ABSTRACT
The Art of Noise was formed while Trevor Horn was working on 90125, adopting a name derived from the Italian Futurists. The title of The Art of Noise's first album, "Who's Afraid of The Art of Noise?", is a particularly striking and apposite example of their reliance on wide-ranging cultural references. Their album covers, publicity photographs and the use of texts support the 'high art' image associated with Zang Tuum Tumb (ZTT), and are rich in ambiguity. As noted, the synthesized timbres on the album contrast strongly with the samples in a number of ways: resolution, noise level, and frequency range. The generation of much sampler music is the result of listening to, and then sampling, audio recordings. With the multitrack tape recorder, several recording spaces within a studio, and a variety of digital signal processors, the possibilities for evoking different kinds of space and movement are virtually endless.
