#ZTT30: Art of Noise in talks about reforming for possible live dates

The original founding members of influential avant-garde synthpop outfit the Art Of Noise are hoping to get back together and tour again, possibly in 2015.

Interviewed (separately) for this blog, Fairlight Programmer J.J. Jeczalik and Engineer/Producer Gary Langan both confirmed that there were ongoing “conversations” about hitting the road.

Langan told us: “What I’d really like, my wish for the future, is that somehow the Art of Noise gets back together again and we go on tour, and we do it properly. There are conversations, everybody’s aware of it.”

“It’s going to be a tough cookie to pull together [but] J.J. has given up teaching and [is] retired, so he’s looking for something to do…. That’s my wish, that we can get it together because I know what can be achieved technically live now, having done it for seven or eight years…. what you can do technically now in terms of production is quite staggering. So that’s my wish and yeah, there are conversations.”

When asked if it might happen next year, Gary responded: “Yeah, let’s say we’ve seriously started talking in the spring of this year, it wouldn’t be until 2015 that you could get it on the road and then it’s [a case of] who’s going to finance it because again, my ideas don’t come cheap.”

The Art of Noise split acrimoniously from ZTT Records in 1985, leaving the trio of Anne Dudley, Gary Langan and J.J. Jeczalik who took the name with them and eventually signed to China Records. Langan himself left a short while after this “under a huge cloud” but frosty relations have thawed over the years and all five members (including Trevor Horn and Paul Morley) were together under the same roof for the 19:Eighties concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in October 2013 (an account of that evening can be found here).

Read Gary Langan’s interview in full on SDE tomorrow, with J.J Jeczalik’s interview following later in the week.

Would you like to see the band reform and play live? Leave a comment and let us know!