New Order’s ‘Movement’ turns 45 on 13 November
New Order released their debut album “Movement” through Factory Records on 13 November 1981. The album turns 45 this year.
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English post-punk band New Order released their debut studio album, “Movement,” through Factory Records on 13 November 1981. Martin Hannett produced the record. “Movement” turns 45 this year.
The band recorded “Movement” between 24 April and 4 May 1981 at Strawberry Studios in Stockport, with Chris Nagle engineering and John Leckie and Flood assisting. The sessions followed the end of Joy Division after singer Ian Curtis’s death in May 1980, and “Movement” was the first album the surviving trio of Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris made as New Order, now joined by keyboardist Gillian Gilbert. The album reached number 30 on the UK Albums Chart and number one on the UK Independent Albums Chart. No single was taken from the album.
The eight-track record runs 35 minutes and 20 seconds:
- “Dreams Never End”
- “Truth”
- “Senses”
- “Chosen Time”
- “ICB”
- “The Him”
- “Doubts Even Here”
- “Denial”
Sumner sang lead vocals, guitars, melodica and synthesisers; Hook played bass and sang lead on “Dreams Never End” and “Doubts Even Here”; Gilbert played synthesisers and guitars and spoke the words on “Doubts Even Here”; Morris played drums and synthesisers. Hook later described the record’s production as unsettled: “I actually liked Movement, but I know why nobody else likes it.” “Movement” streams on Spotify.
About New Order
New Order formed in Manchester in 1980, after Joy Division ended with Ian Curtis’s death. Surviving members Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris continued as a trio and were joined that October by keyboardist Gillian Gilbert. The new band’s debut single, “Ceremony,” a song written in Joy Division’s final weeks, appeared on Factory Records in January 1981. “Movement” followed that November, produced by Martin Hannett, who had also produced Joy Division’s two studio albums. The record marked the band’s transition from Curtis’s former group toward their own identity, mixing post-punk guitar work with the synthesisers and sequencers that would come to define their sound.
New Order’s next album, “Power, Corruption & Lies” (1983), pushed further into electronics, and its non-album single “Blue Monday” became the best-selling 12-inch single in UK chart history. “Low-Life” (1985) and “Brotherhood” (1986) continued to split guitar-driven and electronic material across their tracklists, and “Technique” (1989) and “Republic” (1993) carried the band through the end of Factory Records. Forty-five years after it introduced the group, “Movement” remains the first chapter of New Order’s catalogue.
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