Cuttings

Last night nerves - NME NEW ORDER, PIL, THE SUGARCUBES NEW JERSEY “UP YOURS too, ya wanker..." In the bowels of a New Jersey basketball stadium, two Englishmen - one a pineapple-topped dayglo Andy Pandy, the other sporting a £500 Comme Des Garcons suit jacket, tangerine acieed shorts and flip flops- are swapping V-signs . . . The cartoon aggressor is rotten PiLlock John Lydon; the pricily casual clotheshorse is Factory Records supremo and all-round smartass Tony Wilson. Whether their snarling interface is genuine antagonism or playful release is hard to say. This is, after all, the last night of a three month marathon that has seen PiL, New Order and The Sugarcubes on a coast-to-coast grind from one air-conditioned dome to another, so any emotion is possible. High above the designer slanging match, 18,000 kids - guys in Peter Saville T-shirts at $25 a throw, chicks in Madonna/Estefan/Easton lace bras - are blissing out on the climax of what they know is the hippest US...

LOW RIDERS - Sounds NEW ORDER 'Low Life' (Factory FACT 100) **** Perhaps the new dawn really is upon us. New Order, if not yet allowing the full glare of daylight to fall upon their faded carpets, have at least allowed a half-light to penetrate the black bedroom curtains. It may even be that our dour friends have had a discreet boot up the bum. Because guess what? Opener 'Love Vigilantes' grabs you by the throat and yells 'Dream Syndicate!'. A slab of American pie among mushy peas, and the direction suits New Order as naturally as a baggy suit. The Beatles play ‘Blue Monday' - you‘d better believe it! Though the rest of the package doesn't quite match up to this spectacular and unexpected promise, it does give a less bittersweet, more palatable slice of listening. Grey industralist disco fans won't, though, cast it aside with a snarl of the upper lip and a flick of the flat top. But they should approve of this new taste of variety which...

NEW ORDER: neworderstory (PolyGram) THIS IS the history of the most elusive and sardonic band ever, coos a dreamy and oddly Americanised Jenny Seagrove over Paul Morley's multi-layered retrospective, but "who's to say it ever happened...?" In its original South Bank Show format, neworderstory was all high-gloss highlights and snappy asides. This two-hours plus remix throws in extra footage plus a dozen dazzling promos: 'Touched By The Hand Of God', 'Bizarre Love Triangle', 'True Faith' and many more. By showcasing the foursome's abrasive and petulant side alongside their precision-pop finery, a far more faithful - and, perversely, more amiable - portrait emerges. The slick, pacy momentum is lost, but the soaring peaks and gloriously pig-headed mistakes of a truly seminal career fall into sharper relief. For once hitting the perfect tone, Morley rightly reinforces the band's myth, wallowing in the glamour and absurdity of it a...

New Order (The Rest Of) New Order (London) ARTISTICALLY-speaking, remix albums are generally more bankrupt than Nick Leeson. And anyway, New Order have always been so good at remixing their own songs - most of which, given the way they were conceived and executed, were effectively remixes to begin with - that there seemed little point in getting - anyone else in. Nevertheless, they've assembled a quality cast here, running to Paul Oakenfold,  Shep Pettibone (a blinding True Faith), Terry Farley, Howie B and others. Not all of the results will be to the taste of Order purists, but the more adventurously-minded will find something to interest them. (ASm)

NEW ORDER: SUBSTANCE 1989 NEW ORDER aren't, admittedly, a band who lend themselves to the usual video toss: they don't smite much, they have no known pretensions to acting fame, and frequently they don't even appear to move. On the duff videos here, they are glimpsed standing on stage, sitting in cabs or hanging around in concert halls while the director intercuts interesting bits of drama — a bit of silly dialogue (featuring Jonathan Demme) on Robert Longo's vid for 'Bizarre Love Triangle'; a lot of Arthur Baker nodding along to 'Confusion' (the work of one Charles Sturridge)and I've already completely forgotten what happens in 'Shellshock'— and the result is wildly forgettable. However, when the director shows either sympathy for the band's attitudes or a creative imagination which matches New Order's style, then things are topper. Here we have Robert Breer and William Wegman's film for 'Blue Monday 1988', a m...

DARKLIFE! JOY DIVISION Permanent (London/All formats) HERE ARE the young men, then. The ultimate sixth-formers. When I arrived at college, 'Dead Souls' was blaring out of the next room. Not what I'd expected at all. I thought I'd be the only one who liked Joy Division. Their obscurity was one of their charms. Morons just didn't like this band because you couldn't like them for the wrong reasons. Young Mr Curtis crystallised the faraway romantic desperation of any lucid teenager. Morrissey with a badge and a gun. Drunk on his emotions and Holy with Youth if you like. The really powerful thing about the music is the primitive sort of counterpoint — you can hum all of Hooky's basslines, even the crap ones. Actually, love them just as much for being crap as for being godlike. Joy Division weren't great players. It was what they naively aspired to and sometimes glimpsed that made them like us and us like them. So much wank has been conjectured ab...

Manchester is united in its regard for punk https://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/jul/27/manchester-united-regard-punk-birthday-observer-archive From the Observer archive, 27 July 1986 The city's greatest bands help the tireless genre celebrate its 10th birthday in its spiritual home Jon Savage First published on Sun 27 Jul 2014 00.04 BST Punk is now a costume on the very clothes rack of youth style it set out to subvert. Its 10th anniversary is turning into one of the media obsessions of the year, yet just as the past is rewritten in the language of the present, then so is a series of complex and contradictory signs (about which no one can agree) reduced into a sludge of nostalgia and style recycling. The fact that nobody can agree about what punk was or is may well be a sign of its continued vitality, or at least nuisance value. One way out of the morass is to see punk as an approach to culture that worked. The speed of the media retrospectives hints at the broad inf...

JOYLESS REVISION NEW ORDER AND JOY DIVISION: DREAMS NEVER END Claude Flowers ( Omnibus ) BLOODY HELL. Once — just once — can't we read something about Joy Division which doesn't contain po-faced stuff like "Ian's suicide caused them all to grow up very quickly, their innocence died with him"? This story does not need any more hushed reverence or weary myth-making, thanks very much. As a New Yorker, Flowers displays a limited knowledge of Joy Division, Manchester or the general geography of Britain — physical or cultural. Unable to reach the band themselves, Flowers uses interviews with Tony Wilson, Peter Savile and various suits which were mostly conducted in the late '80s. He makes the most of outdated and second-hand material but his gushing assessments of New Order's music frequently border on the comical, finding in 'The Perfect Kiss' - "a chorus of synthesized frog sounds — hundreds of princes waiting to be kissed, any one of wh...

Before love tore Ian Curtis apart https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/may/04/tonywilson.musicdocumentary Joy Division Joy Division (93 mins, 15) Directed by Grant Gee; featuring Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Tony Wilson, Anton Corbijn, Annik Honoré The music of my mildly rebellious adolescence in the postwar years was traditional jazz which my parents thought cacophonous and its bearded, sideburned exponents bad role models. The recent deaths of George Melly and Humphrey Lyttelton, two of my heroes then, affected me deeply. Rock'n'roll, which arrived here during my early twenties, didn't touch me in the same way, though I did see Blackboard Jungle two days running just to hear Bill Haley's 'Rock Around the Clock' again. Punk impinged on me scarcely at all. The Manchester music scene of the late 1970s and the early death of Joy Division's lead singer Ian Curtis caused slight blips on my mental radar but never landed in my mind. I h...

The agony and the ecstasy  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/27/hacienda-peter-hook Walking through today's regenerated and gentrified Manchester, it's almost impossible to recall how dark and depressing the city was in the late 70s. The home of the industrial revolution was at a low ebb and the only people who believed any kind of revolution was now possible were the romantic idealists behind Factory Records. Emboldened by the spirit of punk and an excess of civic pride, Factory's founders, in particular Tony Wilson and Robert Gretton, believed in Manchester more than they believed in themselves. The Haçienda club, launched in 1982, was the physical realisation of their vision; Wilson found the name in an essay by French theorist Ivan Chtcheglov entitled "Formulary for a New Urbanism" ("We are bored in the city, everybody is bored, there is no longer any temple to the sun... you'll never see the Haçienda. It doesn't exist. The ...

A divided joy: seeing my father on film h ttps://www.theguardian.com/music/2007/sep/30/popandrock.joydivision The new film about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis has been widely acclaimed. His daughter Natalie can see some flaws - but can't fault the music On a sunny day in August I finally got to see the finished version of Anton Corbijn's Control, a film about the life of Ian Curtis, my father and lead singer of the band Joy Division. Ian committed suicide in 1980 at the age of 23, when I had just turned one. I was involved with the project at various stages of production (the film was based on a book written by my mother and Ian's wife, Deborah, and the two of us visited the set several times) but I had no idea what to expect. For obvious reasons it was strange to watch. In addition to the weirdness of seeing my family made fiction, I found myself distracted by my own memories; not just of things I have been told about my father and events, but of my time on se...

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books-joy-a-funny-word-for-ian-1619550.html Joy, a funny word for Ian? SOMETIME in May 1980 a friend of mine was playing pin-ball in a Leeds pub when the door flew open with a crash, and a tragic voice announced: 'Ian Curtis is dead!‘ Cries of disbelief and anguish echoed round the room - it was a student pub, after all - and in the midst of the ensuing horrified silence, my friend, distracted for the moment from his game, remarked innocently: "oh... isn't he the lead singer with Secret Affair" Well, it was a long time ago. Let's just say that confusing the Young Werther of New Wave with the mouthy singer of a naff mod band was a solecism roughly on a par with thinking Kurt Cobain a member of Wet Wet Wet. I guess you had to be there to understand why a lanky nerd with a cracked baritone became a hero for a generation of mac-wearing teenage boys. "That man lived for yoli! That man died for you!“ screamed ...

NME - ASHES AND DIAMONDS JOY DlVISION  Substance (Factory LP Cassette CD)  THEY STILL make outlandish claims and say ludicrous things about the meagre legacy left by this Manchester band. Joy Division lived and recorded for three years (1977-1980). But during that time, it’s claimed they broached new areas of thought and deed, foresaw the millenium, inspired one writer to feel "I could spit in the face of God" and another to hear "the full stop, the end of pop." Even for the disclaimers and early champions of the band, Ian Curtis’ suicide gave a new, unerring fascination to the group’s music and subject matter. The fallout was anything but heathy. Joy Division, more by default rather than design, spawned a tunnel vision brand of English miserabilism. Their influence has often cast a self-pitying pallor over the culture they left behind. According to manager Rob Gretton, ‘Substance’ is released to help New Order, the band JD spawned, with their tax probl...

NME - HOBBY WHORES REVENGE One True Passion (Factory LP/Cassette/CD) THOSE OF us no longer eligible for a Young Person's Railcard tend to regard the words 'solo project' with a suspicion bordering on downright fear. Once upon a time every major band would reach that stage in their careers when it was deemed necessary to 'take five' and 'do their own thing'. Invariably this meant that the keyboard player would produce some dire suite based around The  Hobbit , the singer would produce some tortured confessional about his divorce and the drummer would reveal a hitherto unknown fondness for reggae. That was then but this is now. Still, with the best will in the world and the strongest belief that Revenge are a bona fide band in their own right, there are bound to be legions of doubters to whom 'One True Passion' is no more than Peter Hook’s equivalent of DIY or embroidery; a diverting hobby. If so, who cares? The debut LP by Revenge contains ...

NME - POWER, CONVICTION, LIES! NEW ORDER Substance ( Factory ) WE CHUCK words at New Order. Words like funereal and ethereal and classical and awesome . We treat their music religiously as if staring, open-eared before a mountainous terrain of rushing torrents and echoing valleys; as if their creations rise and fall and rise again while the humble human elements struggle to stand firm in a mightly synthesised soundscape. That sort of stuff. Meanwhile they've packaged themselves almost anonymously. And they’ve offered us few explanations, few indications as to their collective states of mind. On stage they appear disinterested and distant; in interviews they behave like irresponsible tosspots, making it impossible to reconcile the people with the product. So here we are - precisely ten years on from Joy Division's raw inception - at Fac 200. "Now that we've grown up together" as Bernard (Barney) Dicken (Sumner Albrecht sings in 'True Faith"...

VOX - GETTING THEIR HOUSE IN ORDER NEW ORDER Republic (London tba) When New Order last filed a despatch -with 1989’s Technique , recorded in a suitably blissed-out state in Ibiza - they set the mood for a brief era. Then, having released the perfect album to usher in the age of indie/dance crossover, they stepped back and watched an entire scene come and go under their benign gaze. Four years later, the backdrop to their return is one of upheaval, of Madchester’s visible disintegration with the Mondays burn-out, growing violence in the city, and, of course, the collapse of Factory. Rumours of splits have plagued them these past few years, fuelled by the varying degrees of success enjoyed in their respective solo projects but, seemingly against the odds, Republic is testimony that New Order are still together. It was not, however, a happy project, and people are already saying it may be their last. Nevertheless, Republic doesn’t exactly find New Order descending into th...

NME - HOOK ON CLASSICS NEW ORDER The Best Of New Order (London/All formats) MEMORIES ARE made of this... Contrary to popular (dis)belief, Greatest Hits collections are not merely a mercenary sleight of hand by men in suits to empty already generous pockets. Nor are such compilations exploited to fulfil contractual obligations or pay off debts of the decidedly crushing variety. Especially when the artist(s) in question have already succumbed to the comprehensive cobbling-together of product that was ‘Substance’. No sirree. They are actually fulfilling a public service. See, this new New Order selection acts as a catalyst to the mind, triggering off all manner of hazy/hilarious memories half-lost to the vagaries of drink'n'drugs. It's the way the opening bars of 'Bizarre Love Triangle' immediately transport you back to doing the dance of the berserk mongoose at el crappo Goff clubs in Stratford. It's the way '1963' whisks you off to drunken p...

Melody Maker - BROTHERS GRIM BROTHERHOOD Factory LIKE the trick life played on Orson Welles, a calamitous collision of accident and genius has chucked New Order’s career into reverse, doomed them to the bickering of retro-perspective. For everyone lauding their survival, there's someone resenting it. For every plaudit greeting their supposed pursuit of simple purity, there’s an upbraiding for their assumed lack of concern. “Brotherhood” can’t escape raising all the familiar questions. Or doesn’t want to. I can't decide. Infuriatingly enigmatic, every song strains between adrenalised instrumental passages of thundering majesty and lyrics of such embarrassing openness that the listener is repeatedly frustrated and forced to impugn motives to their apparent schizophrenia. Is this tension between frailty and fury a callous formula or shivering naked naivety? I can’t decide. When “Way Of Life” lamely lullabyes across Colourfield terrain, the starbursts of energised guit...

NME - ART OF THE STATE NEW ORDER Brotherhood (Factory) PRAY SILENCE for the thinking person's Andrew Ridgeley: “You look like a pig/You should be in a (heh, heh) zoo (heh, heh)!”  This is a wonderful LP made by very silly people. It comes complete with the stereo horseplay of vocalist Barney making stupid noises - a strangely diffident clown making this glorious hullaballoo sound so easy They could have taken it further. It seems that previous working titles for the record were 'Fuck' and 'The Smell Of It'. Boys will be boys . . . poor Gillian. 'Brotherhood' is the title of a book exposing freemasons. Two years later, the author dropped dead. Funny thing, life. 'Brotherhood' swings in a more blither fashion than the sulky 'Low-Life'. 'Paradise' bowls you over in the way that the Stones’ 'Miss You' should have done. Barney proves to be a man of many voices, and amidst these borrowed manners it sounds odd to hear h...

NME - DRIVEN SNOW OF THE SOUL NEW ORDER Low-life ( Factory ) WHO CARES to be pure in this old rock music? Pop flesh bumps and grinds in our faces without respite - and any old piece of meat, whether it be Pete Bums or Pat Benatar, will do. The savage amusement this spectacle affords has grown cold. And now back come New Order, the driven snow of the soul, with a record to close everbody's mouth. Their titles always reflect cruelly on their content. As 'Movement' was immobile and 'Power,  Corruption And Lies' spotlessly true, so 'Low-life' is celestial: it seems to gaze down from heaven. The sound is all ice and glass and brittle bells. Hook's bass lines don't boom, they hum in an elastic brogue that pumps the heart of the songs. When Albrecht sings it's a sound so human that, in the midst of pop’s throng of digital voices, it seems unearthly. Just as Joy Division churned on the mark of Curtis’ sepulchral tones, so New Order - with t...

NME - RE-ORDER NEW ORDER Guild Hall, Preston NEW Order are born again. As a rock group. That's the first thought that hits you the moment they hit the stage. But, if it’s true, it's certainly, for once, no insult. As the group's appearance is heralded, hordes flock towards them, the taut thread or anticipation is cut by a chord, and a voice speaks (New Order - communicating?). "We're going to start with a very old one. This is called 'Ceremony;." What else could it be called. under the circumstances? New Order, more than anyone else, you can either love or hate. This time it's love. The only way to take them is existentially: they're constantly redefining themselves. It's not the first time they've been reborn - they seem to have as many lives as a cat (and as much mystique). Tonight, there's a genuine warmth in the music which is too often lacking. It fills everything, mesmeric, committed, compulsive. It makes you want to s...