New Order - Oxford 27 March 1986

NME- DISORDERLY CONDUCT

NEW ORDER

Oxford

THE IMPERFECT kiss. Tonight I should have stayed at home and played with my pleasure zone.

I believe in the land of New Order, an ice dust island of volatile emotions entwined with electro-wash creepers and rhythmic sidewinding snakes of shake. For myself, I bring in the carrier bag of my mind expectations of the excellence this group are capable of and fears for the indulgences that sometimes crack their crystal citadel of noise into a million jagged edges. Tonight the latter prevailed, and unfortunately, it wasn't even funny.

The sub-culture New Order have constructed for themselves - and it is just that, an aesthetic separateness - is now under serious threat precisely because of their dancefloor popularity. They attract a large number of stiffs for whom the band is a soundtrack to mewling and puking.

I know that sounds like an elitist statement but it's something that the band are unable to cope with other than by reverting to their infamous cynicism and spite games. “God, you're so f****** boring, no wonder we haven't played in Cambridge for six years" — Bernard Albrecht. "We are New Order and we don't  give a f***" Peter Hook, pummeling his bass like it was a heckler‘s face. Just two of the many comments from the stage.

I've always viewed such typical wind-ups with the chuckle they deserve, only this evening the effect was to lay to rest in a coffin an audience that was for the most part dead already. ‘Shellshock‘? Sure, we were suffering from it, but so did New Order whose streamlined platinum fenders of melody became twisted and crushed under the jackhammer of their ire by the time the as yet unrecorded 'Broken Promises’ was launched.

A fan jumped onstage to grab Hook and was treated to a sullen stare. The audience stood around bewildered for 20 minutes. I don’t know whether or not an encore materialised because l walked outside. “What's so good about New Order?" my partner asked. “They're like life itself: unpredictable and occasionally magnificent.” I laughed. It’s obvious.

JACK BARRONN