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pure sound - acts of new noise
pure sound home acts of new noise
Pioneering sonic landscape album dovetailing often-surreal cinematic songwriting with location and found sound, noise, machinery and demon editing.
Though the Pure Sound albums Yukon and Submarine were to be released first, to critical acclaim across Europe, it was on Acts of New Noise that ex-A Witness bassist Vince Hunt first developed his ideas of creating complex audio tapestries from location sound, machine rhythms and atmospheric actuality and using them as a vehicle for his songwriting.
Germinating in the late 1980s - while Hunt was still penning A Witness tracks like the C-86 classic "Sharpened Sticks", the Peel favourite "Zip Up" and their finest pop moment and final single "I Love You, Mr Disposable Razors" – Acts of New Noise has taken 23 years to reach fruition.
The result is a startling experiment in re-defining music, from the mayhem of the album opener of piano and vinyl madness "My Wife Doesn’t Understand Me" to the despairing ghost-like horn crescendo of "Titanic", almost drowning in a cacophony of sound.
Acts of New Noise heralds a new way of songwriting. Mechanical rhythms, instrumental interjections and industrial atmospherics assemble a lush multi-layered musical backdrop of great depth and detail, while Hunt’s often-surreal lyrics, coupled with a cinematic story-telling technique, unveil the rich imagery of each song.
"Moody Bastard Out Drinking" tells of a man feeding his anger and frustration in pubs, while wet city streets await: "Dialect Poetry" is a reflection on individual reality and an exercise in counting blessings.
"Love Your Pheromones (Be My Slave)" is a musical kedgeree of African village songs, jungle drum & bass and a distillation of the most extreme A Witness track, the yet-to-be released on CD Drill One (from the Loudhailer Songs EP 1984). For "Give Me The Last Twelve Years Back" Hunt added vocals and bass to a piano track laid down in the mid-1990s.
Recorded and edited mostly on quarter-inch tape, often during and after nightshift work in a five-year stint in London, this album is a celebration of ideas over exhaustion, of tape lengths being as important a musical measure as verses and choruses, of washing machines and fridges humming and spinning their rhythms into the mix; of edits being made and made again to cut deep into the groove.
This album survived 23 years of edits and re-edits and – digitally re-mastered - shines like a beast. Some parts come from cassette, some from quarter-inch, some from studio waste bins or pirate radio. But the musical mixer that is Acts of New Noise straightened it out and made it come out the right way, even if that took a quarter of a century.
Release date: March 2008 (EUPH 004 / EUPHONIUM RECORDS).
Available through mail order, iTunes or through our Buy page.
