Art of Noise

The Seduction of Claude Debussy (ZTT)
by Lex Marburger

It’s been awhile, but worth the wait. Not that the world has been waiting for a new Art of Noise album, not that anyone’s even been hoping for one… Not since “Peter Gunn,” that is. But this seems… no, it is quite different. First and foremost, they take on one of the seminal composers of the 20th Century, and do him some sort of justice with The Seduction of Claude Debussy. Perhaps a little background on the man?

Debussy was born in 1862, and was inspired at an early age to attend music school. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), he wasn’t very good at following the “rules.” The rules of writing classical music, that is. He heard beauty in things that his teachers found “wrong,” such as writing contrapuntal music with parallel fifths, which means an interval of a fifth moving in the same direction to another interval of a fifth. That’s right, all you Pete Townshend lovers out there; Debussy created the powerchord. Anyway, he wasn’t very loved until he started playing his mostly melody-absent, tapestry-like music for the people of Paris. Some hailed him as a genius, some a madman and pervert. He became one of the founding fathers of the Impressionist movement, and changed the face of music forever. And he wore a sombrero.

So Art of Noise decided to plunder the past and bring it into the future, grafting drum’n’bass and other techno marvels onto Debussy samples. Add the narration of John Hurt, the rap styles of Rakim, and the usual AON trickery (samples, tweaks, blips & bleeps), and The Seduction of Claude Debussy rises above itself. This CD shouldn’t be as good as it is. But it is. Perhaps a lyric from “The Holy Egotism of Genius” may shed some light. Mr. Hurt? “Debussy didn’t believe in God. He didn’t believe in the Establishment… He didn’t believe in Beethoven, or Wagner. He believed in… Debussy.” Same could be said of AON.