Forty Five Minutes Of New Order- ish

I heard Your Silent Face on Friday night- not for the first time obviously- and it floored me once again. There's something about it that is very special- the rippling Kraftwerk inspired keys and synths, Hooky's bass and the mechanical drumming, Bernard's serious lyrics completely undercut by the 'why don't you piss off line', the way it gloriously skips between euphoria and melancholy. It's much more than all of that, one of those songs that is way more than the sum of the parts. It inspired me to start a New Order mix for my Sunday series but then I changed tack almost immediately. Rather than just sequence of load of my favourite New Order songs (almost all of which would be from the 1980s) I thought it might be more interesting or more fun to do a Your Silent Face/ New Order inspired mix and see where it took me. It took me here...

Forty Five Minutes Of New Order- ish

• New Order: Your Silent Face
• Galaxie 500: Ceremony
• Gorillaz ft. Peter Hook and Georgia: Aries
• The Liminanas and Peter Hook: Garden Of Love
• Ian McCulloch: Faith And Healing
• The Times: Manchester 5.32
• Ride: Last Frontier
• New Order: Isolation
• Mike Garry and Joe Duddell: St. Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H. Wilson (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

Your Silent Face opens side two of Power, Corruption And Lies, New Order's second album, released in May 1983. It's now seen as a New Order classic, a landmark album, the fusing of dance and rock, light and shade, a band stepping out of the shadows of Joy Division and the first NO album Movement. Your Silent Face had the working title KW1 (the Kraftwerk one). Funny story about New Order and Kraftwerk- the Dusseldorff robots visited New Order in their Cheetham Hill rehearsal space/ HQ and sat open mouthed as the band showed them the kit they used to make Blue Monday. 'You made that record using... this?' 

Galaxie 500's cover of Ceremony is a beauty, a slowed down, slow burning version, ringing feedback, the guitars gathering in intensity, and Dean's upper register voice smothered in echo. Ceremony was New Order's first single (and in a way, Joy Division's last). It was released as a 12" in 1981, twice, with different sleeves and slightly different versions. Galaxie 500's version came out as a B-side on their Blue Thunder 12" in 1990. At the time the nine year gap between 1981 and 1990 was an eon, the 1981 world and 1990 world two totally different eras- for New Order as much as anyone. 

Gorillaz got Hooky to play bass as part of their Song Machine project in 2020. Aries is I think the best 'New Order' song of the 21st century. Murdoc, Noodles, 2D and Russel Hobbs/ Damon Albarn together with Hooky's bass totally nailed what NO should be sounding like now. 

Four years before Gorillaz got Peter Hook to sling his four string guitar around he hooked up with French duo The Liminanas. Garden Of Love is (again) a great 21st century 'New Order' song, slightly fragile, slightly woozy, psychedelic garage rock, the bassline wending its way to the fore and staying there. 

Ian McCulloch's Faith And Healing is virtually a New Order cover- it sounds so much like a off cut from Technique he probably should have given them writing credits. It came out as a single in 1989, taken from Mac's solo debut Candleland. 

The Times was one of Creation mainstay Ed Ball's projects. In 1990 as The Times he released Manchester as a single, a hymn to a city at the centre of a youth explosion. Hooky's mentioned in the lyrics. It's also a tribute to the sound New Order had on 1985's Lowlife. It couldn't be more Lowlife unless it came wrapped in a tracing paper sleeve. I sometimes it think skirts the line between ridiculous and brilliant. I can imagine it making some people cringe but I think it has charm. Once, driving through France it came on the car stereo on one of the mix CDs I'd burned for the trip and made me briefly, stupidly homesick. I got over it- I mean we were on holiday in France for fuck's sake.  

Last Frontier was on last year's Ride album, Interplay. It's an Andy Bell song, soaring, chiming guitars and on the money drums. It sounds like a close cousin of Regret (the last truly great New Order single, released back in 1993. Although actually, I'm happy to listen to arguments for Crystal, released in August 2001). 

Isolation is a Joy Division song, from their second/ final album Closer. It's a stunning song, the collision of electronic drums and real ones genuinely thrilling, along with the synth and bass. Ian's words are bleak, a man at the end of his tether. This version is by New Order, recorded for a John Peel session in 1998. They still play it live- they did it at Wythenshawe Park last August. 

Mike Garry and Joe Duddell's St. Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H. Wilson is a song I come back to often, Mike's A to Z of Manchester music endlessly listenable and at times very moving. For his remix Andrew Weatherall, a huge fan of Factory, turned the song into a nine minute Weatherall tour de force, complete with a version of the Your Silent Face bassline. Which is where I came in. 

This Is London

We spent last weekend in London, staying with friends on the outskirts and then travelling in on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday morning we headed for the National Covid Memorial on the Albert Embankment, next to Westminster Bridge. Last December, shortly after he died a friend of Eliza's who is at university in London went down to the memorial and added his name inside one of the hearts painted on the wall. The memorial grew organically, started by the bereaved without official permission, with names added as the death toll mounted. It stretches from Westminster Bridge to Lambeth Bridge, half a mile long, thousands of names of ordinary people who died from Covid added with dates and messages by family members and friends. 

I expected it to be very moving and it was- Isaac's name, part of this sea of hearts and names, each one an individual loss, and it had us in tears. In a part of London full of official and state memorials, statues of monarchs, generals and prime ministers, there's something very honest and democratic about hand painted hearts and marker pen remembrances. It was emotional. Thinking it still is. 

From there we crossed back to the north side of the Thames using Lambeth Bridge, walked up Whitehall and got the tube up to Primrose Hill we we sat in the sunshine, had some food and enjoyed the view. 

From Primrose Hill we walked to Camden via Regents Canal, had a couple of drinks in the sun and then headed to Soho where they happen to have four of the best record shops in the country within a few hundred yards of each other (Phonica, Sister Ray, Sounds Of The Universe and Reckless). I somehow managed to take us down Dean Street in Soho, home to the Sabres Of Paradise office in the 90s, where Andrew Weatherall and friends based their operations above a strip club and next door to a house once occupied by Karl Marx. The doorman at Sunset Strip said that the guerrilla Weatherall plaque gets more attention than the Karl Marx one these days. I think both Weatherall and Marx would have been amused by that. We had a couple more drinks in the evening sunshine outside the John Snow pub, Soho filling with Saturday night revellers, and then a tube and train back to our accommodation. 

On the Sunday we trained and tubed it back into central London and walked from Baker Street to Hyde Park, stopped in at The V&A for an hour or two, missed out on the Natural History Museum due to the length of the queues, and then headed west, ambling up Portobello Road towards the Westway and then Ladbroke Grove. I was looking, at least in part, for The Clash's London I suppose. 

There is nothing quite like walking round London, flitting from one part to another, finding something to see round every corner, road and place names that are familiar from TV and songs and part of the culture we all grow up with. In some ways, London is a different place to much of the rest of the country- in parts of central London it feels like being in a different country altogether. We had a good time, tiring too and with some emotional moments, but it was well worth escaping for weekend. This weekend, we have no plans at all- and that feels ok too. 

This song is by The Times, the indie/ punk vehicle for the talented Ed Ball, released on an album of the same name in 1983 on Artpop! Records, a driving, low fi slice of early 80s Londonisms. 

This Is London

For balance and also from 1983 this is Get Out Of London by Intaferon, a single produced by Martin Rushent. Get Out Of London is one of those minor hit/ lost gems, powered by frantic acoustic guitars and a torrent of words, which only slows slightly for the refrain, 'I gotta g-g-ggg-g-g- get out of London', followed by the sound of a train passing, before the tumult kicks back in. 

Get Out Of London

 

Gravity

Trance Europe Express was a double cd or quadruple vinyl compilation of early 90s dance music that came with a 192 page booklet (or it was a 192 page booklet about early 90s dance music that came with a double cd). It was an offshoot of the Volume series of compilations which had a broader focus musically. Both series were excellent, high quality songs, often unreleased or different mixes/versions. Trance Europe Express wasn't really trancey at all, more progressive house, ambient and techno. But none of them made sense in the title- Techno Europe Express?

I think I've expressed this view before but it struck me again- at the time we took this music for granted, imagining it would always be this good, that the innovation and leaps forward taking place here would be sustained (for most of the artists the culmination of several years work, of getting the best out of new technology, of watching what was happening on the dancefloor in clubs and at raves). Across disc 1 there are easily 5 or 6 tracks that are as good as anything else released at that time in that area- Orbital's Semi-Detached, Spooky and Billie Ray Martin's Persuasion, Celestial Symphony by Scubadevils (a David Holmes project), a jaw dropping track by Xeper (The Black Dog) and Midnight In Europe by 030. Outstanding work from everyone involved but the one from disc 1 that has turned my head the most is this one from Bandulu.

Gravity Pull (Remix)

A different version from the one on their Guidance album (released on Creation offshoot Infonet). Oscillating synths. Clattering rhythms. Abstract but with a sense of forward motion. Mind popping stuff.

Here is their remix of The Times' cover of Blue Monday, something I've posted before but which is ripe for a re-post. A remix that makes me feel like I'm gliding around underwater through bubbles and bliss.

Lundi Bleu (Bandulu 'Smiling' Remix)

Bleu Bandulu

In the second hand record shop the other day I picked up a 12" of Lundi Bleu by The Times. The Times was Ed Ball's (note NOT Ed Balls) acid house project and Lundi Bleu was his cover version of Blue Monday which I posted here several years ago. The 12" had two remixes of the track by The Grid which were what caught my eye and at £2.00 I decided it was worth a punt, having heard none of the remixes before. The two Grid remixes are both good, dubby with vocal samples, chugging away nicely. Here's The Grid's World Communications remix. It's a Youtube video only I'm afraid- my computer issues continue and ripping anything is a bridge too far at the moment.



I enjoyed both The Grid remixes, especially as being off this week I had the house to myself and could turn it up loud enough and sit back with a cup of tea. But the real treat is on the flipside with Bandulu's remix. Bandulu were from London, also on Creation and made reggae influenced dub/techno. Their remix of Lundi Bleu is a delight which defies description really- bubbling sounds and bouncing bass with an otherworldly, underwater groove. Futuristic in '92 and still sounding so today. Properly making something wonderful and new out of a track.

Thanks Everyone

Thanks to everyone who's left messages here over the last few days and to Ctel for the post over at Acid Ted. Sunday morning seems a long time ago now. I.T. went down to theatre at 9.20 on Monday morning and was in for five hours. The consultant said the cochlear implant was tricky to get into place due to I.T.'s 'abnormal cranium' (funny shaped skull in layman's terms), but after getting an x-ray last night he told us it was 'a perfect insertion'. A phrase you might want to consider using at some point. Maybe. He had a ridiculously big bandage on his head which only just lasted until this morning, and three courses of IV antibiotics during the night to protect his immune system (I.T.'s immune system has never fully recovered from chemo during his two bone marrow transplants in 2000). Anyway, we're home now with a bag full of medicines and a boy asking if his new ear is ready to be switched on. It won't be for a few weeks, so he must be wondering why he's had an operation at all.

Since writing that paragraph I've had to drive him back to the hospital. He'd pulled his dressing off when no-one was looking. We've been sent home with enough steri-strips to patch up an army.


While blocking out the outside world this song came up on the mp3 player- Manchester by The Times (and thanks to Tedloaf for reminding me about it via the comment box recently after I posted their French language cover of Blue Monday last week). I may have been in a slightly emotional state but this track brought a tear to my eyes and a lump to my throat, with it's then zeitgeisty tribute to and celebration of Manchester in 1989-90. Twenty years on it sounds impossibly nostalgic, the lyrics coming across as nicely naive (or gauche even, is that the right word?). There are some other mixes of this song that couldn't sound more New Orderish if they came wrapped in tracing paper and added onto the end of Lowlife. At this exact moment in time, this is my favourite song.

The Times - Manchester (Radio Edit).mp3

Version Francoise

Ed Ball co-formed Television Personalities with Dan Treacy during the punk period, set about Bill Grundy, Part Time Punks, Syd Barratt amongst others and set up their own record label. Ball also formed The Times who released records regularly between 1980 and 1999. While finding a home at Creation in the 80s and 90s Ball found the time to record various (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) celebrations of acid house, drug culture and Manchester/London at the time. This is Lundi Bleu, his version of New Order's Blue Monday with Bernard Sumner's lyrics translated into French. It's a post-acid house, 8 minute monster which finds time to turn into Neil Young's After The Goldrush at the end. Very lovely and very of it's time. Art Dept IAMT, currently in Nuremburg, this one's for you.

The Times - Lundi Bleu (Man New Age Mod Mix).mp3