New Order - Gloucester 19 August 1984

NEW ORDER - TO CATCH A THIEF

Gloucester

I FEEL like a detective if I try to look deeply into the secret world of New Order (and their devotees).

For the cultists. it would be true to say that, for them, listening to New Order should be a private and intimate experience. A Leisure Centre is, therefore, hardly the most suitable venue in which to absorb and accept. For one thing, it's redolent of sweat and socks rather than sustaining an appreciation of the moods in the ‘anonymous functionalism' that New Order purvey.

It‘s been said before but, like it or not, there are disconcerting parallels between New Order's current status and that of '70s era Pink Floyd. A part of them shares the Floyd's love of carefully constructed, quasi-symphonic music, full of thunder crashes and grandeur, but then the rest mixes the ingredients in a manner more attuned to the Beat than the Brain. They're all too familiar. The energetic kit or machine rhythms of Steve Morris, Gillian‘s blowing hot and cold keyboard stabs and sways, Hookey's bass pulses that twang or tease, and Bernie with the vocal cries and whispers, the guitar scrabbles and syncopations.

When they fuse together on ‘Procession' or 'Denial' (and ‘Everything's Gone Green' on record), the effect is totally exhilarating —- one of the most glorious sensations imaginable. When the pace is slowed down and the controls shifted towards drama and introspection, ‘In A Lonely Place’ (and ‘Truth' on record) can stop you in your tracks, providing transcendence to a spiritual plane. New Order can provide moments that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

They also have their debilitating cliches. I must be one of a small minority that considers ‘Power Corruption And Lies' to be 50 per cent excellence and 50 per cent rubbish, and ‘Temptation‘ and ‘Confusion’ to be New Order's nadir. To compete in the dancefloor stakes, New Order have to box clever and work hard to stand out from the real mix masters, and at times they don't cut it.

A couple of unrecognised numbers here had all the accoutrements of scratch, Claptraps a-go-go, and swatches of echo and reverb; but coupled with the renditions of ’Age Of Consent' and The Village', my reaction was little more than a frustrated 'so what?’.

With New Order, you get numerous examples of these contradictions that can confound and confuse. They even attract some adherents who might have been more at home at a football ground, and at one stage their over-eager support moved Bernie to ask them to stop pressing forward onto the people at the front. “You see, we do care about people,“ quipped Bernie mischievously.

New Order are now prepared to show some of the outward emotion which has always previously been so closely guarded: precocity may slowly be replacing preciousness. My hope is that what we will see and hear in the future points more towards a temptation of the senses, rather than a mere hip appeal to the instincts.

DAVE MASSEY