Inside New Order’s First Album Without Founding Bassist Peter Hook
Morris laughs knowingly when he hears this. “That explains a lot of the band’s content, doesn’t it?” he asks. “Bernard likes to be alone while writing – alone with his wine.”
The band has thus far completed two tracks: “Plastic” and “Restless,” which features Chemical Brother Tom Rowlands. Morris says that the record will keep true to New Order’s sound while taking advantage of newer drum and synth programming technology, adding that he thinks “production is going in reverse now.”
“A lot of people have started using old analog stuff even though it has no memory,” he explains. “I fool around with modular synths because you create a sound by accident. There’s a lot of noise, and then you’d stop and see something great. There’s something spontaneous about it. You don’t really get that anymore.”
Morris’ nostalgia is particularly endearing given his band’s overwhelming influence on the last 15 years of electro and dance-punk. With equal passion he praises the krautrock drums of Neu! and Can and the younger generation that has taken New Order’s innovations into the new millenium. “I absolutely love James Murphy and DFA,” says Morris. “We toured with Holy Ghost!, which was fantastic. Everything they do is incredible: It’s what we were doing years ago only they’re doing it for now.”
Adds Sumner: “I don’t think you can say that anyone is doing what New Order does but musicians are all influenced by their record collections. Our earliest influences were Bowie and Iggy Pop and Kraftwerk and songwriters like Neil Young before that. Instead of changing things in a negative way, [the bands influenced by New Order] are giving it new life.”
Appropriately, the band will be releasing this LP — hopefully sometime in Autumn — on Mute, home to a roster of synth-loving electronic artists including Zola Jesus, Arca and Depeche Mode. Founder Daniel Miller acts as the band’s informal soundboard. “I don’t think we’d ever finish if we didn’t have someone to tell us to stop,” says Morris. “It’s hard to let something you’re working on go.” When the record comes out, Sumner says that fans should expect a heavy electronic sound with melodic guitars and “an orchestral feel.”
“Some people may say that electronic music is cold and unromantic,” Sumner says, referencing their hit “Blue Monday” as a example of how a song can be both robotic and emphatic. “That’s true in a way, but now a computer is able to translate exactly what your brain is thinking. That’s exciting. It’s what we were trying to achieve in the 1980s.”