Quintessential New Order Album
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no such thing as a perfect new order album. All their albums have some tracks that should have been filtered. Technique is probably the closest to perfect and is probably the quintessential album. I would tell people to start at substance but it aint proper.
The ultimate New Order album is Brotherhood. It was New Order when they were themselves and completely comfortable with being New Order.
Their signature album is definitely Power Corruption and Lies. Low Life and Brotherhood - however fantastic - use too much of the Joy DIvision formula.
Chris Romero wrote: The ultimate New Order album is Brotherhood. It was New Order when they were themselves and completely comfortable with being New Order.
You mean badly produced and nigh on unlistenable twenty years later?
oldmonkey wrote:
Chris Romero wrote: The ultimate New Order album is Brotherhood. It was New Order when they were themselves and completely comfortable with being New Order.
You mean badly produced and nigh on unlistenable twenty years later?
And thus capturing the frustrating nature of the band... Maybe Brotherhood is quintessential NO after all... 
SHEDi xxx
You mean badly produced and nigh on unlistenable twenty years later?
That's really fcuking funny.
Like many people I think Technique is their best album - all the tracks are great and it has a certain sound which seems to make it fit together well. However, if you're talking about a quintessential album that contains all elements which define New Order's various musical styles I would probably say Power Corruption & Lies. I think Age of Consent, The Village and Leave Me Alone are all very different but provide good illustrations of their different musical styles. However, I also think WFTSC has some good examples of their differnt styles too.
This thread has got me thinking on what people's choice of 10 songs that define New Order (i.e not necessarily your top 10) would be, so I'm going to start a new thread devoted to this called '10 songs that define New Order'.
Lowlife, followed closely by PC&L. Don't get the Technique fixation at all, no glaring flaws, hardly quintessential NO at all!
I want it to be PCL,I mean come on,Age of Consent,The Village & Leave Me Alone as someone already said,but Low Life is my personal fave.There's an argument for Substance being the 'Quintessential',tho it would have to have the first version of Ceremony on it,& not the re-record.As an added point,does anyone really listen to fucking Republic? With the exception of Regret,it's by Pet Shop Order....over to you.....
Well both versions of Sub-Culture have a fatal flaw. The Low-Life version has a very muddy completely effed up sound for the last section of the tune. Almost as if there was, "makes it sound like shite" dial on the mixing desk and they turned that to level "10". Additionally the 12 inch remix of the tune has some absolutely clunky effects, butchered barney's vocal, screwed up a lot of the charm of the original including the bridge, but it also has a very "un-muddied" bass solo after the boomerang effect I mentioned a few days ago elsewhere. That concluding bass solo is heartbreakingly gorgeous and amazing.
As for the actual album, I'd definitely go with Technique, it's their only album that is filled virtually constantly with highs (only Fine Time fails to shine, in my view), but interestingly I think you can straddle the fence a bit and argue that PCL-Low-Life-Technique form a perfect trifecta encompassing New Order at their greatest.
Absolute moments of Brilliance: PCL: Age of Consent, Your Silent Face, Leave Me Alone
Low Life: Love Vigilantees, This Time of Night, Sunrise, Face Up
Technique: Loveless, Run, Mr. Disco, Vanishing Point, Dream Attack
Ridiculously good secondary tunes: PCL: The Village, 5 8 6 after horrid opening 90 seconds
Low Life: STYT, Elegia
Technique: All the way, Round and Round, Guilty Partner
Horrendous Mistakes: PCL: We All Stand
Low-Life: Editing The Perfect Kiss? That's like cutting Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody before the ripping guitar outro because, "I've had enough of that queer, faux-opera crap".
Technique: Fine Time. It's not a bad tune, but opening an album with it's worst song, and also releasing it as the opening single is baffling. Yeah maybe it captured the moment, well so did Brittney, and Christina, 98 talentless degrees, and N'Bunk, but it doesn't make the music any less crappy.
The Sound:
Guitars and Synths blended perfectly along with fine Barney moments of genius, and ineptitude and very little if any production issues (unlike the production debacles that rendered movement and Brotherhood flat, and most of Republic plastic, in comparison).
All three albums were filled with genius, just slightly sub genius tunes and at least one tune that just was nowhere near as good as the rest of the album for whatever reason and all three define New Order.
I would say Power Corruption and Lies is their best studio album. But overall substance is their best album, (even though me being a complete nub don't own it, although I have Singles and my dad has Substance on Vinyl)
I still prefer Low-Lifes version of Sub-Culture though.
I would buy the CD version of Substance (fror the B-saides mainly) but can't find it anywhere cheap enough (12.99 on play.com is too much for me)
The him wrote: Like many people I think Technique is their best album - all the tracks are great and it has a certain sound which seems to make it fit together well.
Not forgetting Republic - I think that's NO's best, one great sound/feel applied to all the tracks.
Low-life gets my vote...the great trifecta of "Sunrise", "Elegia" and "Sooner than you think." Plus, I love the story about how they wrote and recorded "Elegia" in a 24 hour session with no sleep. Those were the good ol' days
Low Life is my favourite (but the 12" version of The Perfect Kiss is much better), while PCL comes close. Then it is Technique for me.
I've never really liked Brotherhood somehow.
