Forty Five More Minutes Of New Order And Friends

This is a follow up to last Sunday's Your Silent Face mix which veered into their New Order's back catalogue and those of some adjacent artists- Galaxie 500, The Liminanas, Ian McCulloch, Gorillaz, The Times, Mike Garry, Joe Duddell and Andrew Weatherall. This one starts off with another Power, Corruption And Lies song, Age Of Consent, and then heads off with some covers, some 80s NO, another Weatherall remix and some recent edits. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of New Order And Friends

• New Order: Age Of Consent
• Iron And Wine: Love Vigilantes
• Thurston Moore: Leave Me Alone
• New Order: Dreams Never End
• New Order: Lonesome Tonight
• New Order: Regret (Sabres Slow 'N' Lo)
• New Order: Vanishing Point (Rich Lane Edit)
• New Order: Blue Monday (Newly Reordered Remix)

Age Of Consent is the opening song on New Order's 1983 album Power, Corruption And Lies, a day- glo, lysergic rush of guitars, bass, drums and synths, Bernard sounding more comfortable as vocalist. His choppy, rapid Velvets guitar breaks are a joy too. A peak New Order album song. 

As is Love Vigilantes, the opening song on 1985's Low Life, forty years old this month. Bernard's Vietnam ghost story lyric is up there among his most off the wall, and the band, Stephen Morris in particular, are on it, the classic New Order sound perfected. Iron And Wine's 2009 Americana acoustic cover is a low key beauty, Sam Beams tripping the song down to the country that lies at its core. 

Thurston Moore's cover of Leave Me Alone, another Power, Corruption And Lies song, is from the B-side of a 7" single from 2019, recorded in Salford with 'local musicians and local pints', to quote Thurston. 

Dreams Never End is from Movement, the 1981 New Order debut that saw them trying to will themselves out of being Joy Division and into becoming something else. Hooky sings Dreams Never End, his bass and Bernard's guitar wrapping around each other, inching away from the shadow Ian's death cast of them. If a compilation of the band's 10 best album tracks were put together this song would be on it.

Lonesome Tonight was the B-side to Thieves Like Us, a superb 1984 single. Lonesome Tonight is its low key flip, melancholic, stripped down, beautiful, self- produced song that any other band would have given A- side status to and promoted to the world. The band's limitations forced them to experiment, to use their heads and the studio, and Factory put few, if any, demands on them to be commercial. From this they made truly great records. 

Regret was their 1993 comeback single, an indie- pop guitar riff with a singalong chorus. Sabres Of Paradise got to work on it and turned in a pair of epic remixes. Andrew Weatherall's genius is evident in both, especially the first remix- take the bassline, slow it down and find acres of space, loop a little guitar part and a line of vocal, and hey presto, turn New Order's indie- pop into Lee Perry style dub.

Vanishing Point was an album track, another one, that could have been a single, off 1989's era- defining Technique. Rich Lane's edit takes all the best bits, pumps them up and sends it off flying.

There are times when I think I never need to hear Blue Monday again. The band may feel the same. A few years ago Jack Butters, a friend of Rich Lane's, made an entirely unofficial edit that goes all thumpy and acidic, finding a new story inside the song, making it worth hearing all over again. 

I've Been Waiting To Hear Your Voice For Too Long Now

You'd expect a song called Sunrise to be a lament for the night just gone maybe or music trying to replicate the bliss of the feeling of the sun's rays on your face first thing, possibly the walk home after a night well spent. In 1985 New Order's Sunrise was something else, possibly the angriest and most aggressive thing they recorded. It's a full band performance starting with moody keyboards and an immediately distinctive, upper register Peter Hook bassline and then Bernard's scratchy, raw guitar, an angry urgent sound, harking back to their previous band but definitely bathed in the New Order's mid- 80s light. Speed, tempo, rhythm- lots of speed and some bile too. Bernard sings at an enemy about communication failures, insults and injuries and being the subject of hatred. It's all very specific.

'Why did you never speak my name in front of my family
You gave a gift then you took it away'

'Your name might be God but you don't say that much to me'

'We might be your black sheep
But you forgot us a long time ago'

Hooky's bass rises and falls, the guitar lines go ever upwards, Gillian's synths add weight and Stephen pushes everything on to its conclusion, the pile up at the end and the crash from going too fast, Sumner's guitar finally finishing in distortion as he thrashes away at the strings.

Sunrise 

This version recorded live at The Hacienda in December 1985 shows the song's power played live and the effect it had on their fans- and the playing of the four members together, a modern rock band when they fancied it, as well as dance pioneers.

I've Been Waiting To Hear Your Voice For Too Long Now

By 1985 New Order were well into their stride, the faltering, unsure, step-by-step progress of the early years well in the past. 1983's album Power, Corruption And Lies more or less invented electronic indie and contained at least two career high points (Age Of Consent and Your Silent Face) as well as the blueprint for Blue Monday. The run of singles from 1982 to 1985 takes in Temptation, Blue Monday, Confusion, the peerless Thieves Like Us plus its B-side Lonesome Tonight. Then they put out another album, recorded in 1984 and released in May '85- Lowlife.

Lowlife only has eight songs on it but almost every one is a winner, disco and rock seamlessly intertwined. The sound combines full on synths and sequencers with Hooky's distorted bass providing the rock ballast. Stephen's drumming, with plenty of digital delay, is crisp and loud. The guitars are trebly and choppy, like Velvets era Lou Reed on acid. Lowlife is the first New Order album to contain singles and the first to feature band photographs on the cover (which Peter Saville then obscured by wrapping in tracing paper). From opener the Salford country & western of Love Vigilantes with Barney's enigmatic Vietnam War lyric to the magnificent closer Face Up this is a record I never get bored of. Face Up is huge, a glorious synth and bass intro, sampled choral voices, synth drum pads and then ... whoosh, we bounce along in NO disco heaven. The lyrics contain the usual mix of clunkers and the perfect skewering of life (see 'your hair was blonde, your eyes were blue, guess what I'm gonna do to you' and 'we were young and we were pure and life was just an open door'). Up until 1989 the lyrics were usually a group effort. For Technique Barney took over lyrics and vocals completely, something else Hooky rues as a nail in the coffin.

Sub-culture is here too, another disco-rock peak, Barney's vocals sounding like a guide vocal that he never bothered to redo (and all the better for it). That one fingered synth intro, followed by the drum machine and then the dark lyrics about walking in the park late at night and shafting on your own. Sub-culture is a close cousin of The Perfect Kiss and builds similarly, synth drums and bass riffs piling on top of each other. It was later released as a single in remixed form (by John Robie, an inferior version really with backing vox and synth stabs. Peter Saville was so disappointed he refused to design a sleeve for it). Hooky points to Robie's influence as being one of the turning points that ruined the group. Before Robie they didn't write songs following any rules- after Robie Bernard insisted on all the songs being in his key and eventually they became verse-chorus- middle eight formulaic. But let's leave the blame game aside and stick to the songs. Elegia is their intense instrumental tribute to their former, deceased frontman. I posted the unedited fifteen minute version last autumn and if you haven't heard it you should seek it out. The Perfect Kiss is inserted as track two, a peak among peaks (although it's an edited version on Lowlife. You need the full-on 12" version, a single for which the 12" format might have been invented). The Perfect Kiss has peaks and troughs, bass playing that is something else entirely, and several climaxes. This Time Of Night and Sooner Than You Think are both good album tracks. If pushed I could live without Sooner.... I suppose. But today's song is this one, closing side one, Sunrise. Possibly the rockiest song on Lowlife it opens with descending synth chords before being joined by a superb bass riff -then the whole band join in, pronto. The guitars rattle, bottle tops on the strings to get a Morricone sound and Bernard's vocal is straining, at the top of his register. The synths continue to wash away. The guitar, bass and drums drive away. At the end Bernard thrashes the toggle switch on his guitar. Done.

Sunrise

Elegia

A bonus post for Saturday night, just because. Lots of people I know are off to Castlefield tonight to watch New Order. I hope they have a great time. I'm not going (wife is away overnight so I'm here with the kids) and I'm not getting into the whole debate I've spent some time having with different people about the current incarnation of the group.

In 1985 New Order released Lowlife, one of their many, many 80s peaks. On it, opening side two, was an instrumental called Elegia, a tribute to Ian Curtis. The version on the album was under five minutes. When the Retro boxed set came out in 2002 the bonus fifth disc contained the full length seventeen minute version. It is very beautiful and very long. And here it is...

Elegia (Full Length Version)