Cuttings

THE NOT VERY GOOD MIXER NEW ORDER The Rest of New Order (London/All formats) AH, THE "art" of the remix. Ostensibly, it's all about "Reinvention! Rejuvenation!" but all too often, as with those "New! Improved!" washing-powders, it's really just marketing shorthand for "Not Good Enough In The First Place!" At least, that's the case with habitual indie remix victims from The Soup Dragons to Ned's Atomic Dustbin, for whom the term polishing a turd was doubtless coined. But now it's New Order under the cosh. Which makes this album the equivalent of buffing up... what? Platinum? Diamonds? MR SHEEN'S EXTRA-SHINY SlLVERWARE? Of course, what it's really all about is polishing off what little patience New Order fans have left. Since the collapse of Factory, their legacy has been handled with all the sensitivity of The Stone Roses' Silvertone material. The difference is, you only have to wait five years for a ne...

POSTER MODERNISM Renegade Art Terrorism or bumper tax loss, Barney Sumner or Benson Hedges, New Order or Soft Sell? Well, you‘re the customer! Wherever you live in these septic isles, there’s a good chance you‘ve had your recent bus journeys enlivened by the sight of a 20 foot-high Day-Glo Cupid by the roadside. Silk Cut go Lysergic? No, merely the latest in a series of post-modernist wheezes by those lovable situationists at Factory. Bearing only the legend ‘New Order, advertising Technique’, it is, in case you’re a bit slow, a reminder that the lads have a new record available. As Factory informed me: “As you’re aware NEW ORDER dislike the idea of advertising in the press, yet we still have an obvious duty to inform people that they have a new LP out. So originally we talked about flyposting but that, of course , is illegal. So we decided on the idea of billboards since it’s unusual and Peter Saville‘s sleeve makes for a really striking image and a rather neat pun (‘advertis...

Manchester declares 'Republic' NEW ORDER’s first recordings for three years will be released on their own ‘Manchester’ label, which has been set up as part of their new deal with London Records. A new single ‘Regrets’ (out April 5) will christen the label, which will be exclusively for “New Order and their friends”, according to bassist Peter Hook. The band are currently remixing the B-side, ‘Mixed Regrets’, at Liverpool’s Parr Street Studios. An Andy Weatherall mix has already been completed. It will be followed in May by a 13-track album ‘Republic’, New Order’s first since ‘Technique’ in February 1989. In a sleeve designed by Peter Saville, tracks include ‘Regrets’, ‘World (Price Of Love)’, ‘Avalanche’, ‘Chemical’, ‘Liar’, ‘Everyone Everywhere’ and ‘Techno 2’. The new material was recorded entirely at Peter Gabriel’s Real World studio in Bath and produced by Stephen Hague before the collapse of Factory Records, said Hook. He told NME: “it was a bit of bad timing re...

EVERYTHING IN ORDER NEW ORDER WEMBLEY ARENA YOU KNOW a band has made it when the people sitting at the back are in a different postal district to the stage. New Order are overwhelmingly a boys band and the Wembley Arena is a riot of colour in a thousand different shades of grey. People are being forced to drink Hofmeister out of bottles and buy sweatshirts for £20. It seems unlikely that anything close and frail and secret could go on in the middle of so much ugliness. but it does. New Order take a little while to adjust to being dropped into an air hanger but when they do Mr Albrecht is a post-apocalypse Nick Heyward with a mighty catalogue of tunes to show off, from the sinuous twangings of yesteryear to today‘s wistful Eurodisco. The songs are stretched so tight you worry they‘re going to snap, but they never do, balanced all clean and metallic in a uniform chrome glare on top of that marvellous empty biscuit tin drum sound. My favourite bit is when the guitar comes flailin...

ANIMAL New Order: impenetrable darkness, enveloping gloom and clinging blackness. NEW ORDER Republic If The Smiths were the best British group of the 1980s, then fellow Mancunian miseryguts New Order were the most important. Their restless welding of successive waves of dance music and new technologies to Barney Sumner’s ever-improving singing and ever more personal lyrics continually redefined the edges of indigenous rock and pop. Many more commercially successful groups, Pet Shop Boys and The Cure among them, owed a debt to the sometimes meandering, always understated New Order. The band’s last studio album, 1989's truly great Technique, a seamless meshing of synthesized rock grooves, traditional instrumentation and Sumner's plaintive lyrics, was largely hatched on Ecstasy island, Ibiza, and, along with The Stone Roses' debut, it remains the artistic peak of that whole UK acid/E/Madchester thing. Everything New Order have done since (the Electronic, Revenge a...

A VITAL GLEAM NEW ORDER Goldiggers, Chippenham IN this age of musical compromise and half-baked ideologies, there are still pockets of resistance where certain groups and individuals make their own way and as such are landed with the responsibility of supporting the need for greater commitment and relevance. Whatever theories are proposed and dissected in relation to what New Order represent (and believe me there are enough of them), or why they still choose a solitary approach, there can be little doubt over their maintained ability to simply ignore all the barbed criticism and animosity which is laid at their door. For one, the watery eye of nostalgia is not their way, nor meeting convention even half way, with promises never made and expectations never met. Tonight's show at Virgin's recently acquired Goldiggers Club was a reinforcement of the positive growth New Order are making, in their own time and on their own terms. The solemn and rarely heard "In ...

THE COLUMN THAT LIKES TO SAY NOOOOOOO ! YOU MUST have seen it by now: it's the most sickening advert on TV. The work of Beelzebub, the current ad for First Direct bank that uses Joy Division's magnificent 'Atmosphere' to accompany footage of middle-class stereotypes living their lives of quiet desperation and paying their bills by phone. Advertising is nauseating: personally, I'm with Bill Hicks when he advocates that people in advertising and marketing just kill themselves. Surely all decent people are outraged by the way that ads plunder great music to sell banal products: Mozart sells motors, the Velvets sell tyres, The Clash sell Levi's... But what the f— do Joy Division have to do with bank accounts? Banks are institutions more dangerous than standing armies; bankers' decisions in Frankfurt kill millions in Africa. Banks are the paymasters of war, famine and pestilence the world over. Worst of all, they are currently pushing everyone toward...

PREMIER DIVISION JOY DIVISION HEART AND SOUL  - THE BOX SET (London/CD only) IT WAS ALL GREY trenchcoats, black expressions, post-industrial depression and existential ennui in my day. Oh yes. As if the recession, inevitable nuclear destruction and Spandau Ballet weren’t bad enough, all indie music (you were allowed to call it ‘indie’ then - hell, people were PROUD to be ‘indie’) was depressing as f-. You weren’t allowed to smile, or wear anything with a colour or have nice hair in case you got it mistaken for a member of Blue Rondo A La Turk. And the two bands chiefly responsible were The Smiths and, originally, Joy Division. Manchester, eh? So much to answer for. Joy Division’s appeal has, however, far outlasted their tragically short life because, if' they were miserable, they did miserable differently. And what strikes you most about Joy Division from listening to this collection is not their mythical, mysterious singer, but the band, how they frequently sounded lik...

LAST ORDERS FOR NEW ORDER? NEW ORDER look likely to split up after fulfilling the last of their commitments in the coming month. A spokesman for the group said it would be premature to suggest a split, and that the band had decided to take six months off early next year. But sources in Manchester say Peter Hook has openly told friends the group was finished and he intends to work on other projects. Also, Bernard Albrecht is currently negotiating a solo deal, and will be busy promoting his own material in 1988. New Order are currently rehearsing songs for a new album, perhaps their last, and have a single, ‘Touched By The Hand Of God’, out next month. It was produced by the group and Arthur Baker. A major London show will take place in December, probably at the Brixton Academy or Wembley Arena, followed by a handful of European dates in January, and then the diary is blank. The band spokesman said he fully expected them to get back together next summer, but Hook’s attit...

ORDER NOT ORDURE So, the New Order backlash starts here does it? How sadly predictable! Reynolds thinks 'True Faith' is the ”final nail in New Order's coffin". Dear oh dear, everyone's favourite indie group go Top Five - quick, find another hero,jump on another bandwagon. ‘True Faith’ is a bloody good record, almost the perfect pop song but not quite, that was ‘Blue Monday'. Good music is good music no matter who it’s by - New Order, Terence Trent D'Arby, Pet Shop Boys, Prince. The latter is probably the most perfect example of an artist who is massively successful yet manages to retain artistic integrity. New Order, if one ignores the trite remix of ’True Faith' and the gimmicky repackaging of 'Brotherhood' last Christmas, fall into the same category. Playing live on TOTP and The Roxy may not stand for much but it surely stands for something. Besides Mr Reynolds, New Order don’t take themselves seriously so why should you? Dave Ell...

New Order: the director's cut NEW ORDER’s documentary neworderstory has been extended to almost two-and-a-half hours for its video release, with the inclusion of 14 promos and rare archive footage. The video, to be released on November 22, was originally broadcast as an hour-long TV programme the same night as New Order’s Reading Festival show in August. It will be followed by the release of a new single, ‘Spooky’, before Christmas. Joy Division and early New Order clips from TV shows, including Top Of The Pops and Something Else , have also been added, along with the American Sunkist TV advert featuring an edited version of ‘Blue Monday’. Director Paul Morley told NME , “Everything that was in the original programme has been extended to its full length. And to keep the balance we have also added interview footage.” Morley said that the video includes extra backstage film from the Montreux Jazz Festival, as well as extended clips from interviews with the likes of Qui...