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New Order (band)

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For other uses, see New Order (band) (disambiguation).

New Order are an English rock music 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 music group.

File:No2005promo.jpg
New Order, 2005 Promotional shot. From left, Morris, Sumner, Cunningham, Hook

Current personnel are Bernard Sumner (vocals, guitars), Peter Hook (bass), Stephen Morris (drums, percussion, keyboards), and Phil Cunningham (guitars/keyboards). In 2001, keyboardist Gillian Gilbert (a founding member; she and Morris are married) left New Order to care for her daughter who is ill with a degenerative disease.

History

Morris, Hook, and Sumner had been members of Joy Division from 1978 to 1980. The group had formed a creative and influential body of work, often featuring heavy production input from producer Martin Hannett.

Joy Division had decided that if any member were unable to perform, the remaining members would not call themselves "Joy Division". Intending not to let the band disappear with Curtis, the group toured, recorded with singer Kevin Hewick, and added Gillian Gilbert, as keyboardist.

Early on, each of the group's members took turns at singing, but ultimately the band chose the singer according to the ease of playing an instrument while singing. Because the guitarist could more easily accomplish this Sumner got the job, though Hook sang on two songs from their first album Movement.

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 20 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.

New Order initially started on a similar route as their previous incarnation, performing melodic, dark songs, albeit with an increased use of ethereal synthesizers, showcased on Movement. Soon, however, they found their own sound, less gloomy and far more danceable, exemplified by the single "Temptation" and the album Power, Corruption & Lies. Two steps farther in this direction, the electronically sequenced, four-on-the-floor single "Blue Monday" Their 12"-only release "Blue Monday" is the best selling 12" single of all time, though because the packaging of the first pressing was so elaborate, resembling a large 5¼" floppy disk, the band was said to lose a small amount of money (around £0.20) on each copy sold. 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 pigeon-hole 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 mostly synthesized single "Thieves Like Us" with the heavy guitar-drum-bass rumble of "Murder." The Low-life album (1985) refined and sometimes mixed the two styles, while Brotherhood (1986) divided the two approaches onto separate album sides. New Order's Substance compilation (released in 1987, followed by a 1988 Joy Division Substance compilation) showed the band's singles' progression from mostly guitar-based to slick techno-pop. Technique (1989) showed a heavier acid house influence on a number of tracks and a lighter indie rock sound on others.

The quality and innovation of the group's art earned them the status of icons in the alternative rock community, and have shown considerable longevity. They have heavily influenced techno, and were themselves influenced by the likes of Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire and Donna Summer.

File:NewOrderReading1998.jpg
New Order performing at Reading Festival (1998)

Both New Order and Joy Division were among the most successful artists on the Factory Records label, run by Granada television personality Anthony Wilson, and partnered with Factory in the financing of the Manchester club The Hacienda.

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. As Tony Wilson put it, "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.

Each member of this band has been involved with other bands: Sumner partnered with former member of The Smiths, Johnny Marr, in Electronic and 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.

Their music has largely been heavily synthesizer-based, 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.

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.

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 infamous record label Factory, along with its bands and owners.

Their 2001 release Get Ready was a departure from their more synthesized 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".

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".

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 also wrote and recorded most of the material for yet another album.

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 labelmates the Happy Mondays.

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 LP 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). 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. They opened up a bit in the '90s. The aforementioned NewOrderStory (and in particular the long UK version) featured extensive personal interviews.

New Order released many singles for songs not included on LPs. 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 gig. 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-disc 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, Run2 (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. [1]

Many New Order song titles rarely have anything 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.

Singles often feature remixes. The number of remixes were few at first but increased a great deal with 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," etc.). Dubs were often the solitary b-side on the Factory original 12" 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" 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" 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 the keyboard 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.

Trivia

Peter Hook was married to comedy actress Caroline Aherne for a short time.

The Killers got their name from the ficticious band depicted on the New Order Video of Crystal

New bands such as The Editors, The Killers, Scissor Sisters, and Bloc Party all claim inspiration from Joy Division and New Order.

Discography

Studio albums

Singles

EP

Compilations

Soundtracks

  • Salvation! (1987) (The band contributed a few tracks including an instrumental version of "Let's Go" which has been performed live with vocals)

Tribute albums

Videos

  • Taras Shevchenko (1983, live 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)
  • 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)
  • Item (2005, compilation of promotional videos and New Order Story, DVD)

Singles

Year Title Chart positions Album
US Hot 100 US Modern Rock US Mainstream Rock UK
1989 "Fine Time" - #3 - #11 Technique
1989 "Round & Round" - #6 - #21 Technique

See also

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