A Case of mistaken identity with AJ Barratt Pt.1

Below is a post from my ‘other’ blog – ArtOfZTT.com – where I post artwork relating to the ZTT label and interview the people who made it.
I arrive early, at a pub just outside Hither Green station in deepest South East London, to meet Tony ‘AJ’ Barratt, renown music magazine photographer and key ingredient in the early days of ZTT image-making. His photos of spanners, statues, masks and landscapes gave an identity to (the) Art of Noise as well as gracing the first release from the label, ‘Into Battle’. He also did many live shots, promo and video stills for Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Andrew Poppy.

It’s Friday evening and the place is filling up, the only photo of Tony I’ve got for reference is 30 years old and he’s told me to look out for ‘a hairless Glenn Gregory, ex of Heaven 17 lookalike’. After about 10 minutes a guy comes in who might fit the bill and I catch his eye, ‘Tony?’, ‘Yes’, he says, shaking my hand but with a very puzzled expression on his face. ‘Tony Barratt?’ I enquire, ‘ah, no, you’ve got the wrong person, he says, ‘but my name IS Tony though’. With perfect timing, the right Tony walks through the door holding a copy of the Ambassadors Theatre program for ‘The Value of Entertainment’.

He does indeed look like Glen Gregory, albeit without hair, and is instantly warm, engaging and candid about his early experiences in the music business. We’re joined by his partner, Jan, and after a couple of pints we repair to his house nearby where I notice the 12″ picture discs for both ‘Relax’ and ‘Two Tribes’ amongst the many pictures hanging on their walls.

FGTH War Hidden 12" Pic Disc AFGTH Relax 12" Pic Disc AHow did you get it touch with ZTT? Presumably you knew Paul from working at the NME or was that later?
No, it’s much more personal than that, I moved down to London with Paul’s sister, Jayne (they were an item). I knew Paul in Stockport, vaguely…
Is that where you’re from?
Yeah, and he bought out a fanzine – ‘Out There’ – sent it down to the NME and they said, ‘you’ve gotta come down and speak to us as soon as you can’. He went down and started off his career, this must have been early eighties so that kind of fits in. I moved down to London with Jayne in ’83 and I was a photography student at Harrow. In my second year there, obviously Paul Morley was (at) the NME and he was doing all this great stuff, (so) I took my stuff to the NME. This was before the Art of Noise or whatever. I was shown the door.
I went to the Melody Maker and started doing work there, concert stuff and photos and things, and then as time went by, Paul suddenly started to get involved with… I’ve no idea how that whole thing came to be – that he met with Trevor Horn, you might know a bit more about it or it might be mythologised by Paul or whatever.

The accepted story is that he interviewed Trevor when he was in the Buggles…
Yeah I remember that.
…he slated them, but when Trevor got the opportunity from Chris Blackwell (head of Island records) to start a label, he remembered Paul and got in touch. That would have been at some point in ’82 or ’83 presumably so you would have done those Art of Noise photos in the summer?
(Laughs) It’s awful to say but I have no memory of when or how, you have to remember that I was coming to the end of my photography course, I don’t think I’d actually left and there was this vague idea of some vague photos that might be needed for this vague idea of a group. And it was never something that was kind of like, ‘here’s a brief, we would like you to go out and do this’. The record label started and there’re all very exciting PAs at the Camden Palace with the Frankies, all sorts of bands were signing and people were interested and it was going to be the artist event of the… which it turned out, in some ways, to actually be.

AJ, PM +friends 1AJ (with cable release), Paul Morley (with phone) and friends circa ’83 – AJ: “I took this from across the room with the cable release, if I remember, Paul was on the phone to Trevor sorting out the ZTT thing.”

But I can’t actually remember. I remember it being a great time, I’d moved down to London, I was on the guest list of these great parties and it was free drinks and I thought, ‘oh my god I can’t believe this’. And then there was this record label and there was the Frankies and this vague idea of this thing called The Art of Noise and it was never like a… Because the members were so busy all the time, it was never like, ‘the group are going on tour now, etc.’ So there was no real sense of urgency.

They weren’t a group in the classic sense were they? They were producers, studio engineers and arrangers, which is commonplace today, but back then… They were ‘the music’ and Paul was ‘the image and the words’ and he knew how to present them.
Yeah, I’m not sure how you’d describe it, and he would chuck things in, he really did chuck things into the mix there, but there was never any sense there of… a plan. I got the impression that the music they made was at the end of a hard day producing whoever the hell it was.

The initial ideas for the Art of Noise apparently came from producing Yes, they stole a drum track which was going to be wiped, which then became the basis for ‘Beatbox’.
Well, if you listen to ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’ by Yes, there’s a bit in the middle where it kind of flips up and I remember that being crucial to the Art of Noise. I think that’s when Morley kind of went, ‘that’s what the Art of Noise should be’.

AON Spanner 2

When you took all the images like the hand with the rose and the spanner, that was just you on your own or did Paul come with you, did he give you those props?
My memory of that is that, at that time, I would just go out and take photos. When Paul was talking about the Art of Noise, what kind of came into my head was like Russian Constructivism, FuturismThe Human League did an EP called, ‘The Dignity of Labour’ and I always thought of this idea of labour being a fantastic idea to get into, you know, the ‘strength through joy’ kind of thing.
I know what you mean, like SPK, imagery of spanners and hammers, almost acting out Russian Constructivist posters.
So, I would just go out on a Saturday afternoon, go down to parts of London that I didn’t know and I’d just wander about, climb into things and take photos of things and mess about. Where those photos were taken, where that crane was that I climbed into, the same place as the van (from the ‘Close Up’ sleeve). It has obviously been a scrap metal yard at some point but you can see Tower Bridge in the background and when you think about London 30 years ago, there’s a piece of scrap land that you can see Tower Bridge from, that’s unbelievable.

It’s fascinating for me to see the contacts for the original Art Of Noise spanners etc., just seeing the outtakes or different shots. (AJ had provided me with original contact sheets for some of these shots).AON232 Spanner 1
The spanner photo (above) is my favourite of all time because it’s my arms, I set the shot up and I judged how high up I should put the spanner and I did the cable release with my foot. Strange but true, when I saw it, I just thought, ‘wow’. It’s very rare that, you know yourself as a graphic designer, that you do something and…‘bosh’, it works. I was fairly pissed off when Morley didn’t put it on the cover. The one with the van is at a completely different time when I took my mate Phil down.

AON Close Up 12" front
I’d figured that, I was going to ask, who was that in the mask?
(Laughs) In those shots it’s a friend of mine from college called Phil Priestman, where is he now?
Because you’d assume it was Paul.
Really? Do you think so?
Well, if there’s an image of the group, he was presenting that so you’d assume (that). It doesn’t matter who’s behind it though. Was that the same with the figure on the beach?
No, that was Jayne (laughs)
I’m not sure I want to explode any of these myths (laughs). This is the thing, I’m very aware that by explaining all this stuff it could just sort of pop the bubble. I don’t necessarily want to do that.
Well, I think it’s all well and good actually, the shots on the beach were at a place called Birling Gap, up between Brighton and Newhaven, very nice because of all those rocks and things. Me and Jayne went for a nice day out and…
“Put this cloak and mask on love…’ (laughs)
It was a cape actually, Jayne used to work at the National Theatre as a dresser and she borrowed it (laughs). If memory serves I was given the mask at ZTT and we took it down with us, or Paul dropped it around to where we lived back then. It had never crossed my mind that people would take for granted that that was Morley.
Well, who could it be? No one knew who it was… it was The Art Of Noise in some respects.
(raucous laughter from Tony) Trevor Horn?

AON seaside 1AON208
You would assume he’s the guy in the cloak, you know? ‘Don’t look behind the screen’, kind of thing. So there’s me thinking it’s Paul and it’s actually his sister!
That’s great.
I didn’t know who it was, there’s one on the back of ‘Close Up’ and there’s someone holding the mask and you can see some slicked back hair…
Yeah, that’s Phil Priestman (laughs). Who happened to have the same kind of haircut but that’s really interesting, I’d never thought of that.
In all the Art of Noise sleeves – their greatest visual asset (to my mind) was the masks and they dropped that completely once they’d moved to China records.

AON Close Up 12" back

‘Close Up’ is my favourite Art Of Noise 12″ bar none. For everything about it – the music, the cover, the photos, the colours – that epitomizes them for me.
I’d say you’re right actually.
I would stare at that record, like many other ZTT sleeves, and just try and find clues because that was what ZTT was about, it never gave you the answers it just posed the questions and that was half the fun of it.
Well that was part of Morley’s…mystic.
Because he got so much stick over other things, he hasn’t really gotten the credit for the art direction.
Having known him since… when I first met Paul he had hair parted down to here. Tangerine Dream, Nick Drake, reggae, he loved all that. I have the utmost admiration for him, but having said that, I have watched him chance it and throw it out there so much, actually to the detriment of his health. Like all his heroes, he believed that if he kept that up, he could keep throwing out those great ideas, ‘their fourth number one’, let’s put sperm on the cover, this’ll go. And it got to the point where actually, Jill Sinclair and Trevor were saying, ‘well look, we need to make some money here’.
You can kind of see that in the sleeves and such, that playfulness, ridiculously indulgent whilst the coffers are filling up from Frankie’s success. He had a couple of years of ‘the dream’, the honeymoon period, if you like, and then he was reeled back to reality.
AON240 statue mask

The cemetery pictures for ‘Who’s Afraid of the Art Of Noise’, was that Highgate with all the statues?
I don’t know which one because there are a few, I think the cover is Anton‘s (Corbijn), that’s nothing to do with me. I used to get really pissed off at it actually because I’d be ‘Art of Noise photography: AJ Barratt’ and then there’d be this image that wasn’t mine – Anton Corbijn. Because there was no real brief… there’s a photo of a statue holding up a mask, I can’t remember what it’s on? (Moments In Love 12″ sleeve). That’s in a Paris cemetery, I thought, ‘mask, statue, that’ll do for me’ and off you go. There’s another one in Paris from the same time where there’s a wall and a bit of graffiti and a statue behind, that’s at the Eiffel Tower, it was the same time. But the whole thing with the Art Of Noise was, if you see a little image like that, from my point of view, ‘take it’ and take it to Paul who would say, ‘I like that, we’ll see what we can do with it’. And the next week it’d be on a sleeve and you’d go, ‘er, alright Paul, should I chuck an invoice in?’, ‘yeah’, ‘alright, thanks’.
So, what would happen with this? Would you ever meet the designers or would you give the stuff to Paul and he would sort it?
I didn’t have much contact with designers – I was a photography student at the time. I remember going to a design studio in Soho in, maybe, Carnaby St. and I’d take stuff in and talk to them about it. They were really nice actually.
That would have been XL
It was XL, it wasn’t Tom though (Watkins) because he was the manager. I remember taking some stuff in and them saying, ‘what was the brief with this?’, and I said, ‘hey, this is ZTT, Paul Morley’..., you know? See if you like it and work around that.
He was famous for coming in with little things like beer mats with scribbles on and then working from that.
He directed the ‘Moments In Love’ video and I remember doing the stills on that and getting a picture of JJ (Jeczalik) who had the make up on, holding a rose. And then going round to Paul’s house once when he was sick to get permission to use it and him shouting, ‘AJ, what were you thinking?’.
You did the shot of the three of them and they’re made up as, almost clown / marionettes? It looks like it’s in a hairdressing salon.

Art+of+Noise+ARTOFTUBE2No, no, that’s backstage at The Tube (80’s TV music show) when they were on it, I did take those, yeah. We flew up to Newcastle, it was a horrible flight, bumpy all the way.
I love that photo, that’s the nearest they came (whilst on ZTT) to ‘being the group’, Anne and Gary have face paint and JJ has a mask. It’s interesting that when the Art O Noise signed to China records they made lots of records with guests – Tom Jones, Max Headroom, Duane Eddy – and they needed a front man because Paul had previously provided that.
I think they suffered from that, there was no guiding voice.

Who has these negatives then? ZTT?
Um, you see, when we moved abroad a lot of stuff got destroyed and lost but I would love to say that everything was filed up beautifully from A to B, but it isn’t. But yes, they did go to ZTT and they might well have disappeared.

At this point we have to disappear too so we’ll end part 1 here having sampled AJ’s memories of the Art Of Noise. Part 2 will be along shortly where we conclude with tales of Frankie tours and frustrating videos shoots.

All photos except the backstage of the Tube scanned from AJ’s negatives, © AJ Barratt. All sleeve and picture disc art scanned from my personal collection, © ZTT. All text © ArtOfZTT 2013.

Postscript:Trevor Horn once told me, every studio in the land has a cupboard, where they’ve nicked all his samples” (laughs).

Into Battle with…

Posts are slowly but meticulously being added over at artofztt.com

AJ Barratt: “I remember going into the NME offices one day and I saw this poster on their wall, and someone had added a third line to the bottom of it. ‘Noise Is Golden, Silence is a Dead Giveaway… and Bullshit stinks’, that’s what it was! (Laughs) That’s what somebody had written.”

‘Into Battle’ promo poster from the archive of AJ Barratt, digitally restored by artofztt.com. Also included is the original photo for this design, scanned from the negative. The quote above is from a forthcoming interview with AJ which contains more exclusive images from his collection.

artist: Art Of Noise title: Into Battle With Art Of Noise format: A2 promo poster design: XLZTT photography: AJ Barratt cat. no: ZTIS100 date: 09/83 art of notes: The red crosses are identical to the ones on the ‘You Can’t Suck The Same Piece of Sugar…’ poster and continue the trend for ephemeral symbols hovering in the top right corner.

Calendar for 1970/71 and personal 2012 highlights

Fabulous Hallmark calendar from 1970-71, designed by Push Pin Studios and containing 16 months. Seen via the ever-excellent Voices of East Anglia website who, themselves cribbed it from the Flickr of Mewdeep who has the full thing.

2012 was a busy year for me, probably one of the best yet in terms of new things achieved and unique experiences. I’m always striving to do something different and at the end of each year I remember the line from The The‘s ‘I’ve Been Waiting For Tomrrow (All of My Life)’, “another year over and what have I done?”.

Thankfully 2012 has been a golden year in terms of ‘getting things done’:

Finally getting ‘The Search Engine’ out there was a good start as were the Greenwich Planetarium launch shows and exhibition with Henry Flint at the Pure Evil Gallery, all in January.

Featuring on a Cineola podcast, being interviewed by Matt Johnson alongside an exclusive remix of ‘GIANT’.

The Kraftwerk month and mixes I did on my blog going a bit viral in March.

Having The Amorphous Androgynous remix one of my tracks for a release on Record Store Day was a massive thrill. Hearing it played on 6 Music was great too.

Going to Montreal to learn about and present The Search Engine show in their SATosphere was one of the proudest points of my gigging career to date.

Having J.G. Thirlwell pop round for tea and a chat one afternoon.

The Food & Flint exhibition, hosted at the Factory Road Gallery in Hinckley by Sarah & Leigh was amazing fun.

The Sacrum Profanum concert in Krakow I took part in after an invitation from Skalpel was one of the most fantastic concerts I’ve ever seen and gig of the year for 2012.

The Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique’ mix I did with Cheeba and Moneyshot making waves on the web.

Playing a small part in some of ZTT‘s Element reissue series and getting to edit one particular master recording for a future issue.

Providing images, sleeve notes and audio for a reissue compilation of John Rydgren‘s work on the Australian Omni Recording Corporation label.

Instigating and then editing the results of a new meeting of Coldcut and The Orb for the 25 years of Solid Steel mixes in 2013.

With so much out there it was inevitable that some got missed.

Things that came out in 2012 that I still didn’t get to see or hear:

Berberian Sound Studio

Cabin In The Woods

Lone’s – Galaxy Garden album

The Amazing Spiderman

The B.P.R.D. hardback editions

Butcher Baker comic

Can : The Lost Tapes compilation

The last few issues of Godland comic

GOAT’s ‘World Music’ album

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Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Sex Mix vol.1

Very much looking forward to this, available August 6th from ZTT

CD1: Frankie Goes To Hollywood in The Pleasuredome, a Zang Tuum Tumb singlette in five parts: Happy Hi! (All in the Body), The Soundtrack from Bernard Rose’s Video of the Welcome to the Pleasuredome single, Get It On, Welcome to the Pleasure Dome (How to Remake the World), Happy Hi! (All in the Mind); Relax (International); The Power of Love (I’ll Protect You From The Holocaust) can be read in various ways but, for the sake of CD indexing, has six distinct sections: The Power of Love (extended, singlette – as opposed to 12” – version), The World is My Oyster (Trapped), Holier Than Thou (FGTH’s Christmas message), The World is My Oyster (Scrapped), Holier Than Thou (further festive messaging), The Power of Love (instrumental, singlette version); The World is My Oyster (at its full length); Don’t Lose What’s Left, Rage Hard + ++ *.

CD2: Extracts from Relax, From Soft to Hard, Dry to Moist: Relax (Sex Mix), Later On (from One September Monday), Ferry Cross The Mersey (…and here I’ll stay); Music from and inspired by Two Tribes (Keep The Peace): Two Tribes (singlette extracts), One February Friday (singlette extracts), War (somewhere between Hidden and Hiding); Further elements from The Liverpool Look: Warriors of the Wasteland (Compacted), Do You Think I’m Sexy?, Watching the Wildlife (Voiceless).

Posted in Design, Music. | 8 Comments » |

Spotted in Kid Koala’s studio

I visited Eric San yesterday (aka Kid Koala) and got co-opted into drawing a piece of artwork for his new album (I didn’t mind a bit). While I was there I took these shots around his ridiculously packed studio.

Eric loves anything odd or kooky that makes a noise, he owns a cutting lathe to cut his own tour records, a vintage rhythm machine that plays drum beats on 8-track cartridges and a customised jukebox that plays cassettes!

Posted in Photography, Toys. | 2 Comments » |

The Dark Judges Return to 2000ad on CBR

There’s been a lot of press in the comics world concerning the return of three of the Dark Judges to the current Judge Dredd epic, ‘Day of Chaos’, in 2000ad recently. Besides them being great characters, who haven’t featured in the comic for a few years now, I’m especially into this because Henry Flint is sharing art duties on this story and he’s never drawn them before save for a few promotional images.

What’s also a big deal is that no one saw this coming and their introduction into the story at this point is one of the biggest WTF? moments, and strokes of genius from writer John Wagner, that I can remember in a long time. What’s so good about the story currently running is that, unlike past ‘epics’ in Dredd’s world, this one hasn’t been trailed in quite the same way. There was no big announcement that the-story-to-end-all-stories was about to begin, more that several slow boiling story lines have come together and built upon each other and snowballed.

The basic set up for this epic in the making is that the Sovs (Soviet Judges) have been planning an attack on Mega City 1 in reprisal for Dredd annihilating East Meg 1 in the Apocalypse War decades ago. This has been a slow burn, deep cover operation where they’ve infiltrated the Judicial system to it’s core. Add to that the kidnap of a scientist who has created a doomsday virus with no cure that’s slowly infecting the population of the city, bogus propaganda (or is it?) that the Judges are simply taking the infected and dumping them into plague pits outside the city and full on city-wide civilian rebellion and we’re firing on all cylinders.

To then ramp things up a gear and drop the Dark Judges into the equation (inter dimensional beings who’s maxim is that life is a crime and the sentence is death) and it’s looking like there is no way out for Dredd, or the city for that matter, this time. All the praise that’s being heaped on this story is justified and it seems lapsed readers are returning to the comic after years away and being wowed.

If you want to see what the fuss is all about you can read two chapters over on CBR and an interview with Henry, John Wagner and second artist Colin MacNeil. There’s also a ‘Day of Chaos’ catch up on the 2000ad site too and with the rest of the comic bearing rich fruit and the impending Dredd film at the end of the year, it’s turning out to be a very good year for the title.

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Art Of Noise and Propaganda reissues

AON Influence coverPropaganda outside +

These were out last week, Propaganda’s classic ‘A Secret Wish’ is now remastered and expanded to 2 CDs with plenty of rare and unheard gems. The Art of Noise get a double CD set too with a great compilation of both ZTT and China-era tracks on disc 1 and remixes, rareties and unreleased cuts on disc 2.

One of these is the ‘Anne to Tears’ version of Moments in Love that I photographed when I visited the ZTT vault last year and props to Ian Peel for doing a sterling job on curating both releases. Also a tip of the hat to Philip Marshall for his excellent design skills, keenly referencing the artwork by XL and the London Design Partnership from the originals – reissues don’t get much better than this.  Even more of a joy for me is a mention of my ‘Raiding The 20th Century’ mix with Paul Morley in the sleeve notes of the Influence booklet :) Well I did steal it from Paul after he stole it from the Situationists. Buy them both from here

AON Raiding sleevenote

Posted in Design, Music. | 2 Comments » |

One November Monday

Back in the winter of 2009, on a bleak, windy Monday, I died and went to heaven.

two-tribes-poster.jpgActually, I tell a lie, it was Slough.
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When I think of Slough I see the opening credits to the UK comedy The Office which was supposedly based there. It’s all industrial buildings, dull office blocks and council estates, absolutely nothing to write home about (sorry any Slough dwellers reading this). I’d been invited by my friend Ian Peel to visit him at an address owned by the record label ZTT – home of Trevor Horn, his associated productions as well as the back catalogue of Stiff records, which they acquired in the mid 80’s. Arriving at the address revealed a nondescript ‘premises’ – it wasn’t a house or office in the conventional sense and – while searching for an entrance round the back – Ian popped his head out and beckoned me inside.

I’ve known Ian for a few years now, initially through a shared love for the Zang Tuum Tumb (ZTT) label and it’s golden period in the 80’s, but also for our fondness of the music of that decade. He regularly writes for the Guardian, Record Collector and the like as well as co-ordinating reissues and releases for ZTT, Stiff and occasionally his own label Karvavena. On occasion he picks my brains for something and disappears back into the ether although this time I’d provided him with much more than a soundbite for a magazine feature. An email arrived one day from Philip Marshall who was helping Ian with the reissue of a deluxe 2 CD edition of Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s Welcome To The Pleasuredome album for ZTT. Could I help with sourcing images for the release?

For those unaware, (probably most of you) Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and more importantly the whole aesthetic of the ZTT label in the 80’s, had a huge effect on me in my formative years. Most people have one or two bands that they ‘grew up’ with, moments where a band’s rise to fame and the mania that surrounded them dovetailed with your own musical tastes becoming forever linked with your memories of the period. For most of ’84 and ’85 I bought little else than the bands on the ZTT roster, Frankie, Art of Noise, Propaganda, Grace Jones‘ incredible Slave To The Rhythm LP, even venturing into contemporary classical waters with Andrew Poppy, and of course, the Frankie Say… T-shirts.

bang-poster.jpg4th-no-1-poster.jpg

Jumping 20 years forward in time I was perusing a ZTT fan forum when I chanced upon someone selling the original artwork for the ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’ album. To cut another digression short, I ended up buying the paintings of the front, inner gatefold and back from the original artist Lo Cole and they now hang proudly in my studio. Another jump, 5 years to the present, and Ian is trying to source unique images for the 28 page booklet that will accompany the reissue. The ZTT archive is incomplete, a lot of it having either been binned over time or destroyed in a fire at an Island records warehouse over a decade ago and this was where I fitted in.

Being a fan, over the years I’ve been trawling eBay and used magazine shops for copies of the music press from the 80’s and collecting the ads for all the releases – mini graphic masterpieces in themselves that had influenced my design tastes greatly. Ian had seen this collection and asked if I had any more including the scans of the Pleasuredome preliminary sketches and paintings Lo had sent me when I’d been discussing the purchase of his work. I did and photographed various promo and fly posters too big to include in the folders as well as details from the cover paintings. Then he dropped the bombshell. He was spending a couple of days a week in a property owned by ZTT, sorting out all the master tapes from their archive – the fabled ‘ZTT cupboard’ as it’s known to collectors. Because the artwork required from my collection was so valuable, we agreed I should should drop it off in person to Ian whilst he was working there.
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original-pleasuredome-painting.jpg original-pleasuredome-inner-painting-detail.jpg original-pleasuredome-back-painting.jpg

The thought that I would be in a room with boxes of master tapes all connected directly to the label and music I loved was thrilling but nothing prepared me for the sight I saw upon stepping into the room. It was the whole downstairs floor of the building, the size of a small office or a very large living room. Boxes covered nearly every inch of floor space and were piled up to chest height, Ian had started to sort them into stacks relating to each artist and there was a small warren of footpaths between the piles. Half of the room was barely touched and the sheer volume of boxes was overwhelming.

GJ Slave master 2GJ Slave diskette GJ Slave master

I looked down and saw a stack marked ‘Grace Jones’, in it were various master tapes for the ‘Slave To The Rhythm’ LP and single, duplicates for different territories but no session tapes, yet. Several boxes of Art of Noise reels revealed 24 track tapes of various ‘Moments In Love’ versions, the ‘Beatbox’ and ‘Into Battle’ 12″s, an early, unreleased version of their first album entitled ‘Worship’, already split into an A and B side for the cutting house. Fairlight discs and studio session sheets where inside the boxes too, containing info on what was recorded when, by whom and, no doubt, the original samples used on the tracks. One had the words “I never want to hear this ever again – Anne Dudley” on it, another “Anne in tears” written on the metal reel itself.

AON Beatbox 12" master AON Beatbox diskette AON box 1 AON box 2 AON early tape AON Moments master AON Worship 1 AON Worship 2

“Here’s the Frankie pile”, offered Ian, pointing to about 50 boxes, each stuffed with reels of master tape, cans of film used for videos, VHS, Hi-8, DAT and cassettes. There were session tapes for the ‘Liverpool’ album, I think I saw at least 50+ reels, mixes upon mixes, vocal sessions from actors like Joanna Lumley, Pamela Stephenson and Geoffrey Palmer. A version of ‘Two Tribes’ finished on my birthday in 1984 marked ‘mix 115’. The reels of an unreleased 7 & 12 inch remix by Paul Morley of their last single, ‘Watching The Wildlife’, ready for the cutting house to master. A ‘Welcome To the Pleasuredome’ ‘continuous wacky jam’ between Trevor Horn Steve Lipson and JJ Jeczalik entitled ‘the shit mix’. This was like entering one of those lost temples in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the ultimate digging in the crates session with the added appeal of teenage nostalgia.

FGTH Pleasedome shit mix FGTH Pleasuredome Palmer vox FGTH Rage Hard Lumley vox FGTH Rage Hard Stephenson vox FGTH Relax 7" master FGTH Relax Sex mix master FGTH Two Tribes mix 115 FGTH Two Tribes Video destructo master FGTH Wildlife Morley 7 & 12" mixes FGTH Wildlife Orchestra mix FGTH Wildlife:Waves 12" mixes

After four hours my hands were black and I had to get back to London but I felt I’d barely scratched the surface. A couple of boxes were filled between the two of us, full of interesting or important tapes that needed to be baked and transferred to DAT for future compilations. Pleasuredomes indeed as an old Paul Morley-penned sleeve note read.

The deluxe reissue of Frankie’s ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’ is out April 12th from ZTT / Salvo / Union Square Music. It comes with a second CD of unheard works in progress, rare alternate 12″ and cassette only cuts including a completely unheard extended version of ‘Ballad of 32’ from the original album. Included is a 28 page booklet featuring text by Ian, design and layout in the style of the original releases from Philip and many picture contributions from myself. Ian even let me have a hand in the track selection and order on the bonus CD, running it past me and taking on board suggestions for inclusions and omissions. Last but not least, I get a nice credit inside :)

Buy it here

More design, visuals and tape shots in the gallery below, click to enlarge. I’ve been writing and researching a long piece entitled ‘Who’s Afraid of the Art of ZTT?’ for about 5 years now, it’s nearly finished and will make an appearance someday