Cause when love is gone, there's always justice, and when justice is gone, there's always force

Moments In Love & Close (To The Edit)-Art Of Noise

Before the actual top 40 'hits' came...that'd be "Kiss" (with Tom Jones) and "Paranoimia" (with um, Max Headroom). Before Anne Dudley went on to score numerous films, including The Crying Game and The Full Monty (for which she won an Oscar)...before all of this...these were these two songs. Whats interesting about them, to me, is that they actually charted with this stuff in the 80's. This wouldn't happen now...its not that experimental music is not being produced. It's that it has well fled the pop medium and shooting for the charts. In the 80's, this was the charts.

The first song, "Moments In Love", is a one of the most sensual and erotic songs made. Whats odd to me, is that if you were able to actually take the song apart, like if it was a mechanical device, each part would seem, by it self, rather cold. The chilly synth, the ghostly voices, the chimes. And yet...when it all comes together its remains 10 minutes of the most seminal chill-out music ever made. Oh yeah, you've heard it...it'd be impossible for you to not have heard it in the 80's (I imagine it soundtracked some serious makeout sessions). There are a couple of versions of the song floating about, but the Quiet Storm (this version begins with the piano) and Extended mixes are the best. In a career of many high notes, this is arguably Art Of Noise's penultimate moment.

Arguably? Yes, this is the song that rivals "Moments In Love." The truly remarkable "Close (To The Edit)" remains one of the best songs of the 80's, hands down. Again, that it was even out on the mainstream charts (albeit on the fringes) is surprising enough. Featuring a stalling VW Golf as the main "vocalist", this song became a breakdance and beatbox classic. It still sounds like nothing else...hmmmm, well, ok, no, thats not true. I think Aphex Twin and Superpitcher and Funkstorung and Autechre heard this track. Its an impossibly loose track...it almost sounds like it isn't going to hold together, like it will simply just breakdown and stop (like that damn VW Golf). Yet it is continues to expand and is impossibly funky. If you don't have this on your IPod, frankly, you are not cool. Brilliant and genius.

Oh and then there's the video. Banned in some spots for "encouraging" violence in children, it featured 3 men in business suits (meant to spoof the News of Huey Lewis & the News) and a strange young girl (who looked vaguely like a miniature 14-year old Siouxsie) destroying numerous musical instruments (in stop-gap motion photography). Directed by Zbigniew Rybczynski (an acclaimed Oscar winner & HDTV pioneering director), it was, at 14, perhaps the first time I ever watched something and thought: "what the fuck?" I remember that when I first saw it on MuchMusic (no, I am not Canadian, for some inexplicable reason we got Much Music in NW Indiana) it entranced and frightened me at the same time.

O Superman-Laurie Anderson

Another "what the fuck?" moment from childhood. This has been remixed by Booka Shade & M.A.N.D.Y. for the dancefloors (its good, but no match for the original). The original is well, freaky. Its features two alternating chords and the word "ha" repeated over and over and over for 8 minutes while Laurie Anderson talks zen-like through a vocoder. Its eerie and beautiful and not just a little bit disturbing. All the more disturbing because of these lines.

This is the hand, the hand that takes
Here come the planes
They're American planes. Made in America
Smoking or non-smoking?

This was released in 1981, so it obviously is an odd and weird coincidence. (Not just noticed by me...Laurie Anderson revived the song for a concert post 9-11, recognizing the parallels in imagery). Perhaps even weirder, after John Peel played the song on his radio show in England, the song reached...get ready, #2!!! It might be the strangest #2 ever. Here it just simply continued to establish Laurie Anderson as an avantgarde cult artist. Her time has certainly come, as she was involved in creating the opening ceremonies for the 2004 games and is NASA's Artist In Residence.

Its oddly beautiful. Its not scary in a conventional sense. I think the right word is disorienting. Everytime I hear it, despite it being fairly simple in composition, I marvel at how deep the song actually is. And thats what I find so disturbing, I think. When you listen to it, its as if there are other parts to the composition that are present but you cannot actually hear them, you can just sense that they are there, on the fringes of your vision. Just out of reach.