Words and photos by Rafe Arnott, except where credited. Image above courtesy Factory Records.
Heavy Rotation is a column focused on an LP in my collection. This month I’m discussing New Order Technique, Qwest Records, 9-25845-1, SRC pressing, 1989
A generation-long grind of austerity started in ’70s Britain left little on the horizon but silhouettes of concrete high-rises for the working-class by 1980. A decade which could have promised more for the less privileged instead favoured the rich as Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party looked to capitalize on shifting global political and economic structures. The rich got richer, and the poor got tax hikes, unemployment and inflation. But adversity inspires. The Iron Lady’s unyielding grip led to an prolific songwriting decade for England, laying the groundwork for a shift from punk’s gritty reality to the drug-fuelled escapism of new wave, electronica and house by the ‘90s. The impact this combined front made on music history is still felt today in the hedonism achieved by New Order’s Technique. Released in January, 1989 it heralded an end to the indulgent excesses of the ‘80s with a wink, embracing the unknown pleasures to come with the birth of rave culture.
"Like the radical economies which defined the UK music scene of the ’70s and ‘80s, the band’s evolution was the product of external forces."
–Rafe Arnott
To understand how Technique influenced and secured a place in the annals of dance music, one must trace the band’s evolution from post-punk, new wave progenitor Joy Division to seminal electronic dance rockers New Order. Formed in 1976 with Ian Curtis (lead vocals, guitar), Peter Hook (bass, backing vocals, guitar), Stephen Morris (drums, percussion) and Bernard Sumner (lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals, bass), Joy Division was the end result of lifelong friends Hook and Sumner taking in a Sex Pistols show and deciding to make a go of it themselves. Steeped in punk’s DIY ethic, and inspired by the Pistols’ deconstruction of the traditional rock star as god, the Manchester foursome soon developed a stripped-down, moody, atmospheric percussion and bassline-driven sound that would influence post punk and new wave for years to come. Following the critical and commercial success of their first two albums – Unknown Pleasures (1979) and Closer (1980) – on Tony Wilson’s Factory Records label, a tour of the United States and Canada was organized.
Photo Above: Joy Division about 1979 – Stephen Morris, Ian Curtis, Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner. Image courtesy of Irish Times/Retna.
Like the radical economies which defined the UK music scene of the ’70s and ‘80s, the band’s evolution was the product of external forces. Here it was the suicide of lead singer and reluctant front man Curtis on May 18, 1980. Curtis, who suffered from depression and epilepsy, took his life on the eve of the scheduled North American tour and his passing shocked and devastated the band. Still reeling form the death, Hook, Morris and Sumner invited keyboardist and guitarist Gillian Gilbert to join them in October of that year after they decided to form New Order. January ’81 saw the release of singles “Ceremony” with B-side “In a Lonely Place” which were written while Curtis was still alive. Movement came out 10 months later and continued in the vein of darker, euphonic work Unknown Pleasures and Closer had mined, but saw a shift to include more synthesizers.
Photo above: The New Order – Gillian Gilbert, Stephen Morris, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook at Factory Records in the late eighties. Image courtesy Factory Records.
Following Movement, and trips to New York where the band was exposed to burgeoning genres electro, freestyle and post-disco, there followed a noticeable creep towards dance-influenced beats and song structures. “Everything’s Gone Green,” and “Temptation” were precursors to the consequential change-up in sound presented by the group with 1983’s Power, Corruption & Lies. The album explored previously uncharted territory and is seen as the LP where New Order broke out of Joy Division’s shadow and established them as a force in not only the pop/dance music scene, but the emergent house music one as well. Studio albums Low-Life, Brotherhood and Substance followed in short order between ’85 and ’87 and served a heady mix of electronica, guitar rock and Top-10 singles such as “Bizarre Love Triangle.” A constant flow of singles including “True Faith” and “Touched by the Hand of God” furthered the reach of New Order into dance and club culture, but it was their 5th studio LP – Technique – that truly distilled their transformation from live-venue post punks to studio-based dance heavyweights. The album’s potent EDM aesthetic linked back to the DNA of their seminal 1983 single “Blue Monday” (the best-selling independent 12-inch single of all time in the UK), and stood apart from other burgeoning house albums like a coded Baeleric signal that moved listeners in a way the band had not transmitted before.
That Technique was club-ready on release owed to being partially recorded over the summer of 1988 at Mediterranean Studios in Ibiza, where the group was influenced by the island’s bacchanalian acid house scene (and what would become the entropic centre of European house music culture for the next decade). The idea to record at Mediterranean was pushed by Hook who had enough of recording in "dark and horrible" London studios. But with four months of studio time in Ibiza and only 20 per cent of the album completed, the group decided to finish up at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios back in England. Sumner touted Real World as having a “much more sober atmosphere.” Yet it was Ibiza where the group started implementing their desire to make more layered, complex music which didn’t lend itself to replication in a live performance the same way their initial sparse, new wave compositions did. Tracing an arc from Movement to Technique, it’s almost impossible to rationally link the two albums to the same band as they sound so radically different from one another. Peter Saville’s cover artwork is another inspired touch, with the demure Rococo cherub and its symbolic motif as a higher angel casually corrupted with oversaturated technicolour highlights, flipping the holy to the pagan.
Photo above: A component count of two keeps the signal path minimal to the vintage Altec Valencia loudspeakers.
At one point I’d acquired a 12-inch single of "Blue Monday" and various CDs of other New Order albums, but many were passed on to friends in the intervening years as introductions to the band, so currently I’m left with an original US pressing of Closer, a Rhino/London/Factory Records remaster/reissue from 2007 of Unknown Pleasures, and an 1989 Qwest Records (9-25845-1, SRC pressing) version of Technique. My continuing journey with high fidelity always opens new doors, offers glimpses down paths not yet travelled and piques my curiosity about ways to achieve a closer connection to the recorded event, and this instalment of Heavy Rotation features yet a differwent system curated from components and cables brought to my attention through conversations with other music lovers whose experiences differ from my own, but whose opinions I value. Listening took place with a wonderfully stripped-down system consisting of an Audio Note Oto Phono SE Signature integrated valve amplifier, a Technics SL-1210GR turntable with various moving-magnet cartridges (notes taken with a vintage Shure M44G fitted with a Jico replacement stylus), OJAS interconnects and speaker cables, and a pair of lightly-serviced 1974 Altec Valencia 846B loudspeakers. Incoming AC was run through the transparent Shindo Mr.T power transformer. These simple, time-proven components, and in a sense, new-old-stock cables, presented a minimal signal path for playback to navigate.
Photo above: Left – An early '80s Shure M44G with Jico replacement stylus tracks the groove on a Technics SL-1210GR turntable with Auditorium 23 mat, and Varia Instruments record weight. Right – Audio Note Oto Phono SE Signature integrated amplifier.
Hearing the album when it came out, playing it constantly in my girlfriend’s beat-up red Mazda sedan, it offered intellectual hope as we drove circles around the small town we were stuck in. Technique’s sprawling sonic landscape provided imagination new colours to paint with, and a canvas so much bigger than our youth had fashioned at the time. Other electronic/dance albums and singles would follow in short order as the psychedelia of Madchester unfolded, but nothing that flowed with such speed and precision from song-to-song. It’s an album of transcendent dance melancholy, unified with generous strokes of minor-key melodies. While it is tinged with despondency from Sumner’s introspective matrix of lyrical immediacy (he was going through a divorce at the time), it is a sadness one revels in. Dropping the needle on opener “Fine Time,” the track spools up like sweats from an acid rush that one is unable to shake. Hook and Morris’s processed rubber band percussion and basslines are relentless as they slam the listener into blissful submission while Sumner’s effect-heavy voice is either ethereally or pornographically growling over everything, “You’re much too young… too young […] to mess around with me” (here reminiscent of Blank/Meier with “Oh Yeah” in 1985 on Stella). Birthing a power disco/indie mash-up with driving washes of wide-open guitar riffs, complex, arpeggio synth work built on frenetic bass and drum programming creates a disoriented tilt to the song’s ecliptic plane, further adding to the sense of mania imbued. Yet, one is unable to stop limbs from convulsing of their own accord as electronic emissions pass through flesh and bone to fire synapse of their own accord.
Photo above: 1989 Qwest Records (9-25845-1, SRC pressing) version of Technique.
And like a manual transmission, shifting from the first to second track sees a slight drop in rpm, but a smooth continuation of speed. Sumner’s open-tuned rhythm guitar seamlessly blends with the sustained keyboard and synthesizer pitch change-ups by Gilbert on “All the Way” as Morris’s metronomic stick work maintains its foundational support of the song’s faded sun structure – strongly reminiscent of The Cure, albeit taking it one step further into the club. There is a sense of hypnotic other-worldliness, but like many cuts on Technique, it is countered with vocal despondency. Yet, it is this mix of the upbeat and sombre which underscores the main theme of balance throughout the entire album: light and dark. It’s an LP of both painstaking electronic curation and hook-you-in basslines. Next-level percussive programming, and acoustic flourishes. “Love Less” takes a turn in the road and in lieu of electronic exposition favours pop perfection with straight acoustic guitar-driven melodies. “Round & Round” is soaked in multi-tracked sequenced drums and keyboards, jumping about in a reliable manner before crashing to a dead stop and acts as a lighter emotional bridge to the back beat of “Guilty Partner.” Scripted with cynicism and moral ambiguity, it slouches around in the subconscious. Sumner’s complex lyrics exploring love lost over driving drum and bass rhythms and exquisite guitar by the same.
The album’s second side hits the ground with the wide-open “Run,” a light, indie-spirited mix of jangling acoustic and concise electric guitar leaking through an ethereal layer of percussion, synth and keyboards. The track touches on the importance friendship plays in life’s constant workaday grind, Sumner harmonizing with Gilbert over Hook’s huge bass plucking; “But I know that I'm ok/‘Cause you're here with me today…I haven't got a single problem/Now that I'm with you.” The deep pounding of Hertz-heavy synth notes opens the holiday-romance riffing of “Mr. Disco.” Breathy electro-flute washes mix with string arrangements and laser-gun blasts over expansive drum patterning as Sumner laments his emotional confusion, “Our rendezvous just ended in sorrow/Without you there’s no tomorrow.” Assured keyboard stabs create a film soundtrack-like sequence over alternately plaintive or vulnerable, billowing swathes of complex synth and drum programming on “Vanishing Point” which focuses on abusive parents. Album closer “Dream Attack” is a sublime gestalt of the entire LP’s concept arc. Shifting from a tumble of light and darkness, it backs up the lyrical bite of Sumner with Hook, Gilbert and Morris’s instrumental brawn. It adroitly summarizes their electronic sensibilities, flexing its acoustic muscles through percussive power, keyboard pomp and flamboyant guitar that effortlessly translates the quartet’s rhythmic sensibilities. And like every cut on the LP, it’s over too soon.
Photo above: The album's big, stadium-sized sound lends itself to a mix of vintage gear and tube amps.
Shrugging off the heavy expectations which weighed down Joy Division as neo-gothic doomsayers toying with mortal existence, New Order finally traded poorly lit clubs for arena glam with Technique. To quote Sumner, they finally embraced being “post-modernist, dance-beat miserablists.” An album which could not have been created in any other time or place, by a group forged in adversity, risen, phoenix-like from the ashes of their former selves, Technique was New Order’s first No.1 album and signalled the band was ready for a new decade, and had put the previous one behind them. At the core of what makes the LP so influential is the effortless fusion of dance, pop and indie, all helping define an intersection of what it means to be human. Technique is a sprawling tapestry of complex emotional entreaties put forth in Sumner’s lyrics and musically supported by Gilbert, Hook and Morris. Meant to be deciphered on the dance floor, Technique allowed New Order to plug in the wires between one's lizard brain and conscious mind, moving bodies to a new beat that would help define a generation of club-centric music.
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