The Seduction of Claude Debussy is a 1999 concept album

Concept album

In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...

 by Art of Noise, featuring a line-up of Trevor Horn

Trevor Horn

Trevor Charles Horn CBE is an English pop music record producer, songwriter, musician and singer. He was born in Houghton-le-Spring in north-east England....

, Anne Dudley

Anne Dudley

Anne Dudley is an English composer and pop musician, and was the first BBC Concert Orchestra's Composer in Association in 2001. She has worked in both the classical and pop genres. She is perhaps best known, however, as one of the core members of the synthpop band Art of Noise and also as a film...

, Paul Morley

Paul Morley

Paul Morley is an English journalist, who wrote for the New Musical Express from 1977 to 1983, during one of its most successful periods, and has since written for a wide range of publications...

, and Lol Creme

Lol Crème

Lol Creme is an English musician and music video director, best known for his work in 10cc. He sings, plays guitar and keyboards.-Biography:...

. Also appearing on the album are John Hurt

John Hurt

John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...

, soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

 Sally Bradshaw, Rakim

Rakim

William Michael Griffin Jr. , known by his stage names Rakim , Rakim Allah, R.A.K.I.M., and The Master, is an American rapper. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and most skilled emcees of all time. Eric B...

, and Donna Lewis

Donna Lewis

Donna Lewis is a Welsh singer-songwriter and record producer, best known for the 1996 pop hit single "I Love You Always Forever", and the adult contemporary chart-topper "At the Beginning" with Richard Marx. After releasing her second LP Blue Planet, Lewis left Atlantic Records and independently...

. The group blended the music of groundbreaking French impressionist

Impressionist music

Impressionism in music was a tendency in European classical music, mainly in France, which appeared in the late nineteenth century and continued into the middle of the twentieth century. Similarly to its precursor in the visual arts, musical impressionism focuses on a suggestion and an atmosphere...

 composer Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy

Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...

 with drum and bass

Drum and bass

Drum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...

, opera, hip hop

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

, jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, and narration, and described the album as "the soundtrack to a film that wasn't made about the life of Claude Debussy."

The album was announced in mid-1998 as being due for release by the end of that year. However, it didn't come out until mid-1999. The album was only released on CD and MiniDisc formats. The UK edition was released 28 June 1999. The U.S. edition was released 29 June 1999. The Japan edition was released 1 December 1999.

Standard editions

The most widely available, commercial editions of the album were released in the UK, U.S., Canada, and France, and contained these tracks:

1. "Il Pleure (At the Turn of the Century)" – 8:02
2. "Born on a Sunday" – 4:40
3. "Dreaming in Colour" – 6:42
4. "On Being Blue" – 4:58
5. "Continued in Colour" – 1:19
6. "Rapt: In the Evening Air" – 4:21
7. "Metaforce" – 3:44
8. "Holy Egoism of Genius" – 7:56
9. "La Flûte de Pan" – 2:45
10. "Metaphor on the Floor" – 2:06
11. "Approximate Mood Swing No. 2" – 2:14
12. "Pause" – 2:30
13. "Out of This World [Version 138]" – 5:27

U.S. bonus disc

The first U.S. edition of the album, released 29 June 1999, was a two-disc set, with the second disc containing the following tracks:

1. "Metaforce" – 4:55
2. "Metaforce: The Sighs of a Metaphor" (remix by Roni Size
   Roni Size
   Roni Size is a British record producer and DJ, who came to prominence in 1997 as the founder and leader of Reprazent, a drum and bass collective...
   
   ) – 6:37
3. "Metaforce: The Size of a Metaphor" (remix by Roni Size) – 5:41
4. "Metaforce: The Beat of a Metaphor" (remix by Rhythm Masters
   Rhythm Masters
   Rhythm Masters was a house music duo composed of deejays Robert Chetcuti and Steve Mac, a.k.a. Steve McGuinness. They began mixing together around 1993 after meeting in Malta, doing remixes for, among others, Todd Terry, Michael Jackson, INXS, Junior Vasquez, David Morales, and Roger Sanchez...
   
   ) – 6:54

Japanese edition

The Japanese edition, released 1 December 1999, was a CD-Extra

Enhanced CD

Enhanced CD, also known as CD Extra and CD Plus, is a certification mark of the Recording Industry Association of America for various technologies that combine audio and computer data for use in both Compact Disc and CD-ROM players....

 containing the following audio tracks (some of which are slightly different mixes from the standard edition, despite similar durations):

1. "Il Pleure (At the Turn of the Century)" – 8:02
2. "Born on a Sunday" – 4:39
3. "Dreaming in Colour" – 6:42
4. "On Being Blue" – 4:58
5. "Continued in Colour" – 1:20
6. "Rapt: In the Evening Air" – 4:22
7. "Metaforce" – 3:43
8. "Holy Egoism of Genius" – 7:57
9. "La Flûte de Pan" – 2:45
10. "Metaphor on the Floor" – 2:05
11. "Approximate Mood Swing No. 2" – 2:11
12. "Pause" – 2:29
13. "Metaforce – The Size of a Metaphor: Mix by Roni Size" – 5:40
14. "Dreaming: Colour Green (Brothers in Rhythm
    Brothers in Rhythm
    Brothers In Rhythm is a house music duo consisting of producers / remixers and DJs Steve Anderson and Dave Seaman. As a duo and individually, they have remixed and/or produced tracks by Lulu, M People, Secret Life, Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, Kylie Minogue, Garbage,...
    
     via Art of Noise)" – 5:22
15. "Out of This World [Version 138]" – 5:25

The CD-ROM portion of the disc contained the "Metaforce" video in a QuickTime

QuickTime

QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...

 format.

Pre-release promo

A promotional version, released several months in advance in the U.S., Canada, and UK (CD-R only in the UK), contained the same tracks in a slightly different sequence and with some mixing differences in "Born on a Sunday" and with "Dreaming in Colour" being one continuous track instead of split into two:

1. "Il Pleure (At the Turn of the Century)" – 8:03
2. "Born on a Sunday" – 4:37
3. "Dreaming in Colour" – 8:33
4. "On Being Blue" – 5:09
5. "Rapt: In the Evening Air" – 4:21
6. "Metaforce" – 3:44
7. "Holy Egoism of Genius" – 7:56
8. "La Flûte de Pan" – 2:31
9. "Out of This World [Version 138]" – 5:16
10. "Metaphor on the Floor" – 2:06
11. "Approximate Mood Swing No. 2" – 2:14
12. "Pause" – 2:31

Reduction

Reduction, released in 2000, was a limited edition album consisting mainly of outtake

Outtake

An outtake is a portion of a work that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and DVD reissues of many albums and films as bonus tracks or features, in film often, but not...

s from The Seduction of Claude Debussy. It was available as a separate item in some regions, or as the second disc in a 2-disc set in other regions. Most editions had the following tracks:

1. "Identity Crisis"
2. "Motive"
3. "(New York London Paris) Spleen"
4. "Saluting the point of no return"
5. "Man And Boy"
6. "Information"
7. "And I Placed My Fingers On Her Eyes As Though I Was Touching The Silent Controls Of A Tv Set"

The version of Reduction in the French 2-disc edition added a remix of "Dreaming in Colour":

1. "Identity Crisis"
2. "Motive"
3. "(New York London Paris) Spleen"
4. "Saluting the point of no return"
5. "Man And Boy"
6. "Information"
7. "Dreaming: Maroon"
8. "And I Placed My Fingers On Her Eyes As Though I Was Touching The Silent Controls Of A Tv Set"

Custom CD offer

From 24 June through 30 September 1999, people who purchased the U.S. edition of The Seduction of Claude Debussy from certain vendors received, by email, a code which could be used to order a custom CD-R containing 5 to 12 (initially, 5 to 10) previously unreleased tracks from the group's early years, with one of three titles, each with its own cover art. The titles available to choose from were as follows:

• Bashful
• Belief System
• An Extra Pulse of Beauty

The tracks available were the following:

• "A Time to Hear (Who's Listening?)" – 3:34
• "Who's Afraid (of Scale)" – 4:38
• "Resonance" – 2:14
• "Beat Box (Diverted)" – 8:12
• "Memory Loss" – 1:27
• "Beat Box (One Made Earlier)" – 2:27
• "Structure" – 1:14
• "A Time to Clear (Up)" – 4:19
• "Beat Box (Diversion)" – 4:09
• "The Subject Has Moved Left" – 1:46
• "Closer (to the Edit)" – 6:23
• "Resin" – 3:20

Chart positions

The album reached No.150 on the UK Albums Chart

UK Albums Chart

The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...

 on 7 October 1999. The "Metaforce" single (ZTT 129 CD) reached No.53 on the UK Singles Chart

UK Singles Chart

The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...

on 26 June 1999.