New Order - Movement

When Movement was released in 1981 it was greeted with a lukewarm critical reception, but that was surely missing the point. The point was: it was a miracle it existed at all.

Traumatized by Joy Division singer Ian Curtis’s suicide in May 1980, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris were far from convinced they wished to continue. When they did go into the studio, having changed their name and adding Gillian Gilbert on keyboards, their producer, the drug-addled console genius Martin Hannett, ridiculed their naive musicianship.

Movement is as much Joy Division’s final album as New Order’s debut. The music traces a strange and familiar, brittle trajectory that bridged Joy Division’s ghastly gloom and the electronic epiphany that was to spark, and mark their reinvention as New Order. 

Heavyweight vinyl produced by Rhino Records in 2009.