Villager

See the "Why do I like New Order?" question.

New Order are unique, and remain without peers in their ability to weave soaring, epic synth swells, a rhythmic power that endeared them to early Chicago house DJs and US 'alternative' kids a few years later, combined with a sense of the tragicomic character of life. Bernard Sumner's exquisite minor key chord changes were vitalized by the unearthly beauty of Peter Hook's indescribable bass playing. It remains a mystery as to how Hook could stretch the notes on that Alembic six-string bass toward an emotional crescendo-he wrung tears from that machine-and, when you thought he couldn't exorcise any more grief, Hook pushed the instrument to play notes that its inventor could never have heard or imagined.

Put more directly, though so many artists have tried, there has not been a 'rock band' or an 'electronic artist' who've come even close to bringing those two, usually conflicting, worlds into nearly perfect synchronization as New Order.

Unlike so many bands whose popularity was at a pitch in the mid-1980s, comparisons to New Order by music journalists, record shop blurbs, etc. have never waned. For example, find an email update from the Rough Trade shop in the last two years in which there is *not* a reference to New Order.

Lastly, they are still making fantastic records without having lost credibility among so many of their fans. So, when I speak of New Order in such glowing terms, it's not so much nostalgia, in the pathetic sense, but a nostalgia for the present.