"Ain't no goodbyes...ain't no goodbyes...ain't no goodbyes.."

Excited boy here.

The Art of Noise boxset 'And what have you done with my body god?' arrived on Wednesday. This was a four CD set and booklet, covering Art of Noise's earliest years whilst a quintet with Paul Morley and Trevor Horn at ZTT records and before they splintered into a threesome and went to more commercial climes at China Records. These CD's, aswell as covering all EP's, singles and albums released at that time (1983 - '85) contained hitherto unreleased demos, early versions, recording sessions, samples, alternative versions and even the very first track JJ and Gary created, the track that an excited Trevor Horn took to the head of EMI and later became Beatbox, a record that launched a thousand ships over the decades to come, with its huge beat and arbitrary noises. It was these unreleased curios that really whet my appetite and I was very excited about.

As expected, some of the tracks were very rough, works in progress. From a creative standpoint, its interesting to listen to these and hear how their creative processes worked. Standouts for me are Close to the Edge, an early version of Close (to the Edit), sans 'dums', a version of Moments in love called Moments in Bed, that has Marilyn Monroe 'boo boo be doo' samples throughout, Whose Afraid of Scale and the sessions of Anne Dudley playing classical pieces on an organ, recorded in a converted church. The intention of this was to incorporate the playing into tracks at a later date, but all that was eventually sampled was the sound of her footsteps as she walked across the woodern floor!

I would love to know who the stoned pillock is, that has clearly been secretly recorded, in the studio, explaining to the band what they need to do to a track with comments like 'I don't know if you should use words...like J t'aime' and 'as long as you keep to the side...' and then finishes up with 'I went for some of that accupunture last night', which illicits a urine extracting 'good' from JJ.

I read the booklet as I listened though, a bag of Dorito's at my side, each artist giving thoughts and comments on each track and their memories of the time, from those early days to the split where Anne, JJ and Gary stormed out of a recording session in best rock n roll style.

Overall a very enjoyable experience for me and I would suggest, any other AON fan, hungry for 'new' material and an insight into the early, intimate moments of his/her favourite band. Not sure it would appeal to anyone else, too many variations on tracks with minor differences to be of interest to the casual listener, but then I don't believe that that is the intended audience anyway.

Of course, in the digital age, these things could never exist and the bands of today are unlikely to be releasing this sort of material in twenty years time. If something doesn't work now, it is gone in the click of a mouse, and will never have made it to tape along the way.