Anne says: I would like to quote from a wonderful review of my album by Adam Mason in POPMATTERS online magazine. He really has understood where I was coming from and what I aimed to achieve:

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"Showcasing supreme piano versatility, a solo Anne Dudley proves that the instrument gems she co-created in synthpop group Art Of Noise can survive and even flourish without the car engine samples and robotic “Dum-Dum-Dum” effects.

 

On new album Plays the Art of Noise, Anne Dudley, a founder member of the eponymous English synthpop outfit, is audacious enough to demonstrate that “Close To The Edit” is as much to do with melody and composition as it is the samples that once signposted an entirely new form of music. She offers a stripped-down arrangement of the track that marries piano with beguiling percussive touches, rendering it strangely compelling through her nimble playing, crashing chords and mischievous tempo changes. . . 

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Dudley performs a similar feat on a further 14 Art of Noise tracks on this album, where we get a clear sense of her setting the record straight over exactly what she contributed to the group. . . 

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Dudley certainly lays bare the chord sequences on the minimalistic Plays the Art of Noise, in a concerted effort to mitigate these popular misconceptions concerning the group's oeuvre. That is not to say, however, that the new -- mainly piano -- arrangements constitute boring or sanitized versions of old favourites, with all the fun extracted. The cover design alone suggests otherwise, by mimicking that of the group's first, highly experimental EP, "Into Battle With the Art of Noise", the image of the knight on horseback replaced by the semblance of a grand piano. . . .

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The overall absence of computers will take some getting used to for many, but there can be no doubt that Dudley has done an extraordinary job of reinventing the most iconic Art of Noise tracks on this album, adding enormously to the group's legacy. She succeeds in bringing to the limelight a wealth of previously underappreciated melodies, at a point when the art of sampling has long lost its edge within hip-hop and throughout pop music"