course, a problem within itself…” at which point they will set dogs on me, and with good reason.

I heart the Art of Noise.

Aphex Twin, Retail Item

I can’t do it. I’m having an anxious day and the first five seconds I got through are too much for me. I’m fucking ill dammit, I shouldn’t have to listen to Aphex Twin on top of it all.

No come on then, just turn it down low and it’ll be OK. This is what I feared previously. This might as well be the prodigy or something, I could be in a field with sweaty thugs all crawling over each desperate to prove themselves something, finally, chemically TRANSFORMED into something worth talking about for once.

I was talking to Sofia about scary music the other night; my current songs about nuclear war are making her and a few other people tell me not to be so ghoulish and morbid, but I think the way they’re shaping up shows a humanistic concern with all the factors involved, it’s more existence, non-existence, belonging, identity and all the other stuff that goes with it in a cloying soup of metaphors and megatons. Anyhoo…musically they’re teetering on the side of whimsical at the minute, although may not too much, I don’t know. Anyway, she suggested I write “something happy” to balance it all. I concede that it’s odd to be writing about such frightening things as nuclear holocausts and the ensuing chaos of local governments in the aftermath, but what’s the alternative? Fucking bunny rabbits? Or, screaming “spookily” into a microphone “Come to Daddy” and “I want your soul”? Seriously, this might have dated worse to me that it has done to other people, this is terrible, I might as well be a teenager drawing anarchist signs (and not understanding it either) onto a yellow canvas bag from Army and Navy stores, and YES I KNOW THAT WAS THE SORT OF TEENAGER I WAS but that’s why I grew up and started listening to Radio 3 dammit. And reading the Guardian and thinking about TS Eliot and loving Coronation Street and being selective in my choice of herbal teas (I hate the fruit ones – you might as well be drinking hot squash in a nasty little Church hall in Bolton). OK, I’ve given up smoking and drinking recently…does it show? Am I a wanker yet? It’ll come…

Second track slightly calmer. I’m on my fourth cup of “tranquillity”. Supposed to be writing things about the recovery model of mental health (Ha fucking ha) and I note all pleased that my clothes feel too big for me. Bit of a bummer I can’t quite afford new clothes to show off a thinner frame, but if governments want to keep us in poverty, that’s just what they’ll do. At least they’re not blowing us up or poisoning us (yet). I signed a petition against Trident this morning. Who wouldn’t shoot themselves if you heard sirens coming? Yes OK, maybe a song about bunny wabbits…

I recognise this from when Bjork DJ’d on Breezeblock. Or at least the backing line. This is a remix it says…who remixed it? Aphex Twin? There’s something more intelligent in restraint rather than out and out BE AFRAID OF THIS. I don’t want or like coffee table music though, no matter how much I like coffee.

Aphex Twin, Richard D James UK

This starts more beautiful than I imagined. More kind of ethereal than the aggressive loyalty Aphex Twin seems to inspire in people and all those bizarre and scary videos. This is like a peculiarly attractive computer game of shifting colours and levels. Why does electronica always come across as threatening? I’ve heard bits and bobs of Aphex Twin on and off for years, and I’ve always liked what I’ve heard, yet I’ve never felt an overwhelming urge to go out and buy it or copy it until I copied this and the other one from Jon a few months ago.

There’s something drippy about it all, I don’t mean that in a Christian kind of way, rather like globules of oil paint, one of those Damien Hirst paint spin-y things, a Blue Peter painting that turned out wrong. Not quite the Lego of other musics I know, colourful all the same. And almost not much to write, what’s that all about? Is there any sense of a person in this music/ Maybe it’s because I know fuck-all about him. Him him him. And would it make any difference if I thought he [played all these bit by bit on a synth the way I do or if he sampled it from historical sweetie bags, or if he played it all for real, kosher and acoustic? If there is a stately mansion somewhere of Aphex-minions or if it’s knocked up in a poky bedroom and why one confers authenticity (and I’ve been reading about that again) and one screams SWINDLE.

Exhaustion may be getting the better of me today, I’ve been lying and sleeping and sleeping when I should have been learning about housing benefit. This music is like running under patterned sheets and cobwebs where the light is constantly changing on the outside. It’s never a headache but it doesn’t let you rest. There may well be crowds out there.