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IN•NO•SENSE? NONSENSE! Deluxe Edition

When originally released in September 1987 as a single LP, cassette and Compact Disc, In•No•Sense? Nonsense! was perhaps the most out of place album in the charts that year. It couldn’t be defined by genre, nothing unusual about that, after all it was as an Art of Noise record, but even to their fans it was, and to this day it remains an oddity. It was a complete departure from their first two albums, 1984’s Who’s Afraid Of The Art Of Noise and their best selling album In Visible Silence released seventeen months earlier. Both of those ground breaking records included no less than three hit singles, however only Dragnet from the motion picture of the same name was released from this one.

From motorcycles to orchestras, film soundtracks to choirs, pop to yodelling and ambient backdrops, the album had it all. For those not initiated with it, they could be forgiven for thinking that it would sound like a complete mess, on the contrary it was one of the most sophisticated and fun albums ever made with each track flowing continuously from one to another placing the listener on a musical journey. Although there were no other singles taken from it, tracks were released as b-sides for Kiss and Paranoimia ‘89 keeping the album in the public consciousness. The original CD version had a slightly different track sequence than that of its vinyl and cassette counterparts, swapping around Ode To Don Jose / Day At The Races, however a couple of errors occurred with that running order. The first was that the end of Ode To Don Jose was tracked at the end of E.F.L., the second being that the finish of A Day At The Races overlapped with the start of Ode To Don Jose. The CD was deleted in 1988 and a “corrected” version took its place, unfortunately it omitted the beginning of A Day At The Races. That version remained in print through various re-issues until the album was permanently deleted in 1999.

Nineteen years after its deletion and thirty-one after its Compact Disc debut, In•No•Sense? Nonsense! has been given a new lease of life as a double CD deluxe edition and for the first time on that format, the original LP/cassette sequence has been used and remastered by Dudley, Jeczalik, Langan. The audio quality of this release is far superior to that of the old versions, the sound of every recording is crystal clear, drawing the listener inside the album to reveal nuances not heard before in such highly detailed clarity, even the background sounds that appear in the links between tracks demand the same attention as the actual music. By going back to that sequence order there are no errors that spoil the audio experience of listening to it completely uninterrupted and intact for the first time.

Expanding this album was never going to be an easy task as originally it was believed that a large amount of out-takes and unreleased mixes were missing, never to see the light of day again. Fortunately that wasn’t the case and what is presented is fifty track deluxe edition that gives answers to the most asked question about a b-side from fans: ‘What are the other excerpts that appear in Acton Art?’ That track appeared thirty-one years ago on various formats of the Dragnet single featuring edits from the long player and others that didn’t. Now appearing with those mysterious tracks are a television commercial used for Brut, music for the film Earth Girls Are Easy, the theme tune to The Krypton Factor TV show, unreleased mixes of E.F.L. and One Earth alongside unheard demos. Those just scratch the surface of what has been compiled in this extraordinary set that includes mixes of the singles Dragnet and Legacy as well as a second collaboration with Duane Eddy entitled Spies, alongside an Art of Noise remix of Paul McCartney’s Spies Like Us which in a way fits in with the other movie soundtrack material, but not that well the rest of the album.

The packaging has been carefully redesigned by Philip Marshall remaining true to the original and houses a twenty-four page booklet with a detailed essay by Ian Peel, the curator of this set. As with all of the other rebooted Art of Noise albums, a great deal of thought, time and care has gone into giving In•No•Sense? Nonsense! a reissue it deserves, one that fans can cherish.

- KM Whitehouse, October 2018