Technique [Digipak]

Performer: New Order (UK)
Producer: New Order
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: New Order: Bernard Sumner (vocals, guitar); Gillian Gilbert (keyboards, synthesizer); Peter Hook (bass); Stephen Morris (drums, background vocals). Audio Mixer: Alan Meyerson. Following the critical dismissal of their previous record, BROTHERHOOD, New Order was at something of a crossroads in their career. TECHNIQUE (1989) found them back in favor as antecedents to a pair of oddly related trends: songs about the British tradition of holidays in Spain, and acid-house music. The first of these trends was adopted by everyone from Blur to the Pet Shop Boys. As for the second, while vacationing in Ibiza, a Spanish island in the Mediterranean, the band was impressed by a fleeting dance style then prevalent in the clubs there. TECHNIQUE was the band's own take on that sound, and eventually, this adaptation became one of the touchstones of acid-house music. The album is an effective mix of strange, sampled sounds (something at which the band had always excelled), propulsive beats, and Bernard Sumner's ever-improving vocal style. "Fine Time," "Round & Round," and "Mr. Disco" are New Order at their most assertive, while "All the Way" and "Love Less" show their more pop-oriented side. The album's standout track "Run" sounds as though the band had rediscovered the power of simple bursts of guitar, with searing solos cutting into the smooth beats.

Q (9/93, p.97) - 5 Stars - Indispensible - "...[TECHNIQUE] is the soundtrack for the cynical summer of love...good times never felt so good..." CMJ (1/5/04, p.26) - Ranked #19 in CMJ's "Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1989" Q (Magazine) (p.122) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "New Order's final '80s album made their previous four seem like preliminary sketches....[A] masterpiece." Mojo (Publisher) (9/01, p.86) - "...As well as being the pinnacle of their joyously cathartic pop-techno, TECHNIQUE was also Bernard Sumner's finest songwriting hour..." NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #42 in NME's list of the `Greatest Albums Of All Time.' Blender (Magazine) (p.66) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "They bid a graceful farewell with 1989's TECHNIQUE, paying tribute to the Ibiza acid-house club scene they'd made possible." Record Collector (magazine) (p.101) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "TECHNIQUE not only embraced the burgeoning acid/rave scene, but became as much a defining album of the time as The Stone Roses' debut from the same year, 1989."

Born in the early 1980s out of the ashes of U.K. post-punk pioneers Joy Division, New Order became one of the first electro-pop bands to find mainstream success in the US. Their single "Blue Monday" was a landmark in dance music, and subsequent recordings achieved a perfect balance between technology and pop songcraft. They were a standard choice of club DJs through the '80s & '90s and even snuck onto the pop charts occasionally with catchy hits like "True Faith" and "Regret." Leader Bernard Sumner sporadically records with Johnny Marr as Electronic, and occasionally reconvenes the famed quartet.

Click Here for Shipping Options and Policies

Shipping or Dimension weight in pounds: 0.25