New Order - Technique

I also get the feeling that the Smiths must have had a huge influence as well on the songwriting. Compare "All the Way" to "Girlfriend in a Coma". The genius of Technique is to conflate the giddy bounce of "Girlfriend" (on the very edge of ska, if you squint your eyes), with the swinging feel of house. its why this album stands out: there are not many indie-house-pop hybrids that work quite this synthetically and well (though one can see superpitcher pushing towards this now from the other side. can't say i see him getting the balance right, though.)

About one description above--"the reflection of CD lasers bouncing off glittering cocaine"--I've never seen cocaine glitter, it's powdery dull; bathroom mirrors?

does anyone remember this being called their balearic album? some of cocteau twins "heaven" done under the same influences (its the only cocteau album I like)... "fifty-fifty clown" and "run" played next to "sueno latino" et al. in ibiza. maybe thats the better geneology of the album's light, pop, crypto-latin style

dan i do understand where your coming from, and its the opposite of where i am in some ways--I found Saunderson through NO and synthpop, not the other way around...obv. these things matter to one's impressions.

I play Perfect Kiss a lot as well. It kind of mixes itself when it goes through the instrumental parts, I used to mix it into a remix of Patrick Cowley's Mindwarp. New Order are the best band for transitioning from pop/new wave to electronic disco/house.

MTO/MTO2 is too tracky for the album; a great song, though if I remember that's the one that bites a contemporaneous Derrick May riff; Chris Orr left his record bag in my apartment after an extended afterparty, and playing through his records the next day I found the song, and was like, Damn! They straight stole that shit. I remember hearing that Detroit was up in arms over "Run" copping the style they invented; Sumner in discos taking notes and stuff. Pretty ironic in retrospect considering something like Kreem's "Triangle of Love" from roughly the same moment. Biting went both ways (though "TOL" is so lame it could be a parody...)

Here's the tracklisting from "Balearic Mastercuts", which was a precis of the evanescent genre in the moment of 'Technique'. All of this--save 'Wax the Van', since the Arthur Russell reissue--is pretty obscure/uncool now, but is a neat counterpoint to the thriving American house stuff, which is generally more rhythmically tense, moodier and more synthetic. Sublimely cheesy stuff but I'm feeling it, esp. Electribe, BBG, and the Grid (early Weatherall). A few songs sound like "Blue Lines" instrumentals (Sheer Taft!). They were playing some shambolic indie mixed with this stuff in the discos, and that stuff mostly curdles my blood: James (eeurgh), House of Love, Beloved, Sundays and that.

1. Barefoot in the head - Man Called Adam
2. Snappiness - BBG & Dina Taylor
3. La passionara - Blow Monkeys
4. Josephine - Rea, Chris
5. Talking with myself - Electribe 101
6. Flotation - Grid
7. Wax the van - Lola
8. Spiritual high - Moodswings
9. Cascades - Sheer Taft
10. Sueno Latino - Sueno Latino
11. Primavera - Tullio De Piscopo
12. Hoomba hoomba - Voice Of Africa

More than you ever wanted to know...

but Triangle of Love is the most blatant, for sure.

Fine Time
Run
All the Way
Round and Round
Love Less
Dream Attack
Vanishing Point
Mr. Disco
Guilty Partner

I love how I'm in love with this album again. It's always been in 'my top 10 albums' for as long as I've thought about such things, but I haven't been so immersed in how wonderful it is for ages.

there isn't a single weak moment on technique. it is sonically perfect, and very probably my favourite album ever made.

You may be right about that. It's one of those albums I've never gotten tired of.

I love it as much today as I did as a 14 yr old in 89.

But the hiss behind Fine Time's intro pisses me off !

This one. To which you said "Splendid stuff Ned. I will say more later." And I've been waiting! Not impatiently, though, that would be wrong.

am i really the only one who feels like this?

Oh wait, I forgot about KMFDM. So there was one, but they weren't even really ever my favorite band.