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Sick and tired of hearing in the press about how new order invented dance music,not just from the general press but also from their own record company ,warners.
What do you lot think,did they invent dance music or not?
I think thay had a reveluntionary bass sound on bm83,and that the bassline has often been copied but never bettered ,but did they REALLY invent dance music,did they?
i think perhaps not!
Not.
Speaking from personal experience, the one thing New Order did do though, or rather Blue Monday did, was to get 'lads' up dancing with one another. You can say what you like about your Donna Summers, Patrick Cowleys or Kraftwerks or whatever, but Blue Monday was a rock hard record which stopped lads pogoing around to the Jam and doing Nutty Boy dances to Madness and actually had lads [ahem] 'disco' dancing with one another.
And, nope, this ain't supposed to sound 'gay'. 
I have a related question (I think). I read somewhere that an NO record was the first one to be mixed/remixed. Is that true? If so then that would help make the pioneer case. While I don't believe they invented dance music I do think they helped, let's say perfect it.
I thought it is written that they imported the dance- or club-stuff from the US to Europe. So you can call them pioneers...
Al Jarvis wrote:
Not.
Speaking from personal experience, the one thing New Order did do though, or rather Blue Monday did, was to get 'lads' up dancing with one another. You can say what you like about your Donna Summers, Patrick Cowleys or Kraftwerks or whatever, but Blue Monday was a rock hard record which stopped lads pogoing around to the Jam and doing Nutty Boy dances to Madness and actually had lads [ahem] 'disco' dancing with one another.
And, nope, this ain't supposed to sound 'gay'.
*insert Rob Gretton quote on gay disco*
;)
New Order were probably the first British band to take techno/electronic dance music into the mainstream... they didn't invent it though. I'd say Kraftwerk are the pioneers of the techno sound, and bands like Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League were doing 'dance' music in the late 70s/early 80s
What do you lot think,did they invent dance music or not?
No. But they did invent good dance music, so there you go...
I reckon the first MAINSTREAM and successful remix was Donna Summer's I Feel Love which was released by Giorgio Moroder in 7- and 20-minute remixes in 1977. Besides it's all computer-driven. Although I may be wrong. 
Ok, NO's dance "influence" unleashed after Blue Monday and that's 1983. Some may say about EGG, but was it really that popular... Anyway by 1983 the ELECTRO dance music had been largely established: disco and NY hip-hop scene was quite impressing, new wave bands like the Human League, Depeche Mode - they all used computers straight away to compose dance music. I'm not saying they were that good at that but still.
Kraftwerk were genuine electronic pioneers, but hardly dance ones :)
So we're practically talking here about only Blue Monday to call NO the pioneers? Had they followed the same path but they turned to Lonesome Tonight, Love Vigilantes and so forth.
THOUGH to me they were dance pioneers in my perosnal point of view: before NO I didn't listen to dance/electronic music at all. They brought me to that kind of music. 
new wave bands like the Human League, Depeche Mode
I would add "Don't Go" by Yaz, which was released in 1982, to that list. In fact, "Goodbye Seventies" could be included also.
I think New Order were the first ever truly ALTERNATIVE dance band. They just made collide new wave and electro, and nobody did it before, apart from avant garde bands like Cabaret Voltaire, but here we're talking about pop music. The strength of New Order was that they were doing it keeping the accessible song form, but through a post punk attitude. Also they've been in the right place at the right time. Depeche Mode were doing electro when New Order were still doing Movement, though they were already experimenting with EGG. But Depeche Mode's electro still derived from Kraftwerk, though they used that sound to make commercial pop music (and the funny thing is that they went on the opposite direction to New Order's, evolving from easy pop to darker synth pop in the mid 80s, so I'd say it's more Depeche Mode being influenced by New Order). What New Order did was going to America on tour just when the early electro was exploding from the underground. The video of Confusion just tells the story, they go to the club and they see breakdance. What happens therefore is New Order come home and are the very first to use electronic tools more in the New York way than Kraftwerk's. Arthur Baker is a key in this transition. And actually there were no other bands doing that thing at the time. Bands influenced by Kraftwerk, plenty of them (OMD just went near to be like New Order and ahead of the time but the difference was that they mixed new wave with classic continental electro pop, not American breakdance electro)... but bands importing the New York sequencers, only New Order. The same luck will be of the Hacienda when they'll be the first to import the Detroit house sound in the mid-80s, and what about New Order going to Ibiza right in 1988 at the heighth of the acid house explosion? New Order have been unique in this, not only the first, but the only ones to get the evolution of music at the right time, importing fresh sounds and reworking them in their own style but mantaining some background (that's the difference with many artists who just try to do records "sounding like" other genres, like the Blow Monkeys or ABC trying to sound house... New Order have always remained essentially a new wave band, just exploring different areas but without conforming to any style or fashion) at least with Blue Monday and Technique.
I wish they had made an EP or an album with Baker in 1983 in the wake of Confusion. I always felt confused and frustrated that a song like Lonesome Tonight followed those fantastic dance tunes.
Maybe they realized it was not really what they felt like and they turned to guitars for Low-Life and Brotherhood.
As for Technique, apart from Fine Time, the album was not a hot dance collection. When I first heard it the rhythms even sounded to me a bit out of date. What about 808 State and Blue System then?
|| | ||| 6217|| 8 || 3 wrote: I wish they had made an EP or an album with Baker in 1983 in the wake of Confusion. Maybe they realized it was not really what they felt like and they turned to guitars for Low-Life and Brotherhood.
*I'd have also loved to hear more like Confusion, but they just kept evolving... they didn't just guitar... after Confusion came Thieves Like Us, which would be a good ballad on an imaginary album featuring EGG, Temptation, Blue Monday and Confusion. Then the sound kept going forward and forward and the next thing we got was Perfect Kiss which wasn't really electro anymore, it was already something else, the start of the synth pop they'll evolve until True Faith.
As for Technique, apart from Fine Time, the album was not a hot dance collection. When I first heard it the rhythms even sounded to me a bit out of date. What about 808 State and Blue System then?
*Fine Time was indeed the only song truly of its period. The album was another thing, it was released too late to sound ahead, and they didn't even pretend it. They just took some elements of acid house and techno (which had already exploded in the Hacienda) and mixed them with their own style for songs like Mr.Disco and Vanishing Point. Like I wrote above, that's why they're so great, they don't conform to styles, they just take elements and implement them in their own evolving version of new wave... I never thought 808 State were pop music, though they used guest vocalists... they remain a great proper dance band, a bit like the Chemical Brothers today...
I think along with the Chicago and Detroit and to a lesser extent NYC scenes, they help turn disco into house/acid/rave whatever. They're probably more responsible for creating the "uk" dance sound than anyone, whether directly or through FAC51.
It's odd though, I've actually felt recently that their electronic work was being ignored, strange that others feel the opposite. I certainly think they had a far more profound impact accross the spectrum of electronic musicians and DJ's than accross rock bands. Ask anyone who makes, mixes or produces dance music about NO and they will have an informed opinion.
As for how far ahead of the game or not they were.....Next time you have access to a big rig, and are playing some modern dance tracks on it.....just get it sounding nice and hot, then leave the settings the same and put video586 on. It'll be a race between the building collapsing and the speakers going boom. I have said before that if someone else had mixed EGG, Temptation and Hurt, they'd be fucking deadly tracks....but barney kinda shafted them.
