New Order > Technique [Collector's Edition] > Fact 275 Technique < Peter Saville

Technique [Collector's Edition]; front cover detail
Technique [Collector's Edition]; front cover detail

Release date

29 September 2008

Tracklisting

Technique:

01 Fine Time
02 All the Way
03 Love Less
04 Round & Round
05 Guilty Partner
06 Run
07 Mr. Disco
08 Vanishing Point
09 Dream Attack

Technique bonus disc:

01 Don't Do It (12" Version)
02 Fine Line (12" Version)
03 Round & Round (12" Version)
04 Best & Marsh (12" Version)
05 Run 2 (12" Version)
06 MTO
07 Fine Time (Silk Mix)
08 Vanishing Point (Instrumental) (12" Version)
09 World in Motion (Cabinieri Mix) (12" Version)

Liner notes

Stephen Morris has a way of dating New Order albums. While 1985's Low Life was being made there was the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in the former USSR, and the US space shuttle Challenger exploded. The later stages of Movement coincided with the inner-city riots of 1981. And just as they were about to play Buenos Aires, military unrest in Argentina marked the readiness of Technique in early 1989. Human dramas all, just as the previous eight years had been crowded with incident. And the sense of distance travelled, from the dank precincts of 1981's Movement to the fluouro-pastoral sheen of February 1989's Technique, did seem astonishing. The place that gave this album its unique tone was, as in all things New Order, arrived at by total chance.

"We had two candidates for a studio," recalls Stephen. "One was Peter Gabriel's in Bath, which was fantastic. The other was in Ibiza, which Hooky and Terry (Mason, road manager) went to see. When they came back they said, immediately, 'We don't fucking care how good Peter Gabriel's studio is, it's not got a swimming pool, has it?' 'No...' 'Fucking go to Ibiza! then!' Judas Priest's drummer owned it. It was, as Tony Wilson said, the most expensive holiday we ever had. But fortunately it was the right place at the right time. All of that was happening just down the road, in Amnesia and we embraced it, fully."

'All of that' was, of course, the Acid House/ Balearic explosion. The maddening, provocative sound of Acid had already hit the UK charts. It's quaint to think of the splutterings of rage engendered by, say, Lil' Louis' 1987 hit French Kiss, but New Order's Confusion had been, in much the same way, too much for some people in 1983. These were less songs, more super-heightened expressions of rhythm and sensation, concerned with hypnotic repetition rather than being 'proper' songs. In Ibiza, British and European youth were flocking to hear these sounds in clubs dedicated to non-stop ecstatic dancing, that stayed open until 12 o'clock the next day - an heir of sorts to the New York dance scene that had so besotted New Order in the early '80s. But as ever, there were hazards.

"It virtually turned into a disaster because we were out partying all the time," says Bernard of their four months spent in Mediterranean Studios. "We didn't get that much done, basically. We'd go out to Amnesia instead. And the studio had its own bar and a 24 hour waiter fetching us cocktails and a swimming pool... there's more to it than that but it's not printable."

Stephen takes up the story. "It was just after that Comic Strip Presents... The Funseekers," he remembers. "Which was a send up of all that Club 18-30-ness, with Jesus in it, so there was a sort of an undercurrent of that as well as this mad acid-crazed dance scene. To the point where we were actually running coach trips to the studio and having barbecues for the club 18-30 tourists... they'd be fucking running about the studio... throwing up! Ha ha! Terry'd gone out and met'em, and then the Thursday night barbecue started, until it got beyond a joke.

It was nice, but we did fuck all. In a way it was quite good to waste our own money, doing something that took your mind off what was happening with Factory."

Gillian Gilbert's recollections involve more labour. "We had Mike (Johnson, engineer) with us, so there was always somebody doing something," she says, "but it was the beginning of us not being together in the studio when we were doing things. It was like, oh you do your drums today, and I'll do vocals tonight... The songs were sort of there but there were huge chunks missing. You'd leave blocks and say, will you fill that in? I'm off now. In some ways it was good because (adopts conspiratorial tone) you were left on your own and could do whatever you wanted. And people would come in and say that sounds dead good. 'Cos sometimes when you were writing it was like, I don't like that, why don't you do that ... but there was nobody there especiallyduring the day because they'd been up all night!"

From such confusion sublimity would spring. It's arguable thatTechnique is more a clear split between rock and electronic dance thanBrotherhood was, but the two sides have serotonin-flooded, sunkissed qualities that make them more alike than apart. While Fine Time, Round and Round, Mr Disco, Vanishing Point and Dream Attack sit in the latter category, as do the instrumental extrapolations on this reissue'ssecond disc, the vocal songs with guitars are infused with a similar sensuality. This was the first time Bernard had written all the lyrics himself, and it appeared that the Ibizan experience had also informed his words. Dream Attack is a beautifully poetic treatment of that feeling of never wanting to go back to the real world after a quasi-mystic clubbing holiday; the more bereft Mr Disco speaks for one of those Club 18-30 lotharios who finds himself without the lifelong soulmate he met one night when battered.

After four months in Ibiza, it was probably time to go when gaunt Happy Mondays vibesman Bez turned up and started crashing cars. By cosmic coincidence, Bez was also the name of an ancient Mediterranean dwarf god of music and revelry who, it's said, gave the island its name. Who says there's no such thing as coincidence? Then band then adjourned to Peter Gabriel's still-new and gleaming Real World studio in Bath to complete what would be their masterpiece. "It was much more sober atmosphere," says Bernard. "Except when someone had the bright idea to have a party at the end of it, I think it might have been the studio manager, who was thinking of a cheese and wine party. I think we got a 70 seater coach from the Haçienda... Rob got the Haçienda DJs, we did the place out like a club... and Bez came, again. Oooaaargh.

Good do. It did get messy. The poor studio manager nearly had a nervous breakdown. At 8.30 in the morning he said that's it, everyone on the coach, so we woke the coach driver up and he's like thank god for that, but the battery was flat! Yay! Back in until 11... heady days."

On February 11 1989, two months after number 11 hit Fine Time had seen Bernard do his own variation of the Bez dance on top Of the Pops, Technique was at number one on the album charts. The month after that the single of Round & Round was at number 21. This was New Order's commercial zenith, and it left the way clear for other bands to blend rock and dance (U2 must have been listening), and predicting club music's chart takeover in the '90s. Behind the scenes, though, it seemed that the creative tension that had sustained and inspired New Order had finally given out.

"I think Technique sounds fantastic. It really does, considering it's not an Ibizan dance record, I think it catches a summer sound really brilliantly," says Peter Hook. "It was funny. It was also a struggle - an epic power struggle between the sequencers and me. I was resisting it valiantly, because I still wanted us to be a rock band."

"We were in this position of being known for this dance-electronic sound and it would have been daft to have just stopped doing it," counters Bernard. "That was the nature of the time. The way I saw it was we were still writing band music as well, so we'd reached a compromise. To be fair, doing electronic music like that has to be by its very nature one or two guys in front of a computer screen. ... I realise it was boring perhaps for Hooky to sit there while we were programming songs, but there was no other way round it. That was the sound that was happening at that time. I wasn't going to drop making this type of music. So, I went off to work on Electronic."

By the end of December 1989 Bernard was, indeed, Getting Away With It in the charts in the company of ex-Smith Johnny Marr and the Pet Shop Boys. For now, one of the most beloved bands of their generation had suspended operations. They had, of course, done it at the height oftheir powers, having carved a unique place in popular music. No other group were so equally acceptable on the dancefloor, in the football ground, the art gallery or on your headphones in the middle of the night. Was it ultimate proof of their contrariness, to step away so casually from making albums at the moment of their greatest triumph? "It has a bit of an end of term, last day of school feel about it, doesn't it, Technique?" says Stephen, archly. "And then, just when you should be doing another one, you don't do anything at all! Yes, how New Ordery. I'm not surprised when people say they were annoyed with us. I felt a bit bloody annoyed as well! But... it's chemistry isn't it?" Gillian agrees. "We all had personalities, and that was part of the group. So you leave it, you don't force yourself, if you're not gelling."

Early the following year, of course, there'd be the England World Cup song World In Motion; look further ahead, and still to come is gang trouble at the Haçienda, the demise of Factory, 1993's reunion album Republic and five years of solo projects. Bernard would carry on with Electronic, Stephen and Gillian would work as The Other Two would fit in two bands, Revenge and Monaco. Like New Order's regrouping in 1998 and the tragic death of manager Rob Gretton in 1999, though, these are stories for another time.

"I remember one beautiful sunny afternoon when I took my son and daughter for a walk in Heaton Park, when New Order had finished," reflects Hooky. " And there was this kid with a ghetto blaster, playing this fantastic track. I asked him who it was - he said, 'It's fucking New Order man, Run! You not heard it?' I think that's a metaphor for being so close to something and not knowing your arse from your elbow.

None of us, I think, are particularly full of ourselves and yet we've made some absolutely fantastic music, and written some amazing songs that have lasted so well. When you work as closely as we'd done for so long, you create things of immeasurable beauty that last for years and years and years, and you turn around and think you've done fuck all."

"New Order/ Joy Division has been a slow burner," offers Bernard. "Perhaps we didn't go, brr-paw!! Mega worldwide success, woah we've done it let's get a house in LA and a beach in Malibu, we didn't hit the world like that. People perhaps learned about us through word of mouth. Y'know, New Order can play anywhere in the world. Maybe some college kid played it to his mate and they played it to their mates, and the whole thing grew organically. Until it covered the world." There are many spine tingling moments on Technique, and on the ominously titled Vanishing Point, Bernard singing "when they gave him away like in Whistle Down The Wind" is one of them. It recalls the scene from the 1961 Disney-meets-Dennis-Potter British film when Alan Bates' fugitive - who Hayley Mills thinks is Jesus - gives himself up to the police in an act rich with symbolism. It's a farewell, but a disbelieving one that's convinced of a return. Rather like events after Technique itself. New Order had gone. Later, they would come back. And in another sense, they didn't go anywhere. When a group makes music as good as they did in the 1980s, they'll always be around.

Ian Harrison

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Tracklisting as per Rhino publicity