Influenced by the likes of Kraftwerk, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Terry Riley, Miles Davis, Todd Rundgren, Marvin Gaye and Tangerine Dream, they considered themselves futurists in the sense that they were interested in the future, in making the future a better place, in the technology of the future, in turning up in the future, in sounding like they belonged in the future.Īt their first group meeting, on February 2nd 1983, they decided that they would never appear in their videos, they would not have a lead singer, they would never officially finish off a track, they would use technology to liberate the imagination, and they would be represented in photographs by spanners, roses and Sigmund Freud (Read into that what you will). They took their name, like all the best pop groups from Soft Machine to The Velvet Underground, from a book - a book about Italian futurism. Formed at a time when the reverberations of punk, post-punk and new wave could still be felt, they were determined to be a different kind of group, a group that set themselves outside the then currents of fashion and style, a group that were the missing link between The Monkees and Talking Heads, Abba and Kraftwerk, Frank Zappa and The Archies.
Art Of Noise first appeared to appear in 1983, with a song in their heart, a beat in their soul, and an ignition key in their hand.