NEW ORDER
MOVEMENT (DEFINITIVE EDITION)
RHINO★★
EIGHTEEN MONTHS ON FROM THE SUICIDE OF IAN CURTIS, NEW ORDER’S
DEBUT ALBUM FOUND THE BAND TRYING TO REDEFINE THEIR SOUND...found Sumner intoning “No
reason ever was given” like a
hurt requiem for Curtis.
In addition to that halting
original album, included on
both vinyl and CD with the
original Peter Saville artwork,
this set has a CD of demos.
It features the three-piece New
Order’s fi rst ever recording
session, at Cabaret Voltaire’s
Western Works studio in
September ’81, whose high/
low points include a rare
atonal, skeletal snippet,
Homage, and band manager
Rob Gretton ‘singing’.
The plangent early singles
Ceremony, Everything’s Gone
Green and Temptation, omitted
from the original Movement,
are also left off this set (except
as demos or live tracks), and
instead simultaneously reissued
as vinyl 12" singles with
original B-sides. It’s a typically
wilful, contrarian New Order
move: but then, this precious
band have never done things
the easy way. Ian GittinsI
t’s oddly moving to see a
slick, ‘defi nitive’ version of
an album that was so raw,
so ragged and unready.
When Movement was
released in November
1981 it was greeted with a
lukewarm critical reception,
but that was surely missing
the point. The point was: it
was a miracle it existed at all.
New Order’s debut album
was recorded in a dark
shadow, in the most diffi cult
of circumstances. Traumatised
by Joy Division singer Ian
Curtis’s suicide in May 1980,Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook
and Stephen Morris were far
from convinced they wished to
continue. When they did go
into the studio, having changed
name and added Gillian Gilbert
on keyboards, their producer,
the drug-addled console genius
Martin Hannett, ridiculed their
naive musicianship.
This deluxe one vinyl album
and 3CD boxset reissue thus
confi rms what a hesitant,
tentative document Movement
was. It was as much Joy
Division’s fi nal album as New
Order’s debut. For one thing,CLASSIC
BEST REISSUE
APRIL 2019© ITV/REX/Shutterstockboth reluctant new singer
Sumner and Hook, who sang
on two tracks, appeared to be
mimicking Curtis’s doom-laden
vocals: it was, as they later
admitted, all that they knew.
The music traced a strange,
brittle, austere trajectory
between Joy Division’s
sepulchral gloom and the
electronic epiphany that was to
spark their reinvention as New
Order. Tracks such as Truth and
ICB trickled rudimentary synths
over skittering drum-machine
patterns as Hook’s attitudinal
bass circled ominously. Senses