Following the suicide of Ian Curtis on May 18th, 1980, the remaining members of the band – Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Steven Morris – agreed straightaway that they would carry on, albeit under a different name. But that was the easy bit.
Nothing was certain. Joy Division themselves had progressed at such a rapid rate that even as they came to a halt they were considering fresh moves. They’d rapidly moved out of punky squalls, but had multi-tracked other iterations since then. They were more than capable of metallic rockers like Shadowplay, Twenty Four Hours, Dead Souls and Colony, but were increasingly abandoning their rock sound almost entirely.
Love Will Tear Us Apart and Ceremony indicated they were on the brink of mainstream chart success, but there is one JD track, virtually ignored at the time, which was even more influential: As You Said, a two-minute instrumental on the flipside of a flexi-disc giveaway. It sounds more like Cabaret Voltaire, those other northern pioneers, and would fit well on an Aphex Twin or Boards Of Canada album.
So, when New Order got going they were full of doubt. Who should sing? Who should write the lyrics? What should they write about? Should they get someone else in? Should they play Joy Division songs live? Was Martin Hannett still the right producer?
The process of answering these questions threw up a first year of experimentation which is what this episode is all about. Personally, I’d have been happier if they’d stayed in their 1980/81 mode, tense and anxious, but also not afraid to experiment, for a great deal longer. However by 1982 they’d answered all those questions once and for all (Bernard, Bernard, don’t sweat it, Gillian, no and no), then after Temptation and Blue Monday, never looked back.
But the early autumnal version of New Order is the one I much prefer. It doesn’t last long and this period in their lives was one in which they confess to feeling lost. Once they discovered Italian house music and party drugs, the emphasis was on fun, even hedonism, and that fitted the ’eighties well. Not surprisingly their new musical direction matched this new found happiness.
But, as we see so often, misery can be the nursemaid of the best creativity. And their experiments proved, in the end, as influential as the more familiar sound they developed as the decade wore on. But judge yourself.
Tracklist:
Dreams never end, New Order
Inbetween days, The Cure
Cries and whispers, New Order
Asleep, Makthaverskan
The him, New Order
Squalor Victoria, The National
Procession, New Order
Electronic Renaissance, Belle and Sebastian
Ceremony, New Order
Bordeaux, The Durutti Column
Chosen time, New Order
Strange neighbours, Plastic Flowers