- Capturing a moment in time has been the reason the “live album” exists, the possibility of containing lightning in a bottle to be sampled over and over again. Gets a bit more complex when you are attempting to bring thirty-plus years of an extensive and intriguing back-catalogue to life and then do it under a different set-up to the standard gig format. That takes some skill and a certain chutzpah. If anyone can do it, you have to imagine New Order are one of the few musical outfits who would both attempt it and stand a chance of pulling it off.
In 2017, New Order along with visual artist Liam Gillick presented a five-night residency at the old Granada Television studio complex in Manchester as part of that year’s Manchester International Festival. Gillick’s stage design had two rows of six boxes, one row on top of the other, each box containing a member of the ‘synth orchestra’ from the Royal Northern College of Music under the direction of Joe Duddell with the current members of New Order arranged in front. The sound is, predictably, massive, even though the venue is termed “intimate” and the noise of the crowd is mixed in with the stage sound as if they are another part of the performance art – something you’d expect of New Order’s old label Factory Records and their late, lamented producer, Martin Hannett.
This collection is dynamic and enticing, revisiting -in the main- tracks that haven’t been heard live for decades. Rather than a greatest hits run-through, it only touches on three or four of the better known songs (such as Shellshock, Sub-Culture and a thumping version of Bizarre Love Triangle) with some of the lesser known New Order tracks getting a welcome makeover. Who’s Joe and Ultraviolence from either end of New Order’s career both rise under the symphonic synthesiser-meets-guitars treatment of this set and gain a new appreciation.
The revisiting of old material doesn’t stop at music created by New Order, but also takes in their first foray as Joy Division. There's Decades, In a Lonely Place and -not sounding forty-years-old- Disorder, which is greeted by the crowd with a roar of approval. Perhaps it also contains a hint of melancholic reflection for what was and could never be again with Joy Division; given 2019 marks the fortieth anniversary of their seminal Unknown Pleasures, hearing the first track from that album played live with such life is, no pun intended, a joy.
The set traverses across the full collection of New Order material, including what many critics claim as a welcome return to form, 2015’s Music Complete album and from that release, Plastic bubbles like a chemical reaction set to an infectious. European electronic beat.
It’s impossible not to like this wonderful collection, whether you are a dedicated New Order/Joy Division aficionado or just a casual fan of their work. Four decades worth of material has never sounded so fresh.
- Blair Martin.