In No Sense? Nonsense! by Art of Noise

In No Sense? Nonsense!, the third full-length from Art of Noise, came out on China Records in 1987 with the group pared down to a duo. Engineer Gary Langan had gone the year before, so Anne Dudley and J.J. Jeczalik produced it themselves and handed the mixing desk to Bob Kraushaar and Ted Hayton. The sampler is still the engine, but now it drags rock muscle and orchestral forces into the collage too.

It plays less like a set of songs than one long, restless reel. Tracks bleed into each other, ambient hush swelling into clattering percussion, sweeping strings, a clarinet choir and chanting voices, with the whoosh and rumble of transport of every kind as a running motif. Themes from "Dragnet", "Galleons of Stone" and "Ode to Don Jose" keep resurfacing, and "Roundabout 727" recycles "A Nation Rejects", a B-side from In Visible Silence. It arrived a year after "Peter Gunn" had won them a Grammy.

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