NME "Last Orders for New Order"

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 attitude would suggest otherwise.

SOMETIMES IT seemed like NEW ORDER had built and peopled Manchester and like all great institutions, their presence is so well-integrated that you take them for granted. Now that our four heroes have ceased their unholy alliance, what will become of a city who’s sole representatives are now The Fall?

Though frequently unremarkable in interview, New Order were a remarkable and noble phenomenon. For almost a decade they and manager Rob Gretton (the “character”) resisted the wooing of major record companies, maintaining a state of non-greed and low-profile that’s oft construed as indifference. They stayed with Factory (with whom they’d never signed a contract), the label who set them up and the organisation that championed ex-dodgy new wave act Warsaw (check their ‘At A Later Date’ on the ‘Last Of The Electric Circus’ LP) in their transition to Joy Division. A regular showing on Factory nights at Hulme’s Russell Club shaped the sound that was to be regurgitated by every other new band of the early ’80s: Peter Hook’s (the “wild/affable one”) booming, geometric basslines, Ian Curtis’ (“the polite one”) mournful lowing and epileptic dancing, Steven Morris’ (“the quiet one”) innovative, rumbling drumming and Bernard Albrecht/Dicken’s (“the wild/ awkward one”), well, his Barney-ness. After two corking albums, the polite one hung himself.

A replacement - they did look - could not happen. New Order began as a stately, sombre trio and filled out with Gillian Gilbert’s (the other quiet one) swarming swathes of keyboard. Remarkable fact: the original line-up was only altered by death itself. Remarkable feats: the group knew when it was time to change an old, successful formula and had the ability to deliver an even better one next time. New Order Mark 1 peaked with ‘Everything’s Gone Green’, Mark 2 with ‘Blue Monday’ (the best-selling ever 12” was on an independent label) and Mark 3 with the giant-killing Euro-disco of ‘True Faith’.

What the band absorbed from Manchester, they returned, allowing much of their profits to be channelled into the idealistic Hacienda Club, and endowing the city with sterling folklore - mainly Hooky’s and Barney’s doings, Steven and Gillian preferred to stop in with their computers. It took almost a decade for New Order to shed their (uninvited) reputation as grim miseries and be acknowledged as ‘lads’ (but not you Gillian). Now they have split up. What miserable bastards.

Myrna Minkoff