Beat Box
is one of the most popular songs by the mysterious English group Art of Noise.
Published 40 years ago, in December 1983, it is a four-minute instrumental piece that uses noises such as an engine starting or water falling down a drain to accompany a powerful drum rhythm.
Despite its sound, certainly experimental for the time (many hip hop groups have recognized the influence of this song in the development of the genre), it reached the top of the
Billboard
dance
chart in 1984, being the most listened to song in America's nightclubs for several weeks.
Without promotional photos and performing with masks to hide the identities of its members (the majority of its audience believed that they were black musicians), the career of the futuristic and influential Art of Noise is truly fascinating, especially thanks to the revolutionary use of the
sampler
—brief sound cut that can then be used as an instrument.
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Trevor Horn: architect of modern pop.
By Diego A. Manrique
Trevor Horn (74 years old), one of the members of the group along with Gary Langan, JJ Jeczalik, Anne Dudley and Paul Morley, as well as an iconic name in pop-rock as always, knew how to see, before anyone else, the possibilities of the new synthesizer Fairlight CMI, an Australian invention for recording and releasing sounds.
“I never learned to use it completely, because the manual was too thick, and I would have had to stop production or even eating to read it.
We invented something new that, even today, has marked today's music,” recalls Horn.
In black, with sports shoes and thick glasses, gray hair and an elegant demeanor, Trevor Horn is smiling, even though he has been awake since four in the morning to catch one of the first flights from London to Madrid.
Today he has not been able to carry out his daily routine: waking up at eight, taking his grandchildren to school and going into the recording studio he has in the basement of his house, a mansion in west London that once belonged to the actor Bob Hoskins.
Without a trace of the northern English accent with which he became known in music, when he was a paid bassist, a Bob Dylan imitator and a minor, recounting his career has a thousand starting points.
Today it is Art of Noise, but it could have started with
Relax,
the legendary song by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and one of the best-selling singles in the history of the United Kingdom, which Trevor Horn already knew would be a success because he designed it in 1984 with that intention.
Trevor Horn, pictured in November 2023.picture alliance (dpa/picture alliance via Getty I)
“When I started, it cost so much money to get into a recording studio that people would only pay you if you were able to do something that sold records.
Now it's easy, you can buy the equipment for a few thousand euros.
And yet, there is less risk in pop.
It's terrible, but I'm not able to differentiate current pop singers because everyone uses autotune," says who was also one of the composers behind
Video Killed The Radio Star.
(The video killed the radio star)
,
from The Buggles, as well as singer of the legendary progressive rock group Yes and producer of Seal, Grace Jones, Paul McCartney, Belle & Sebastian, tATu and John Legend.
“By the way, on the new album I did use
autotune
on some specific notes, but you won't be able to detect it,” he confesses, mentioning some of the stars—Tori Amos, Rick Astley, Robert Fripp, Iggy Pop—who have collaborated on
Echoes - Ancient & Modern
(2023), an album of covers, released on a label with prestige in classical music such as Deutsche Grammophon.
“It's a German label and most of the recording technology was invented in Germany, like analog tape.
In my studio I still use Telefunken microphones from 1953″, he reveals.
Technology had a lot to do with Trevor Horn's ability to innovate—as it satisfied an insatiable natural curiosity (“I went from doing pop with ABC to working with the father of punk, Malcolm McLaren; I didn't want to be bored”)—but it also They had to see the “tons” of weed he smoked, according to Horn himself in his autobiography
Adventures in Modern Recording
(2022).
Technology and weed explain the ten minutes of
Moments in Love
, perhaps the most perfect pop song ever written… but in the abstract, deconstructed.
“Yes, it's a pop single, but with the wrong elements in it,” he reflects, laughing.
"I think marijuana changed things in the '60s because, you know, one minute the Beatles were wearing nice suits and hairdos and the next,
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
comes out and everyone is stoned out of their minds.
Drugs contributed to the expansion of music in each era, but I think technology is more to blame.
Technology and music have always been part of the same thing.
From the early days when cathedrals were built, because the cathedral was the original reverb unit, where any music would sound fantastic.
That was the vision of heaven for the church;
when you went there on Sunday with the heavenly choir singing.
And before rock and pop, the modern symphony orchestra is a great feat of engineering.
All instruments beautifully made and tuned,” he reflects, adding that artificial intelligence will not change the music at all, “because they are just tricks,” although the verses written by Horn in 1979 for
Video Killed The Radio Star resonate today more than ever:
“ They took the credit for your second symphony / Rewritten by the machine in the new technology.”
Buggles keyboardist Geoff Downes (left) with Trevor Horn in a promotional image from 1979.Fin Costello (Redferns)
The British producer mentions The Beatles not by chance: one of the most perfectionist producers in history - during the interview he will tell how he had to spend days working with five takes of the same song sung by John Legend to achieve the effect he was looking for. , the group he has always liked the most is the same one that simple people like.
“I'm not one of those who mention an unknown band to seem superior to the rest.
I grew up with The Beatles: I was 13 years old and watching them was what made me want to be in a group and play bass.
And what surprises me about The Beatles when I listen to them is that all three of them had almost the same voice.
They had different versions of the same voice.
They could have been brothers from the way their voices sounded alike.
Paul McCartney did not have the high, flexible voice that John Lennon had.
He had a slightly deeper voice but very gritty.
And George Harrison, a lovely voice, thick and deep.
Even today I am surprised when I listen to them;
40 or 50 years have passed and the sound of their voices together is still something amazing to me,” he says, visibly moved.
Many singers speak precisely of Horn's talent for recording them and getting the best out of them.
“My trick?
I'm not going to reveal it to you.
Or maybe yes.
Hard work.
It's true that people always sing better when they feel happy.
Or if they feel sad, but they are happy to be sad.
So you have to make them feel comfortable.
And make them feel that you are listening, that you are paying attention.
In a way, when someone sings in a recording studio, you're a one-man audience.
And you have to get the person excited,” he says.
His life has had everything.
Also a tragedy: the death of his wife, Jill Sinclair, manager of the ZTT record label with Horn: one of his four children accidentally fired a rifle in the wrong direction.
After a coma of several years, Sinclair passed away in 2014. “When she was gone, I realized how much of the bad part of the music business she kept away from me.
With her death, I lost that protection.
Before his accident, I could only concentrate on music,” he says, immediately changing the subject, mentioning that this year he has done 80 live concerts and, somehow, remembering that music (and technology and drugs, oh my ) will always be there to save people.
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