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New Order Information
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'New Order' is an English rock group formed in 1980 by the surviving members of Joy Division following the suicide of singer Ian Curtis. Early New Order was reminiscent of Joy Division, but they quickly evolved their own distinctive sound, and are often cited as an important and influential electronic dance act. Their sound can be described as a fusion of guitar-based indie rock and electronic dance music, particularly house music.
Current members are Bernard Sumner (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Peter Hook (bass), Stephen Morris (drums, keyboards), and Phil Cunningham (guitars, keyboards). In 2001, keyboardist Gillian Gilbert (a founding member; she and Morris are married) left the group.
History
From 1978 to 1980, Curtis, Hook, Morris, and Sumner formed a creative and influential body of work as Joy Division, often featuring heavy production input from producer Martin Hannett. Curtis committed suicide just prior to the release of the band's second album, Closer, in May 1980. Intending not to let the band disappear with Curtis, the band rehearsed with each member taking turns at singing, ultimately choosing Sumner as the guitar was an easier instrument to play while singing. The group toured, then recorded with singer Kevin Hewick.
Wanting to complete the line-up with someone they knew well whose musical skill and style was compatible with their own, New Order invited Morris' girlfriend, Gillian Gilbert from Macclesfield, to join the band during the early part of October 1980, as a keyboardist/guitarist.
As Joy Division, the band had agreed not to continue under that name should any one member have left the group. The late Rob Gretton, the band's manager for over twenty years, is credited for having found the name "New Order" in an article in The Guardian entitled "The People's New Order of Kampuchea". The band adopted this name, despite its previous use for ex-Stooge Ron Asheton's band The New Order.
Movement
With the release of Movement in November, 1981, New Order initially started on a similar route as their previous incarnation, performing melodic, dark songs, albeit with an increased use of ethereal synthesizers. The singles that followed ("Everything's Gone Green" and "Temptation") indicated that at this stage the band had begun to change direction.
The Hacienda, Factory Records' own nightclub (largely funded by New Order), opened in May 1982. This was the UK's first ever Superclub.
Power, Corruption & Lies
Power, Corruption & Lies was released March, 1983, a synthesizer-based outing and a dramatic change in sound from Joy Division and the preceding album. Starting from what earlier singles had hinted, this was where the band had found their footing, mixing guitar driven indie music with early techno music, heavily inspired by acts like Kraftwerk and Donna Summer. Also, the group had begun to adopt abstract, nonsensical lyrics, with a curious naiveity to them, effectively the polar opposite of Curtis' brooding poetry. Also, as seen at the end of the emotive Your Silent Face, Sumner seems to have adopted an ironic, satirical sense of humour, finishing the song with the line "why don't you piss off", a quality that the band has taken to heart over the years.
Two steps farther in this direction, was the electronically sequenced, four-on-the-floor single "Blue Monday", which became the best selling 12 inch single of all time. The 12 inch "Blue Monday" single sleeve was so elaborate, resembling a large 5¼" floppy disk, that the band and Factory themselves, were said to lose a small amount of money (around £0.20) on each copy sold. However, later presses became less and less elaborate, and the band still reaped large profits off the sales of the single. The American edition of Power Corruption & Lies, released later, featured "Blue Monday" as an extra track.
The hip hop tinged single "Confusion" (released in 1983 and co-produced by Arthur Baker) firmly established the group as a dance music force, inspiring many musicians in subsequent years. It was a crossover success on the club scene, and set a precedent for remixes of rock or pop songs which has now become a key part of music marketing.
Still, the group did not pigeonhole themselves as a dance act; instead they lead two simultaneous and sometimes overlapping lives, one guitar-based and one dance-oriented. In 1984 they followed the largely synthesized single "Thieves Like Us" with the heavy guitar-drum-bass rumble of "Murder."
Low-Life
The Low-life album (1985) refined and sometimes mixed the two styles. In February 1986, the soundtrack to Pretty in Pink featuring "Shellshock" was released on A&M Records.
Brotherhood
Brotherhood (1986) divided the two approaches onto separate album sides.
Substance
While New Order toured North America with friends Echo & The Bunnymen, the summer of 1987 saw the release of the complilation Substance that featured the new single "True Faith". Substance showed the band's singles' progression from mostly guitar-based to slick techno-pop.
Technique
In February 1989, Technique debuted at number one in the UK, showing a heavier acid house influence on a number of tracks and a lighter indie rock sound on others.
New Order recorded the official song for the English football team's 1990 World Cup campaign, "World in Motion," under the ad-hoc band name EnglandNewOrder. The song, co-written with comedian Keith Allen, was a number one UK hit.
Unusually for such a major group, New Order never had a formal contract with their label (This was in fact Factory's standard practice until the mid-1980s. According to Wilson, "All our bands are free to fuck off whenever they please"). Because of this, the group (rather than Factory Records) legally owned all their own recorded material. This has often been cited, not least by Wilson himself, as the main reason London Records' offer to buy the ailing label in 1992 fell through.
Republic
The band's first album release since parting company with the now defunct Factory Records featured a more direct sound, stylistically similar to Technique, but with a more somber edge. The release spawned the singles "Regret" (their highest charting single in the US), "Ruined In A Day", "World" and "Spooky".
Following the release of Republic, the band put New Order on hold, whilst each member pursued their own side-projects: Sumner partnered with former member of The Smiths, Johnny Marr in Electronic (who also enlisted the help of Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys on their self-titled debut, and later Karl Bartos formely of Kraftwerk). Sumner also collaborated with the Chemical Brothers on a track from their album Surrender; Hook formed the bands Revenge and Monaco; and Morris and Gilbert formed the aptly named The Other Two.
Get Ready
Their 2001 release Get Ready was a departure from their more electronic style and is more focused on the guitar. According to Sumner, "Get Ready was guitar-heavy simply because we felt that we'd left that instrument alone for a long time." Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins performed guitar and vocals on the album.
In 2002, Q magazine named New Order in their list of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die", although this was as part of a sub-list of "5 Bands That Could Go Either Way".
Waiting for the Sirens' Call
The band released a new album on March 27 2005, entitled Waiting for the Sirens' Call to good reviews. According to Peter Hook, during the sessions for Waiting for the Sirens' Call, the band wrote and recorded enough material for two albums, with plans to release the second one in the future.
In recent years New Order have become more comfortable with the Joy Division era of their repertoire, often performing live versions of classics such as "Transmission" and "Isolation." Joy Division and New Order were portrayed in the film 24 Hour Party People, which depicts the rise and fall of their record label Factory, along with its bands and owners.
At the 2005 NME awards, New Order were presented with the award for 'Godlike Geniuses', their equivalent of a Lifetime Achievement award. Previous winners include Ozzy Osbourne, The Clash, and Factory Records labelmates the Happy Mondays.
thumb|300px|New Order performing at Reading Festival (1998)
Aesthetics
New Order, and Factory Records products in general, frequently bore the minimalist packaging of Peter Saville. The group's record sleeves bucked the '80s trend by rarely showing the band members (the Low-Life album was the exception proving the rule) or even providing basic information such as the band name or the title of the release. Song names were often hidden within the shrink wrapped package, either on the disk itself (such as the "Blue Monday" single) or on an inconspicuous part of an inner sleeve ("The Perfect Kiss" single), or a cryptic colour code invented by Saville (Power Corruption & Lies). Saville elaborated on this concept on the NewOrderStory video, saying his intention was to sell the band as a "known secret" of sorts. The distinctive minimalist style was enough to allow fans to identify the band's products without explicit labelling.
The band rarely gave interviews in the '80s, later ascribing this to not wanting to discuss Ian Curtis. This along with the Peter Saville sleeve designs and the tendency to give short performances with no encores gave the band a standoffish reputation. The band became more open in the '90s, for example the aforementioned NewOrderStory (and in particular the long UK version) featured extensive personal interviews.
New Order released many singles for songs not included on albums. Singles were released in many formats and often with varying track lists and exclusive artwork. According to Tony Wilson, Factory intentionally released other singles, LPs and compilations in non-UK markets to increase their collectability. Indeed, the complete New Order discography is far too sprawling for most fans to collect in its entirety, and the compilations released by Factory and other labels are notoriously incomplete. In the late 90s, London Records spoke of releasing a Depeche Mode-esque singles retrospective for New Order, complete with original packaging and track lists. In fact, the project was at times named Cardboard and Plastic and Recycle, with t-shirts for the latter appearing at the infrequent New Order gigs. Eventually, the financial aspects caused the project to devolve into the Retro box set (2003), which featured many tracks that were readily available elsewhere. The single-disk International compilation (2003) similarly omits the classic, out of print recordings in favour of updating the conventional (The Best of) New Order (1995) and Substance (1987). At least one single, "Run 2" (1989), may never be reissued; it was the subject of legal action from John Denver, who argued that the song's wordless guitar break was based on his own song "Leaving on a Jet Plane". An out of court settlement ensured that the song would never be re-released in its original form.
Many New Order song titles have nothing to do with the song. In some cases songs with normal titles appear to have had their titles swapped to other songs. For example, the phrase "This Time of Night" appears in the song "As It Is When It Was" on Brotherhood but is the title of a song on Low-Life. Other song titles were taken from the titles of old movies ("Thieves Like Us," "Cries and Whispers," etc.) For a full list see New Order tracks which include the title in the lyrics.
Both New Order and Joy Division were among the most successful artists on the Factory Records label, run by Granada television personality Tony Wilson, and partnered with Factory in the financing of the Manchester club The Hacienda.
Their music has largely been heavily synthesized, like other dance acts, and among more well-known songs are the singles "True Faith" (1987), and "Bizarre Love Triangle" (1986). On recent albums they have showcased a more traditionally rock-oriented sound on some tracks.
The quality and innovation of the group's art earned them the status of icons in the alternative community, and have shown considerable longevity. They have heavily influenced techno, and were themselves influenced by the likes of Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire and Giorgio Moroder.
Singles often feature remixes. The number of remixes were few at first but increased a great deal with increased popularity of dance music during the release of 1993's Republic. New Order remixes tend to have one or more of these characteristics:
* Dub Versions: Inspired by the dub musical genre, these have titles related to the original track (e.g., "The Beach," a lyric in "Blue Monday," is a dub version of that song; "Bizarre Dub Triangle" is the dub version of "Bizarre Love Triangle", "Dub Vulture" for "Subculture", etc.). Dubs were often the solitary b-side on the Factory original 12 inch singles, and were often recognizable rearrangements of the title tracks with few, if any, added parts.
* Edits: These were shortened versions of other mixes, often meant for distribution on a 7 inch record.
* Extended Versions: These preserve much of the original track but add extended intros, outros and instrumental parts (e.g., "Round and Round 12" Version", "True Faith (Shep Pettibone Mix)").
* Instrumentals: The title track minus vocals (e.g., "Fine Line", "Vanishing Point Instrumental"). An interesting twist on this is the "Confusion (A Capella Mix)" which has a sole vocal track.
* Re-recordings: Later takes of the title track (e.g., "Ceremony" on the white and blue 12 inch and on Substance, "Shame of the Nation").
* Live Versions: Live recordings (e.g., "The Perfect Kiss (Video Version)", the 60 Miles An Hour Tour Disc).
Bassist Peter Hook contributed to New Order's sound by developing an idiosyncratic bass guitar technique. He often played high-pitched melodies with a signature heavy chorus effect, leaving the lower registers to keyboards or sequencers.
Drummer Stephen Morris regularly played a mixture of acoustic and electronic drums, and in many cases played along seamlessly with sequenced parts.
All the band members could and did switch instruments throughout gigs, as evidenced on Jonathan Demme's video for "The Perfect Kiss" and the fairly common Taras Shevchenko and Pumped Full of Drugs concert videos. In particular, every member could be seen playing keyboards at times. Taras Shevchenko is notable for the fact all four members of the group have left the stage before the final song ("Temptation") comes to an end.
Honours and recognition
* NME Godlike Genius Award 2005 - New Order
* UK Music Hall of Fame Inductee 2005 - Joy Division / New Order
Discography
Albums
| Year | Album | UK | US |
|---|
| 1981 | Movement | 30 | - | | 1983 | Power, Corruption & Lies | 4 | - | | 1985 | Low-Life | 7 | 94 | | 1986 | Brotherhood | 9 | 161 | | 1989 | Technique | 1 | 32 | | 1993 | Republic | 1 | 11 | | 2001 | Get Ready | 6 | 41 | | 2005 | Waiting for the Sirens' Call | 5 | 46 | |
Compilations
| Year | Album | UK | US |
|---|
| 1987 | Substance | 3 | 36 | | 1990 | The Peel Sessions
(originally recorded in 1981 and 1982) | 52 | - | | 1990 | The Best of New Order | 4 | 78 | | 1995 | The Rest of New Order (remixes) | 4 | 78 | | 2002 | International | - | - | | 2002 | Retro (box set) | - | - | | 2005 | Singles | 14 | - | |
Singles and EPs
* Note that many New Order singles were not available on their albums at the time of their release. All songs eventually did appear on many of New Order's compilation releases.
| Year | Song | UK singles | US Hot 100 | US Dance | US Modern Rock | Album |
|---|
| 1981 | "Ceremony" | 34 | - | 61 | - | - | | 1981 | "Procession" / "Everything's Gone Green" | 38 | - | - | - | - | | 1981 | "1981-1982 New Order" (EP) | - | - | - | - | - | | 1982 | "Temptation" | 29 | - | 68 | - | - | | 1983 | "Blue Monday" | 9 | - | 5 | - | Power, Corruption & Lies | | 1983 | "Confusion" | 12 | - | 5 | - | - | | 1984 | "Thieves Like Us" | 18 | - | - | - | - | | 1985 | "The Perfect Kiss" | 33 | - | 5 | - | Low-Life | | 1985 | "Sub-culture" | 63 | - | 35 | - | Low-Life | | 1986 | "Shellshock" | 28 | - | 14 | - | Low-Life | | 1986 | "State of the Nation" | 30 | - | 4 | - | Brotherhood | | 1986 | "Bizarre Love Triangle" | 56 | - | 4 | - | Brotherhood | | 1987 | "True Faith" | 4 | 32 | 3 | - | Substance | | 1987 | "Touched by the Hand of God" | 18 | - | 1 | - | - | | 1988 | "Blue Monday '88" | 3 | 68 | 1 | - | - | | 1989 | "Fine Time" | 11 | - | 2 | 3 | Technique | | 1989 | "Round & Round" | 21 | - | 1 | 6 | Technique | | 1989 | "Run 2" | 49 | - | - | - | Technique | | 1990 | "World in Motion" | 1 | - | 10 | 5 | - | | 1993 | "Regret" | 4 | 28 | 1 | 1 | Republic | | 1993 | "Ruined in a Day" | 22 | - | - | 30 | Republic | | 1993 | "World (The Price of Love)" | 13 | 92 | 1 | 5 | Republic | | 1993 | "Spooky" | 22 | - | 6 | - | Republic | | 1994 | "True Faith '94" | 9 | - | - | - | The Best of New Order | | 1994 | "1963" | 21 | - | - | - | The Best of New Order | | 1995 | "Blue Monday '95" | 17 | - | - | - | The Rest of New Order | | 1995 | "Bizarre Love Triangle" (US re-release) | - | 98 | - | - | - | | 1997 | "Video 5 8 6" | - | - | - | - | - | | 2001 | "Crystal" | 8 | - | 1 | - | Get Ready | | 2001 | "60 Miles an Hour" | 29 | - | - | - | Get Ready | | 2002 | "Someone Like You" | - | - | 34 | - | Get Ready | | 2002 | "Here to Stay" | 15 | - | - | - | - | | 2003 | "The Peter Saville Show Soundtrack EP"
(limited edition of 3000 copies) | - | - | - | - | - | | 2005 | "Krafty" | 8 | - | 2 | - | Waiting For the Sirens' Call | | 2005 | "Jetstream" | 20 | - | 3 | - | Waiting For the Sirens' Call | | 2005 | "Waiting for the Sirens' Call" | 21 | - | - | - | Waiting For the Sirens' Call | |
Soundtracks
* Pretty in Pink (1986) - "Shellshock"
* Salvation! (1987) (The band contributed a few tracks including an instrumental version of "Let's Go" which has been performed live with vocals)
* Trainspotting (1995) ("Temptation" appears on the Soundtrack, and is featured prominently in the movie - with one of the characters, Diane, singing the chorus in a scene)
* The Beach (1996) - "Brutal"
* Blade (1998) - "Confusion" - Pump Panel Reconstruction Mix
* The Wedding Singer (1998) - "Blue Monday"
* American Psycho (2000) - "True Faith"
* D.E.B.S. (2004) - "Temptation"
Tribute albums
* Blue Order: A trance tribute to New Order (1997)
* New Order Tribute - Thieves Like Us (2000 - Si Records)
* A Tribute to New Order (2001 - Cleopatra Records)
* True Faith - A Tribute to New Order (2001 - Synthphony Records)
* A String Quartet Tribute to New Order and Joy Division (2003)
* Community: A NewOrderOnline Tribute (2004) The first ever online Community tribute album done for New Order.
* Love's Shattered Pride - A Tribute To Joy Division / New Order (2005)
Videos
* Taras Shevchenko (released in 1983, a live show from 18th November 1981 in New York. Originally available on VHS, re-released as part of the 316 DVD)
* Pumped Full of Drugs (1985, live in Japan, available on VHS and DVD)
* Substance (1989)
* New Order Story (1994 VHS, re-issued on DVD (2005) in extended 140 minute form)
* (The Best Of) New Order (1994 VHS, a compilation of videos)
* 316 (2001, DVD containing 1998 concert at the Reading Festival, as well as the afore-mentioned Taras Shevchenko recording)
* 511 (2002, live at Finsbury Park, DVD)
* A Collection (2005, compilation of videos & rarities, DVD)
* Item (2005, box-set of A Collection and the extended New Order Story, DVD)
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