Art Of Noise: Classic Or Dud?

Sporadically brilliant, but hard to be passionate about, I'd say. "Close to the Edit" remains a classic single, however. Ever notice how the video for Garbage's "Happy When It Rains" looks like the video for "Close to The Edit" (directed by Zbigniew Rybczynski) if the little girl grew up to be Shirley Manson? Think about it. No really.

I'd say classic in the sense that they were self-consciously a "project" band, and that they pushed the envelope where aggressive sampling was concerned. Perhaps dud in that they often ended up as mediocre soundtrack material ("Dragnet" was pretty unpardonable), but hey, that's what you get when you cover Mancini.

If they had stopped after the first album, I think they would have been an unchallenged classic in my books..."Beat Box"! "Moments in Love"! "Close (to the Edit)"! At the time, it was really innovative stuff. Then they had to go and start releasing followup work that got more and more cheeseball and irrelevant along the way, with some real embarassments like adding Max Headroom to "Paranoimia". By the time they got to The Seduction of Claude Debussy, I had so little interest in their ongoing saga that I didn't even bother picking it up used...and I'm led to understand that I haven't really missed much.