![]() If you listen closely from 3’16” there’s an early example of Sumner’s now trademark whooping. This was New Order’s first venture into self-production and Sumner’s lyrics – “Won’t you show me, please show me the way” – perhaps hint at lingering insecurities, but the shimmering electronica takes existential angst on to the dancefloor. The result was a song that reflects the influence of Donna Summer’s I Feel Love, coasts on a juddering sequence of electronic notes that provide melody and rhythm at the same time and acts as the blueprint for the combination of electronics, bass and guitars that would eventually produce Blue Monday. Sumner had found an old synth with an oscillator and experimented with synching it up to drums. Wilson was never one to undersell things, but New Order’s first venture into electronics (as opposed to synthesiser washes) is a seminal record. 3 Everything’s Gone Greenįactory boss Tony Wilson once called Everything’s Gone Green “the most important song in the modern world, the first time anywhere that people used computers – primitive Apple computers with soldering irons and wires coming out of them – linked to 1970s synthesisers”. The climax, with Hook’s pensive bassline accompanying Gillian Gilbert’s spoken word narrative, is New Order at their most beautifully striking and elemental. As with Dreams Never End, Peter Hook takes the lead vocal. It begins with a trademark Hannett sonic trick – an unusual sound followed by a second’s silence – before Steve Morris’s drum machine and a rolling Pink Floydesque tom-tom motif sets the scene for the banks of keyboard. I could have picked the more well-known Dreams Never End, but the magnificently slow-building Doubts Even Here (initially titled Tiny Tim) has been unjustly forgotten since the band banished it from their live performances some 33 years ago. There’s some truth in both those criticisms, and yet it contains some unadulterated gems. ![]() ![]() New Order’s 1981 debut album, Movement, is much maligned – not least by Sumner, who felt Martin Hannett’s production smothered the songs and that the group hadn’t quite found their feet as a new band.
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