CEREMONY

A SPOKEN WORD DEDICATION TO TONY WILSON

“To see so many indie bands interested in replicating the work of New Order as a tribute to Tony and to help raise funds for Salford Foundation Trust so that it can continue its fine work with young people is just fantastic! Through the Trust’s Tony Wilson Award, young people can access grants that can help them to pursue music, drama, dance and the creative arts.”
MySpace -- FAC251 The Factory -- FAC51 The Hacienda

1963

The Milling Gowns

1963 - I bought the True Faith 45 on the day it came out. I walked home with it in my hands, making sure not to crease the lovely sleeve, a floating yellow leaf. I ran to my room and listened to the single until I had my fill and turned it over to listen to the b-side; 1963. I immediately interpreted the lyrics as gay and as up til that point in my life I hadn't heard anything like that. It made me feel hopeful to hear a "gay" song by such a cool, well liked band... BUT Of course, in time I came to find out the meaning of the lyrics and they weren't gay at all but the song remains for me a piece of my own coming out story. This beautiful song was my first choice to record for this compilation.
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60 Miles An Hour

GD Luxxe

Why "60 Miles An Hour"? Because I think it is one of the best songs NO ever did. I'm more into the early stuff usually, but "60mph" is a stand out track and has of course a very, very funny and great video :)

When I started doing music with a cheap 8 track sequencer, an even cheaper drum machine, a 4 track fostex cassette recoder, and my guitar, New Order were my main influence. Without them I would maybe never have started to do music at all.
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All Day Long

John Ralston

Artist Bio & Links

Angel Dust

Fornever

I chose "Angel Dust" because...well...it wasn't taken...uhhmmm... All kidding aside, though, it's a song that really spoke to me...its layered melodies, energy. It's hard to put something emotionally intrinsic into words, but it's a compelling track that sort of unites the various aspects of the band...blending their knack for rhythmic dance pop with the post-punk urgency and intensity of Movement and Joy Division. And its stylistically diverse blend and immediacy was something I thought I could do justice to...reworking it into something that's my own while retaining those elements that made the original work so well.

I suppose on some level, I've felt sort of a connection to New Order dating back to my childhood...one that was further cemented in my college days as I dug deeper into the band's discography and discovered more facets of their music while developing and beginning to hone my own. The band's often lo-fi, electronic-yet-organic, honest sound...their refusal to give into formulas or be defined by genre...their concentration on art over image...and their melodic layering have always struck a chord with me, both inspiring and often inherently appealing to my own natural musical, melodic, and artistic sensibilities.
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As It Is When It Was

The Bedford Incident

As It Is When It Was - I chose this one as it is a little different to the majority of the band’s songs. From the opening use of a finger picked acoustic guitar to the rockier sound of the climax, it illustrates how dynamic and wonderful they are at their best. That and the fact it has some of the most beautiful lyrics Barney has written has always made it one of my favourites - recording it has been a joy and a consummate pleasure.

New Order encapsulate everything that is perfect with your favourite band. They have a great look and image all of their own, a fascinating history and pushed the boundaries of popular music fusing technology and styles into a unique and massively influential sound. They are rock n roll heroes influencing me and my band in all the right ways, yet as people they always seem to be the epitome of northern wit, with their feet planted firmly on the ground but their souls in the heavens.
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Bizarre Love Triangle

Jimmy Oakes

Bizarre Love Triangle - another timeless song and melody, has been way overplayed... but, had to give it a go.
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Blue Monday

Rabbit In The Moon

Artist Bio & Links

The Cloud Room

Artist Bio & Links

Chosen Time

Light Yourself On Fire

Artist Bio & Links

Manumatic

I picked Chosen Time because I wanted to try to make one of New Order's darker songs more dancey.

New Order is easily my favorite band of all time. No other artist has touched me the way their music has. The mix of electronic and tradition rock instruments is breathtaking and has influenced so many people after them.
Artist Bio & Links

Confusion

Marc Deon

I believe Confusion to be New Order at their genre-bending finest and I have a deep love for this period in 80’s NY Freestyle. Ceremony, a friendly dare, is quickly becoming a favourite. After hearing several head-on rock covers, I opted for a sleek, Pop-Tech rendition.

As both Artist & DJ, New Order were huge, huge influences in my earlier years and their records remain essential tools for any DJ who plays across the musical spectrum. Too edgy for disco, too soft for industrial, too four-to-the-floor to be rock and too guitar driven to be dance, New Order is and will always be the band’s band. They made music… timeless, awe-inspiring music.
Artist Bio & Links

Crystal

The Dark Romantics

We chose New Order's song "Crystal" mainly because of the driving choruses and Depeche Mode-like backup vocals on the verses. We instantly heard how we could rework the parts to make the song our own. We thought slowing it down and using different instruments would give the song a nice groove.

To be truthful, we were always fans of New Order's biggest hits. It was a challenge to pick a song that was unfamiliar to us, but we think it has shaped up great. New Order has always meant to us, "Blue Monday", "Bizarre Love Triangle", and "True Faith". Now we can gladly add "Crystal", and a few others to our list of favorites. It is a real ear-opener and a great experience that we get to be part of this tribute.
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Doubts Even Here

Razed In A New Division Of Agony

I chose to cover Doubts Even Here because not only is it my favorite song by New Order, it's my favorite song of all time, and the perfect showcase of the band's transition from Joy Division into New Order. Unlike most of the covers I record, I wanted to stay as faithful to the original sound as possible because, in my eyes, the song is perfect to begin with.

New Order, simply put, is the most influencial band in my CD arsenal. The song that got me hooked, "True Faith", was my favorite song from grade nine through twelve. Without New Order, I probably wouldn't have even bothered learning how to record music in the first place. --Logan Edwards (Razed)
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Dream Attack

Kites With Lights

Dream Attack is one of my all time favorite songs, the tune has everything I love about New Order.

Everyone can agree that music is comforting and the thing I admire about New Order is that it always feels like they truly want to reach people and comfort them with thoughtful, modern, danceable music.
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Every Little Counts

XOXO

Artist Bio & Links

Everything's Gone Green

CBentley

I chose Everything's Gone Green since it's always been a favorite of mine with it's chugging sequencer, chiming guitars, and etheral vocals. To me it was the sound of the band on the threshold of finding it's identity. My treatment of the cover was to give it more of a dance floor vibe and a touch of pop sensibility.

New Order has been one of my main influences since I started making music. There was always a comforting familiarity to each new song I heard and they did it with a sound and style that was uniquely "New Order."
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Face Up

Last Year's Model

We chose Face Up because it has always been a favorite of MODEL-001's, off his favorite New Order record (and the first New Order record he owned), Low Life. It was a fun opportunity for the band to speed up a mid tempo dance track and the song has a lot of room to add new guitar parts. Finally, 001 has always loved it best when Bernard Sumner is out of tune, and he really enjoyed emulating the pitchy vocals in a more punk style.

Last Year's Model was inspired early on by New Order. Their musical combination of organic and synthetic elements is something that is very important to our own style as a band. Not to mention that the amazing songs New Order has written over the years have all been such perfect pop songs and we love pop music. Our two favorites are Low Life and Technique, but really we all love their whole catalogue. New Order is one of the best pop bands ever!!
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Leave Me Alone

Allegra Gellar

"Leave Me Alone" has always been my favorite new order song. I'm really attracted to the humor that is mixed with the overall sad and even desperate theme of the track. We actually recorded a demo version of the song years ago, while we were in Underwater, but it was never completed or released. I was really excited to have a reason to take another shot at it. - jeremy
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Love Vigilantes

Jimmy Oakes

Love Vigilantes - Liked it the first time I heard it (unlike some of my other favorite songs)- never seems to get old. What a melody. Seems appropriate these days too...
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TurboVamps

Love Vigilantes struck me as this upbeat and patriotic song until you realize the guy singing in first person is dead. It takes on a truly haunting quality and with the world at war right now, it just seemed like the right song to do. Plus, we felt we could take that song, do some rearranging, and have it fit our sound. It works, right? --Steve DeFalco

My dad used to say that New Order's song TEMPTATION was the theme song of his life and that we had to promise that it be played at his funeral. I grew up listening to Joy Division, New Order and Monoco. No matter what project those guys were doing, the music was great. It is an honor being featured on this tribute with other independent bands. I loved Orgy's version of BLUE MONDAY and Frente's cover of BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE. New Order is definitely the band to cover. I suppose that is to be expected when you make incredible songs! --Andrew TV
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Love Less

Jimmy Oakes

Love Less - a seldom-played gem with a nice acoustic groove that was fun to give a whirl.
Artist Bio & Links

Mr. Disco

DETACHMENTS

I adore the lovelorn ache that his song is shot through with. Great tune drenched in luscious, romantic melancholy. Rhythmically it's fantastic too. I've been into this song since I was a dreamer aged 15.
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Marc Deon

Mr. Disco, IMHO, is one the band's most beautifully romantic songs and some of Mr. Sumner's best vocal work.
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Paradise

The Beauvilles

Artist Bio & Links

The Perfect Kiss

DETACHMENTS

Myself and Max Moreau(who organised the recording) both love this tune. The entire structure and arrangement is brilliant. That soaring, epic climax too - sublime - blows you away. Throughout the tune there isn't a dull moment which explains how listeners don't realise quite how long it is (over 9 minutes) - time flies when you're having some fun. We recorded it at an art gallery in Antwerp, at the end of the session I thought it would be about 12:30am but it was 4am! Incredible.
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Procession

The Thin Boys

Artist Bio & Links

Regret

Win Win Winter

Regret - Lyrically, the song had personal significance to me and I also wanted to do something vocally unconventional.

Without bands like New Order we would have either remained in the 1970s or just skipped ahead and had two 1990s. Through the underground, Blue Monday created a sound and culture that ended up not only selling more 12 inch vinyls than any other disc but it was also the grandaddy of all those 80s electro-pop songs that defined the time and impacted the mainstream without it ever even knowing what it hit.
Artist Bio & Links

Round & Round

Sibling

I chose Round & Round for its great melody, great sounds, great bass.

Getting use to life without any more new New Order is taking some getting use to. Again. --Phil Edmundson
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Run

The Sheaks

We really wanted to challenge ourselves to approach doing a cover from a completely different angle and thought it would be interesting to tear a song down into its bits and put it back together in some new way. Then, once it was torn up, these new verses and lyrics sort of sprang up, and then the original verse fit so well as the new chorus, and on and on...etc. We just wanted to see if we could do it. We only chose "Run" because we thought it was funny New Order got sued by John Denver, of all people, over the melodic similarities to "Leaving On A Jet Plane" and that they ended up sharing the songwriting credit together. In fact, this is horribly morbid and I probably shouldn't even be telling anyone this, but if you listen closely to the new lyrics in the verses...ehh...well, nevermind..."

NEW ORDER - Very few bands get dealt the blow of losing their main songwriting force and ever recover (Pink Floyd and Lynryd Skynrd are the precious few that come to mind), but New Order did exactly that. They recovered, and more than that, they thrived and went on to create their very own separate body of work. They really pulled it together and went on to write some of the best dance rock of the 80’s. Even if you worship Ian Curtis and think everything after “Ceremony” was a step toward hellfire sacrilege, you have to give them credit for that.
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Christian Webb & Adam Knowles

We chose Run because of its standout lyrics “what the hell is happening?” with their sudden change from yearning for a response to becoming positive in outlook “But I know that I’m ok”. We also liked the strange structure of the song. It’s strange but we didn’t even spot that the chorus had no singing on it until we began recording… but what a fantastic riff… we couldn’t change that part.
Artist Bio & Links

Sub-Culture

Pocket - feat. Shaun Robinson (Oppenheimer) & Tracy Shedd (Teenbeat Records)

Why Sub-Culture?

Richard: It was available - lol. I wanted to pick a song that was not a super obvious hit - one that was great but hadn't already been covered a zillion times. Subculture is a great song and I have always loved Low-life.

Shaun: I've recently just moved to NYC and I'm recording new material every day. I had a chance to be a part of a Pocket track and I jumped at it.

Your Thoughts On New Order?

Shaun: When 'True Faith' came out in 1987 I was 13. I loved the song and went and bought 'Substance' and it blew me away. I once owned an original copy of 'Blue Monday' but stupidly swapped it for something that now seems, in retrospect, shite.

Richard: I once wrote a dissertation on "Blue Monday" - do I need to say anything more?
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Sunrise

History

Artist Bio & Links

Temptation

The Dark Esquire

Artist Bio & Links

The Him

Johnny Parry

Because we don't use guitars, and my vocal timbre, I knew we were never going to be able to pull of an accurate recreation of the songs. So I looked for a track with lots of space in the hope to attempt a stylistic reimagining. The simple but haunting bass line of The Him immediately captured me. I didn't feel I could add any thing to the original so the only way to interpret it was to dismantle the key elements and rebuild an arrangement from the core of the song in the hope to highlight new aspects of it. As with all New Order, The Him is so strong lyrically it was a dream to spend time on.
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Thieves Like Us

SUNBEARS!

New Order has been a big influence on the 'BEARS! for a long time, especially in the computer music world/side of SUNBEARS! and heck, they have some great songs, taboot!
Artist Bio & Links

This Time Of Night

Kingsbury

We picked This Time of Night by a recommendation from a friend close to the band. We had already started working on Everything Gone Green, and I had never heard This Time of Night. He said it would work for us, and after listening to it, it was obviously a better fit. The whole process was fun. We have very little in common with NO sonically, so breaking a song down into pieces that work for us was very rewarding. We're happy with the results.

You can't deny that New Order was very influential to that era. We enjoyed digging through their catalog for this project, and we are all very excited to be a part of it.
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True Faith

Against The Stars

Artist Bio & Links

Truth

Flight

'Truth’ is a track that we have all liked since its inception. It is a very dark song and really matches a lot of what we are about. It has a feel all of its own and whilst New Order went on to be quite commercial and accessible musically in a lot of ways this still has the hallmarks of the darkest Joy Division tracks such as ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ and ‘Decades’.

We are all big New Order fans, with some of us having been fans of Joy Division and following them right from their earliest days playing places like ‘Erics’ in Liverpool around the time of the earliest records.
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Turn

Lone Wolf

Artist Bio & Links

Waiting For The Siren's Call

Lush Progress

As a musician who has always been strangely fascinated by, if not addicted to a strong melodic line, this song appealed to me because of its straight forward and hypnotic vocal hook. I remember the first time I heard it. It was a late night in a friends car. The windows were down, the wind was roaring, but somehow I was still drawn into the sound from the speakers. That memory still fades in every time I hear this tune.
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We All Stand

The Artificial Sea

"We All Stand" is an incredibly open-ended song which seemed ripe for reinterpretation. Hauntingly vague lyrics and deceptively simple musical structure.

New Order managed to make the simple profound both musically and lyrically. They were impenetrable yet unerringly direct. They were enigmatic but I thought they were speaking directly to me. They’ve influenced everyone but there’s never been anyone else like them
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World

Solo Gigolos UK

Artist Bio & Links

Your Silent Face

Flight

Artist Bio & Links

Wedgepiece

"I picked 'Your Silent Face' because it was playing the first time I was with my ex-wife and therefore it stirs up some very, very bad memories. This emotion rarely fails in bringing something interesting to bear."

On New Order: "Power, Corruption & Lies remains, in my eyes and to my ears, one of the greatest musical achievements of all time. There was real pain within those dance-happy beats."
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Glomag

Ceremony has the benefit for me of having been recorded by both Joy Division and New Order. I recorded a 6 song EP in 2008 of all Joy Division covers and this was easily my favorite.

It was such a surprise to me that New Order continued on after Ian Curtis's death and somehow managed to grow into an different but equally inventive band with such a unique sound. It's always been that combination of uplifting major key melodies with sometimes pretty dark lyrics that make them different and addictive.
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Disc One

Disc Two

MP3 Version Available At

Ceremony The Digital Album

CD Version Now Available

Twelve Versions of Ceremony

CD Version Now Available

Available April 6th

Beatport Special Edition

Thoughts & Inspirations