Art of Noise's "Close (To The Edit)"

From 1984, Art of Noise's "Close (To The Edit), from the first CD I ever purchased: "(Who's Afraid Of?) The Art of Noise!" Samples of this track can be heard in The Prodigy's "Firestarter" and Christina Aguilera's "Back in the Day."

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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adminfoo

Hey David, did you buy it at Wizard’s or Mole’s?
- David Pescovitz
  
  Maybe Everybody’s. But more likely Record Theater, as that was closer to my house.
bcsizemo

And then from those times in the 80′s to early 2000 you get Autechre:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hKJnQqVsqw&feature=related
Anonymous

The characters in this music video last seen in season three episode of The Venture Brothers, “What Goes Down Must Come Up”:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Goes_Down_Must_Come_Up

“Dr. Venture manages to establish communication with Brock via emergency wall phones, until he is captured by more subterranean lurkersâ€”a little girl and three men in suits (dressed as the characters in The Art of Noise’s “Close (to the Edit)” video).”
bibulb

I’ve played chunks of the album for some of my younger friends, and it can still grab them. Potent work indeed. (“Snapshot” is one of the grabbiest minutes EVAR.)
Shawn Wolfe

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Trevor-Horns-Glasses-/180568131278?pt=UK_Music_Music_Memorabilia_LE&hash=item2a0ab306ce

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Art-Noise-Moments-Love-Master-Tape-/180568131772?pt=UK_Music_Music_Memorabilia_LE&hash=item2a0ab308bc

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Buggles-Adventures-Modern-Recording-Master-Tape-/180568132323?pt=UK_Music_Music_Memorabilia_LE&hash=item2a0ab30ae3
Darryl

Ah, always love an excuse to link to whosampled.com:

http://www.whosampled.com/sampled/Art%20of%20Noise/?sp=2
Anonymous

awesome post
chivito

Was that closing scene filmed in NYC on what is now the High Line park? Looks like Westbeth in the background…
- charmingquark
  
  civito, the entire video was shot on the High Line. The set was in one of those spots where the old railway passed through a building.
Anonymous

See, I don’t remember that video. I remember this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdlFkBbTk-U
tim

Ah. 1985, San Francisco, SIGGraph. I was an IBM Research Fellow making my first trip to the US (business class, natch) and was utterly entranced by the famous Sexy Robot demo reel from Robert Abel & Associates which used this as the soundtrack.

I was also entranced by the flight simulator networked game running on some very high-end graphics workstation (it had a 68020 cpu! 1Mb memory! 800*600 8bpp screen! Wow!) and of course, the Tektronix 4404 Smalltalk workstation. Playing with *that* lead to much of the next quarter century of my life…
charmingquark

Ah, one of my all time top 3 videos, the others being Peter Gabriel’s “Shock The Monkey” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo9riZYUpTw, and Caberet Voltaire’s “Sensoria” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkfzXq0tA3c.

All from the early eighties. Pretentiously artsy? You bet! But this was when the music video was still something relatively new, and I’d have a hard time citing much since then that tried to push the form as much as these in their time.

Makes me feel both young and old to watch these again.
- robulus
  
  Caberet Voltaire – now we’re talking!
  
  I always remember the clip for “Just Fascination”. I saw it on Max Headroom.
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWDdWOk0HTg
  
  I like Art of Noise, but I just think “Fairlight CMI” when I hear them. I had brochrures for that thing, which was hilarious, because the purchase price was about the same as a house where I lived. Nowdays you’re likely to get vastly better capabilities thrown in with a new computer on OEM software as an afterthought.
whisper dog

I’m not sure if they used their own samples for drums on this track, but I remember at the time (’82-’83ish) there was a company called Digidrums that sold replacement eproms for drum machines, that you could plug in to change the kit sounds. They had a John Bonham kit based on samples taken from the intro to “When the Levee Breaks” that sounded just like the drums on this track.

I almost bought the eproms for the LinnDrum I used at the time but it was too much of a hassle to swap chips and I wouldn’t have been able to do it during a live show. It’s amazing how technology has changed.
Maddy

I imagine the grown up little girl from this video with a booth at signing conventions, right next to the grown up Nirvana penis baby …
Xenu

And don’t forget this classic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEPq0FvFm3g
- otterson
  
  what about this wonderfully weird video?
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BggXhzUhZ94
  
  Ahh. The 80s. 120 minutes on MTV. Wow.
Anonymous

Ahhhh…this video was my introduction to Art of Noise via Night Flight of course. Directed by Zbignew Rybizcinski I believe (mangled spelling beside the point)
Mike

This was the first music video I ever saw, and my introduction to Art of Noise. Its effect on me was akin to the money shot scene from The Ring. Wonderfully strange and somewhat terrifying. MTV was downhill ever since.
Anonymous

I had to be the youngest Art of Noise fan ever. Did anyone else listen to In No Sense (Nonsense!) constantly when they were three?
deltaverde

Have the picture disc on vinyl. Beat that.
Anonymous

For my birthday years ago, my better half sought high and low and across the Internets for the specific edition of The Best of Art of Noise that had the extended, full drum version of “Moments in Love.” It is the best version of that song, and it was only on certain CDs, not others.
netdiva

For my birthday years ago, my better half sought high and low and across the Internets for the specific edition of The Best of Art of Noise that had the extended, full drum version of “Moments in Love.” It is the best version of that song, and it was only on certain CDs, not others.
Eicos

Oh, how nice, she’s showing them where the instruments are so they can give up their sawing/angle grinding/hammering and make beautiful music!

… hmm. Get on with it, will you? No, three people are not required to play a violin. Wait, what… NOOOOO!!!! How could you … ow.

Ok, the saxophone? Whatever, I guess… doesn’t look like it’s playable anyway.

Wait… no, not the piano! AGHHHHH!! *pause
Xeni Jardin

Every track from that record brings back such vivid memories, mostly related to wandering around dirty alleys and subway platforms in a grimier NYC back in those years. Good times.
- dculberson
  
  Okay, we apparently have pretty similar musical history. From Bad Brains to Art of Noise, these are the bands that played the soundtrack to my youth.
  
  I was just listening to this song the other day, thinking it should sound cheesy and dated. Yet, it does not. They knew what they were doing.
  
  “To be in England, in the summertime, with my love, close to the edge.”
  - Freddie Freelance
    
    “Close to the Edit” was based on samples from Yes’ “Leave It”, which Trevor Horn and his house band were working on when they came up with the idea for the Art of Noise, and they named it (sort of) after another Yes song, “Close to the Edge”.
Anonymous

I used to fall asleep to the extended version of Moments in Love. Beautiful and brilliant. Art of Noise were one of the best things to come out of the 80s.
Cochituate

Art of Noise was close to my heart because of their connection to 10cc, which had the same lack of angst or ego about their music. Nice beats, good videos (I’m a visual sort of guy), and a fun time.
9re9

Like many music videos of this era, the visuals and audio are inextricably intertwined – you can’t imagine one without the other. Big props to Zbigniew RybczyÅ„ski for making a film that so perfectly complements Art of Noise’s song.
Anonymous

Directed by Zbigniew Rybczynski http://bit.ly/arFTlY an absolute legend of music video and a pioneer of HD video. (he shot this on HD in the 80s… http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2mpqj_zbigniew-rybczynski-keep-your-eye-o_music His oscar winning short tango is also worth checking out.
teleny

One can only hope no real musical instruments were hurt in the making of this video…..
- oasisob1
  
  “teleny â€¢ #13 â€¢ 10:18 AM Monday, Oct 4, 2010: One can only hope no real musical instruments were hurt in the making of this video…..”
  
  Of course not, the Fairlight is safe.
- Mike
  
  Trust me, you do not want to witness an Einsturzende Neubauten concert. :)
Zaren

Takes me back to my awkward high school days… Getting a ride home from the school’s financial manager, this tape blasting away in her car, and wishing I was living the kind of life Xeni was living at the time… good times…
Anonymous

This song is still awesome after all these years.
Mr. Necktie

Personally a fan of Paranoimia on the “Best Of” CD they put out in the late ’80′s/early 90′s, Xeni.

I was about six when I first heard that, a while after its release. This one was always my favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtK5g1x0aBw
Blazorge

Yes, memories indeed… I remember this only because of the destruction of the instruments and after all these years it still makes me cringe.
To me musical instruments are sacred objects no matter how cheap or unplayable they are.
Just saying….
chivito

I do prefer version 2 from #23 above
JJT

I seem to recall this video being mocked by Beavis and Butt-head.
Donald Petersen

Man, I loathed this video back in the day. Haven’t seen or heard it in 25 years.

Now… it’s okay. Not my cuppa Nesquik by any stretch, but it doesn’t bug me anymore. It’s become easier for me to perceive the art within the noise, as it were.

But then I dwell awfully far from the avant-garde. I prefer Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road, myself.
Anonymous

Yello – Solid Pleasure – Bananas to the Beat

nuf said.
- knoxblox
  
  Ah, memories…Art of Noise, Yello, Landscape, Numan/Tubeway Army…even the first phase of The Human League (Ware/Marsh/Oakey) before the girls became true members.
philipb

Was Anne Dudley the funkiest school ma’am ever? I had the pleasure of recording her on a couple of 80′s hits, if I remember correctly her go-to keyboard was the PPG Wave which separated her from the endless Prophet 5 riffs circulating at the time & delivered those chop-chop bass lines in spades.