Catalogued as SALVOMDCD22, the 17th Element has an excellent sounding remastered CD and a good quality DVD thrown in for good measure. At first glance it seems like the perfect package, but the reality of this release of Who's Afraid Of The Art Of Noise will most probably appeal only to the die-hard Art of Noise and ZTT fans as casual album buyers may be put off.
I say that because my partner got bored with the amount of different versions of the same song. By the time we had finished listening to the CD, she vowed never to listen to it again as it was repetitive. As a fan of AoN since September 1983, yes one of the first people to discover them before the hits came along, I slowly began to realise that she maybe right as she was listening to it from an everyman's perspective.
For the audio CD alone, there are no less than twenty-one minutes of disc space dedicated to Moments In Love, twenty-one for Beat Box and ten to Close (To The Edit). My justification for being happy with the additional tracks is that they are live radio sessions, but that is because I am an avid fan of the group and my enthusiasm gives me tunnel vision when collecting Art of Noise releases.
The A Feast Of Reason DVD is made up of various video versions of Art of Noise's three aforementioned singles as well as rare television and cinema commercials, all in one place, available to the public for the first time, essential viewing for fanatics of the group. The rest of the material is constructed from the The Seduction Of Claude Debussy electronic press kit that has nothing to do with Who's Afraid Of The Art Of Noise, along with completely out of place live performances from that 1999-2000 period, which would fit better on a restrospective of material from the late 1990s. There is also footage taken from infamous 1985 The Value Of Entertainment show, that after twenty-six years still causes anger with a lot of AoN fans which seems rather strange to include it as for mysef, I found it awkward to watch. Apart from those aspects that seem a little off to me, it is a nice collection, apart from two concert shows, no Art of Noise video albums have been released before.
As stated at the start this set is really aimed at die-hard fans, such as myself and am grateful for the amount of unrleased material that is included as it is a treasure trove and it can't be knocked for that. It is a shame that ZTT/Salvo didn't put out a reissue alongside this set without any added material, as they did with Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Welcome To The Pleasuredome when that was recently deluxed. This would give the casual music buyer a choice to enjoy the album for what it is and not have to be expected to jump into a set of multiple versions of various pieces.
