Product Description

After the tragic suicide of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, the band restructured. Guitarist Bernard Sumner, whose gift for combining the melodic with the hypnotic had been the band's cornerstone, stepped up to the microphone. The resulting debut MOVEMENT finds the group taking a brave step away from its unfortunate past. Preserved are Joy Division's dark edges--Sumner's guitar attack swerves deftly between funereal repetition and noisy bursts, while bassist Peter Hook continues to explore his instrument's upper registers.
From the slow, deliberate build and melodic interplay of its opening moment, the mid-tempo "Dreams never End", MOVEMENT boldly states the band's more experimental, slightly less emotionally turgid agenda. That Sumner is trapped under the influence of Curtis is undeniable--at times, the resemblance is alarming, but MOVEMENT is the sound of Sumner finding his voice. The spacey synth-pop of "The Him" foreshadows the sound New Orderwas to slowly develop, as Sumner became more comfortable with the upper reaches of his vocal range. Dynamic play abounds--the existentialist drone of "Truth" gives way to a crushing, chaotic guitar wail, while the intense, revealingly named "Doubts Even Here" slowly erupts beneath a disturbing double-vocal, stressing the burgeoning diversity of this legendary band in the making.

Track Listing

1. Dreams Never End
2. Truth
3. Senses
4. Chosen Time
5. I.C.B.
6. The Him
7. Doubts Even Here
8. Denial

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19667 in Music
• Released on: 2000-04-10
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

feeling
new orders true career charts from this in '81 through to Technique in '89, the rest is nostalgia - from both ours and
the bands perspective. the band hate it and from a musicians point of view I can see why, it's fragile in places.

whether the band are aware or not this album is an artwork, as much as PCL and Low Life. it captures losing a friend,
a singer, a world gone by. I came to this album retrospectively in '83 [as would be the want of the band], and it hooked me
in. I couldn't believe the band that created PCL made this stuff, they had worked hard at clearing their tracks.

Intensity gave way to optimism: time heals. NO became something new, something they do very well. a devotee to the band, both Brotherhood and Technique surprised me and that's creativity at work.

back to the tracks - everything makes up the whole, a whole that is as genuine as you could wish from any outfit. stand out tracks would be Dreams Never End, Chosen Time, and Denial for sheer drive, drive that gave NO weight which they never emulated. ICB, The Him, Doubts Even Here make you ponder the weight, the hope, the feeling.

Is it unique or not?....... I like it anyway.
By no means do i think this album is bad, although i am a Joy Division fan. I can understand why New Order fans wouldn't rate this album compared to the rest of their albums as it is more like a Joy Division genre in SOME ways but not in others. Yes the album is quite dark, like Joy Division but, unlike the majority of Joy Division songs, it isn't as lively, its more relaxed and relaxing.

The use of a synthesiser is frequent and the drum beats are quite different to the majority of Joy Division songs - more like Japanese traditional drumming as they adopt a fast pace. I think the drum beat in Joy Division's Atrocity Exhibition can be likened most to the majority of drumming in this album. Guitar work is low beat, except in Dreams Never End and I.C.B where the riffs are both dominant and driving. Bernard Sumner does a brilliant job of taking over the vocals from Ian Curtis. He did obviously try and immitate I.C. in this album but who can blame him? It goes perfeCtly with the music and is a proven recipe for success.

Tracks that stand out particularly for me are firstly Dreams Never End which as has been said before, seems like a preaching of hope. I can't quite figure out what the band were trying to put across with this song (maybe nothing) as the rest of the songs are a lot less lively than it and i. As a listener of the album don't feel they needed hope as they were great instrumentalists anyway. Truth also stands out to me as a great track. It is quite eerie both musically and lyrically. The lyrics that Sumner constructed for this track are something that Ian Curtis would probably have thought up although its fairly safe to say Sumner just felt they kept a good atmosphere as a compliment to the music, rather than reflect his own life. Doubts Even Here also stands out to be good as does The Him, Senses and Chosen Time. They all follow the same suite - dark, soft and relaxing.

You can sit and listen to this album in a quite room and just simply loose yourself in it and thats a great quality in my books.

I don't think you can say New Order whole heartedly kept going with a Joy Division style in this album. There are hints of Joy Division in the vocals, lyrics and atmosphere of the album yet the album is different to Joy Division in the etiquette of the songs. A good way to describe this is I can't imagine Ian Curtis dancing on stage to the music in this album, it wouldn't quite suite him and certainly wouldn't suite a punk rock audience. Its hard to say who what type of music you'd have to like to like this album whole heartidly so i'll just say to anyone reading this - I recommend it to you.

band in transition
By now you know the story; death of I.C., birth of New Order, and all that. Yes, this is the first New Order album, but if you are seeking the New Order sound so familiar to most this is not where to look. However, if you are a devout Joy Division/Section 25/Crispy Ambulance fan as am I, I do believe you will love this record (as do I). Listen closely (or perhaps not that closely) and Ian Curtis is audible on several tracks. Barney is not bad at all at capturing the Curtis-type crooning. Also noteworthy is the fantastic intermingling of synth and guitar, here in inchoate form, later to become the quintesence of New Order. But make no mistake, this album is not a get-up and dance/feel-good/perfect kiss/Blue Monday affair. The fact is this album is fairly dark, and considering its history, captures the mood of the events that surround it. To this effect it is both brooding and mournful, and yet remotely hopeful and expectant. True, this might be a projection, but it is hard to take this album out of context.