Re-Member wrote: For someone who was stated that they own Blancmange and Thompson Twins albums, it's really difficult not to look at this negative review toward the album itself as an act of trolling for attention.

please,

i'm an avid 80's music fan.....i listen to pretty much every group that ever came out.. from a to z..

808 state abc big country blancmange cabaret voltaire the cure duran duran depeche mode echo and the bunnymen erasure flock of seagulls go west human league heaven 17 inxs kraftwerk ktp level 42 ministry new order omd pet shop boys simple minds tears for fears thomas dolby thompson twins u2 ultravox wang chung xymox

i'm also a huge collector of vinyl, and now cd's..

so that's why i tend to pay attention to all those releases also..

anyways, my point is, i listen to a lot of different music, and different types also.. (not just 80's stuff)..

its just that new order had a special place, and has always been one of top/favorite bands from 1983-1987 ................it really did redefine an era of music that i think has never been captured again...

that's why it was so hard for me to accept the changes that they went through..

it's like that for a lot of other bands i like too.. duran duran, depeche mode, u2, ultravox, simple minds.. all of them have fallen, and fallen hard in my eyes..

i think its very hard for a group to sustain their urgency, and creativity over a long period of time. and i'm pretty sure they would get bored doing the same thing over and over, despite how much fans would wish they would continue sounding the way they liked them..

but that's another discussion..

later -1

My favorite NO album...ever!!!

Why didn't you say this before -1? Of course your perspective to Technique is different if that was your context.

I love NO because when I first heard them it was from International, but when I started getting the albums there were all these hidden gems.

-1 wrote:

well during the era, substance came out, and everyone was very excited.. well, the store manager who knew about the music industry, and was in touch with groups.... he was responsible for bringing a lot of alternative, 'new wave' type groups to houston.. -1

Lemme guess, Record Rack

The thing is, Technique is not nearly as commericial or manufactured sounding as some of the groups you've listed, so why do place higher standards toward New Order over the others you've mentioned? I could see if New Order were an extremely experimental, subversive and non-commericial act then pulled an album like Technique out of nowhere (the group SPK comes to mind here), but that's not the case. The structure of their work itself has always been rather traditional within the context of pop music. Techinque isn't even that drastically different of an album than Brotherhood. Mix both albums together and the only tracks that would seem out of place would be Fine Time and perhaps Round & Round.

I would choose New Order's Technique over any album by a few of groups that you've listed, but that's just me. Musicially, I love New Order and they are my favorite pop group, but I have far more respect artistically toward a handful of other recording and performance acts, so I guess can somewhat see your point of view, but even I know that slamming Techinque on a New Order message board is a bit controversial and will provoke backlash, which is why I stated it seemed like you were trolling for reactions.

dave soligo wrote:

-1 wrote:

well during the era, substance came out, and everyone was very excited.. well, the store manager who knew about the music industry, and was in touch with groups.... he was responsible for bringing a lot of alternative, 'new wave' type groups to houston.. -1

Lemme guess, Record Rack

dude, you nailed it on the head !!!!!!!!!!

bruce godwin was the man for awhile, if it weren't for him, i would have probably never heard of 90% of the groups i did, or see them in concert at 'numbers'...

granted, he was snobby, uptight, and pretentious at times... but hey, at least he was nice in the store.

i know i spent several thousand dollars there..

did you go there? or know him? interesting...

later -1

Re-Member wrote: The thing is, Technique is not nearly as commericial or manufactured sounding as some of the groups you've listed, so why do place higher standards toward New Order over the others you've mentioned?

to me new order never quite fit in with the usual groups, and musical categories..

i know they were lumped in with 'new wave' acts, right after 'true faith' made them a major hit, and then the resurrection of 'bizarre love triangle', and then they were actually staples on the radio...

i always placed them in a high status, because of the things mentioned several times on this board:

artwork , and craft - these always went hand in hand with their releases, and showed that is was not just an afterthought with their music.. [note that ultravox also used saville for covers]

musical integrity - did we used to hear them on the radio? on tv? countless times promoting their albums? see them do numerous interviews? no, all these things were less important at the time, and the music always came first... [or so we believed]..

live standards and touring - yes, they would tour extensively at times, and support their work, not go on limited tours, and only visit a few places like they seem to have done near the end..

i'll admit again, i have selfishly put my own wishes for the band, before their own ideas..

yes, they needed progression, but it was much harder to swallow... i also felt betrayed by u2, simple minds, and a lot of other groups that are still around..

groups like the pet shop boys, echo and the bunnymen, duran duran, etc... do experiment, but they seem to stay pretty safe within the confines of what they've done before, so its not too hard to to allow them to continue being status quo..

I could see if New Order were an extremely experimental, subversive and non-commericial act then pulled an album like Technique out of nowhere (the group SPK comes to mind here), but that's not the case. The structure of their work itself has always been rather traditional within the context of pop music. Techinque isn't even that drastically different of an album than Brotherhood. Mix both albums together and the only tracks that would seem out of place would be Fine Time and perhaps Round & Round.

yeah, i agree with you to an extent.. in my review for brotherhood, i was also suprised at the direction that they were going ... and didn't realize how far they would go in that direction..

I would choose New Order's Technique over any album by a few of groups that you've listed, but that's just me. Musicially, I love New Order and they are my favorite pop group, but I have far more respect artistically toward a handful of other recording and performance acts, so I guess can somewhat see your point of view, but even I know that slamming Techinque on a New Order message board is a bit controversial and will provoke backlash, which is why I stated it seemed like you were trolling for reactions.

yes, my posts are lengthy enough as it is, without delving into the whole history of new order, which ironically, we end up doing here..

i think in the old days of ceremony, rhetoric, ideals, and essays were more appropriate there.. than on a message forum.. where shorter posts seem to be more the norm..

this coming from a dinosaur (like me), who still seems to live in the past..

i need to learn how not to deter new listeners from checking out something they might like, and not alienate the older listeners that prefer a different sound...

thanks again for your insightful comments..

later -1

I am listening to the remaster, I have to say it's really great ! The bonus cd has some minor flaws.....

I think Technique is the best New Order album by far..

To make things worse :-(, After Violator its my favorite all-time album....

Wow -1's review is weird. Others have already commented on how wrong some aspects of it seem, such as how it could apply to Republic and not Technique, how it sounds much less commercial than many of the bands -1 lists.

-1 criticises pop music but there is nothing inherentlt wrong with popmusic; the Beatles were pop. The fact that so much bad music has been labelled as pop does not make all pop music bad. But that is an aside.

-1's perspective on Technique was ifluenced by his time and pace so let me tell you why Technique is probably my favourite NO album and why it is both relevant and important for me and not a band selling out.

For a teenager growing up in England in 1989 Technique is the epitome of all that was happening in music; at a time when music was changing. With Technique New Order were widing the crest of a wave; a wave that they had started.

Indie music was popular but really not that popular. It didn't bother the charts and it didn't get played on daytime radio. It is easy to forget that now that so much mainstream music has been influenced by 80s indie music. If you liked indie music in the 80s there weren't many radio shows, John Peel is the one we all listened to, and there weren't many indie clubs, just student unions and gigs ain dives not stadia.

Nightclubs were awful places that played cart music, were frequented by townies and were largely for pulling (q.v. the "erection section" most nightclubs had at the end of the night) and were not about music. Some clubs were about music but they tended to be very cliquey soul clubs that altered to an older crowd.

Indie musc changed that by changing itself. It got caught up in the late 80s dance music craze. That craze was influenced by, andled by New Order.

I first really became aware of acid house through records like jack your body by Steve Silk Hurley an Derby, where I grew up, had one of the earliest house clubs, 20th century but I was too young to go at that stage.

I remember seeing Voodoo Ray by A Guy Called Gerald on the Chart Show's Indie Chart Countdown. That was when I started to listen to more electronic music. Afterall John Peel was playing Stakker Humanoid.

A lot of this music sounded like the strangely prescient "ecstasy" of 6 years earlier.

Technique was not so much New Order embracing this new electronic dance music (they had always embraced it), it was them, once again, leading the way.

The music on technique should be heard in that context. Fine Time is part of the same continuum as Blue Monday.

After this everything changed. Dance music clubs sprang up everywhere and by the mid 90s became the mainstream (and consequently boring).

Guitar based Indie music became its most popular ever with "Britpop" and the likes of Blur and Oasis which were influenced by 80s indie via "baggy" (which was equally influenced by dance music).

New Order had preceded and predicted all of this. Brotherhood and Technique are the two sides of this transformation of music.

Technique is a great album that came out at a great time. In many ways it is the completion of the journey that NO (and JD) began; a journey that changed muic.

By the time Republic came out everything was different.

I've typed this most in hurry and I have visitors so can't check it just yet, but I hope that you can understand my thesis and I hope -1 can see exactly why Technique is loved by so many.

Yeah, some bloke in a record shop 3,000 miles away knows the band has broken up before the band know it, and that makes it gospel truth.

When I go on holiday does that mean I have split up from work?

People have been saying New Order have split up since 1986, unless they've actually split up, then they haven't. Or as the band would say "Up your arse!"

mark reed wrote: Yeah, some bloke in a record shop 3,000 miles away knows the band has broken up before the band know it, and that makes it gospel truth.

to be fair, i said i was skeptical..

however, this is not just some person off the street.

this person was highly involved in the music scene, had countless contacts in the industry..

had ALL the prerelease material way before it was available commercially, and had pictures with all the artists as proof.. not everbody has access to those..

here's an archive of some of the pictures

http://web.archive.org/web/20020405152050/recordrack.com/pics.html

he ran several music clubs in houston that booked most of the alternate/new wave bands that came into houston, and he single handedly helped the radio stations discover the latest in music trends, groups, and the whole scene in general..

there used to be a website with all the information for the concerts, groups, etc...check it out:

old concerts from 1979 to 2008 http://www.numbersnightclub.com/index.php?page=past

so before you discard someones credentials so easily, you might want to actually do some research into who they are..

later -1

New Order have been rubbish at keeping secrets : but there wasn't anything to keep secret in 1988 - I think we all heard that the band were planning to spend some time off after the next album but not then.

The reviews on Amazon are generally not worth reading - everything is five stars and wonderful etc. However, this fantastic review of Technique caught my eye - well written - and I agree with everything he says:-

"What a moment the unleashing of this music was on the world of New Order fans! This is one of the most important releases and collections of music released by NO in a career littered with important dates, career jumps, exploration and advancement. Well, at least under Factory.

There is nothing that can take away from the music that is contained in Technique, except hindsight. We can listen to this album now knowing that it represents the end of the classic period of New Order and the end of their involvement with Factory. It represents a goodbye and closure which is made all the more poignant by the fact that at the time we had no realisation that the passing of an era was coming about. I mean ok, we get 'World in Motion' after this, but while it reached no. 1 - it was quintessentially not an integral part of the New Order plan and vision. It could also be seen as a major dilution and closing of the chapter of New Order as musicial adventurers!

Technique also has to be judged by what came after in terms of NO's catalogue at the hands of London and now Rhino and these reissues. Lets not beat about the bushes. There was something fabulous about the structure, look, detail and contents of NO's Factory releases. What can be said about London and now Rhino?

London began the prostitution of the NO back catalogues. Between 1994 and 2005 they inflicted on the market five compilations and two remix albums; most of these have no real logic or proper structure to them, with the possible exception of the last 'best of' Singles - which tries in look and its ethos to follow in the footsteps of Substance. Some of the releases have been close to criminal in their poor execution: the box set was one of the worst, unstructured releases by a major artist: NO seemingly content to farm out and 'outsource' the whole thing to music journos and celeb fans.

I have nothing but admiration for Rhino generally and their reputation speaks for itself. But who it needs to be asked was responsible for the unnecessary release of these five 1980s albums in these formats with all the flab, crap and tracks easily available added on? Rhino really need to own up, identify that person, and fire them, 'cus this detracts and diminishes from their excellent reputation. And the reputation of New Order.

These releases are a sad day and a sad postscript in the history of the once mighty New Order. I for one would like to hear what the band think."

I love it ! - "London began the prostitution of the NO backcatalogue..." - classic. Hats off to Mr.G.Hassan (Glasgow) the author of this fine critique. I sincerely hope that London Records do read this piece Mr Hassan and send out the old P45's to the Remaster team.