25 August 1984: BBC Basement Studios "Saturday Live"

New Order
"Saturday Live"
BBC Broadcasting House, Studio S1 (basement), London
radio: Radio 1 (stereo)
television: BBC Two (in color!)
25 August 1984

source: BBC Radio 1 FM stereo live broadcast 25 August 1984
lineage: Auntie's royal airwaves > cassette master > CASSx1 (TDK AD90, Sony KA3ES playback) > Tascam CD-RW750 CDRx0 > WAV > iTunes > CDRx1 > analogloyalist magic > FLAC > archive.new-order.net
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

This short 5-song set is high up on quite a few favorites lists.  The video just has to be seen to be believed (Barney throws a hissy fit throughout, in much-too-short shorts, for starters), but the pure aggression in the band is brought to fore on this.  This version of "Sooner Than You Think" is close to, if not absolute, my favorite performance of this song.

Legend has it that they were caught in a massive traffic jam betwixt Cornwall and London, so were late for the set and had no chance to do a proper soundcheck, and basically had to wing it that afternoon.  I really have no other explanation for the band choosing to air "In A Lonely Place" ("Faster!") - as majestic as it is - to all of the UK on a presumably pleasant late summer Saturday afternoon.  As Barney puts it after the song, it's "an atmospheric song in an unatmospheric place".

I am convinced that the master cassette for this source was recorded by someone who had somehow found a way to hard-wire an RCA cable into the airwaves.  There was little to no FM noise, it was really just a beautiful source and is leaps and bounds the best version I've heard of this (and as usual, I've heard lots).

Techy notes:  The "diginoise" in a few spots in "Age Of Consent" and the end of "Temptation" - for both songs, on the vocals only - appears to be Barney overloading the poor Beeb's console.  There were a few other glitches in "Age Of Consent" that were more than likely FM noise, which I've fixed.  It didn't help that shortly into "AOC" Barney ripped off the pop screen from the vocal mic.  And while not a "tech" note, had the Beeb's censors been heads up, there are a few lines here and there that shouldn't have made it through...

01 BBC announcer
02 Sooner Than You Think
03 Age Of Consent
04 Blue Monday
05 In A Lonely Place
06 Temptation

FLACs here.  Sample track above.

Someone with the skills for the video editing side of the biz needs to match this audio up with the best circulating video copy of this.  I'd pay for the result!  Not really...

Please to enjoy!

new blog URL! archive.new-order.net

We have teamed up with the fine fella behind the glorious, legendary, site-ahead-of-its-time New Order Dot Net to provide a custom URL and permanent host for the New Order Archives!

From here to eternity - err, as long as the new-order.net bill is paid - we will be found at http://archive.new-order.net so reset your bookmarks.  I believe the blogspot URL will still work, but why be plain and boring?

All joking aside, new-order.net has by far the best gigography online for New Order, and, the documentation for the hundreds of audience tapes the site owner has reviewed is great reading!

So onward we march.  archive.new-order.net is where we'll be!

4 November 1986: The Palace, Hollywood, CA

New Order
The Palace
Hollywood, CA
4 November 1986

source: soundboard
lineage: radio station pre-FM master>Maxell UDS-II90 1st generation>Sony TC-D5 playback>Microtrack II>WAV(44.1/16)>CD Wave Editor tracksplit>FLAC level 8>me>magic>FLAC level 8>neworderarchive.blogspot.com
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

This gig is a terrific little guy, easily one of my favorites.  While this set has seen somewhat wide circulation, I can virtually guarantee it has not done so in this quality.

This was obtained approximately a week after the gig, by a friend of the program to be known only as Blog Friend, in a swap for an audience recording of the same gig.  Blog Friend obtained this direct from the folks at the radio station [redacted], who had recorded the gig for broadcast from Oz's PA.  Blog Friend only sporadically shared out analog dubs of his 1st generation cassette, and only recently digitized it for the first time.  This is that digitization, made more better.

I believe - and this is only based on the many versions I've sampled before getting this from Blog Friend - that 99% of the copies in general circulation are from the radio station broadcast.  The versions I've heard have markedly different sonic characteristics, most often associated with FM broadcast compression and EQ.  This, on the other hand, sounds like it came from Factory ready for retail release.  It's probably the best - in quality, that is - non band-sourced mixing desk recording of the band out there.  Believe me when I say you folks will be quite busy lifting your collective jaw off the floor when listening.

All previously circulating copies are much too shrill - to the point my ears bled when listening at anything approaching a normal listening volume.  This is not a problem with this dub off the master.  Additionally, all previously circulating copies had marked and inconsistent pitch and speed variances, which - again - is not a problem here.

(As an aside: A supporter has very generously gifted me a copy of the amazing, beautiful and lovingly trainspottery tome From Heaven To Heaven, written by a fellow named Dec Hickey (who religiously followed the band in their glory years of 1981 through 1984) and lovingly annotated with tapes, setlists, unpublished photos, and other ephemera of the day.  If you are a New Order fan, you need this book.  Not sure if Dec still has copies, but check the website.  Anyway, one of my favorite things about the ephemera in the tome (and it is a tome, not simply a "book") is the exhaustive list of early working titles the band gave their songs.  These working titles survived on the band's actual setlists long after they were released under their "proper" titles, even through this day where we still see "KW1" on latter day gig setlists for Your Silent Face.  There are a few I've not known before, the first of which we'll be using here for Leave Me Alone.)

Barney does some... lovely isn't quite the term... interesting vocal ad-libs during Face Up and Blue Monday.  And the tape has easily the best shoutout I've heard at/on a gig to encourage punters to buy the record:

"OK motherfuckers!  This is called Way Of Life and it's off our new LP called Brotherhood available on Warner Brothers/ Qwest Records."

Quite.

01 Shellshock
02 Everything's Gone Green
03 Ceremony
04 Every Little Counts
05 Dark Nites
06 Thieves Like Us
07 Way Of Life
08 Face-Up
09 Temptation
10 Confusion
11 Blue Monday (fades out, as the DJ begins to play the 12" version over the band as they're ending!)

FLACs here.  Sample track above.

Please to enjoy!

17 December 1985: Manhattan Club, Leuven "stash" tape

New Order
Manhattan Club
Leuven, Belgium
17 December 1985

source: Hooky's rubbish bin (the "stash" tapes)
lineage: Master soundboard recording cassette
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

At long last I'm starting to fix up and free a stash of gigs - which first saw the light (heh) in 2004 on the long-defunct Sharing The Groove, but were essentially untouched beyond basic cleanup - that really show how brilliant New Order were in their prime in the mid-'80s.

The quick-and-dirty background:  Whilst cleaning house, a set of master New Order soundboard tapes (various mid-80s live gigs, some rehearsals, and a DAT or two from the band's 1989 US tour) was found by Hooky under the floorboards at his studio Suite 16 in Rochdale, England.  At some point, these tapes ended up in Hooky's trash as he thought they were shite, apparently.  After a drunken night at Casa de Hooky, a musician friend of the bearded bass player, who was in his employ for a duration in the early 90s, rescued the tapes from the rubbish bin.  Ultimately the tapes ended up being auctioned to a well-known New Order internet site proprietor in Florida, a fellow who is not commonly known for sharing the wealth.  In the interim, ATR (sometimes called Stash) obtained digital transfers of these tapes before they were shipped off to the Sunshine State.  ATR then shared them amongst the New Order cognoscenti, and then in 2004 we fed them to the world via Sharing The Groove.

All these gigs had their various problems as-received from the source in between Hooky and us, the least of which were sector boundary errors (which means, if burned as-is to CD, there are audible "pops" in between tracks) and all off-pitch by varying degrees.  Some were extremely muddy, and others were far too bright.  None of them were just right, but my aim is to make them so.

(The New Order "stash" gigs that were on Sharing The Groove, and various other torrent sites and blogs from 2004 onward, are all from those original 2004 releases and have not been formally mastered since, until now.)

Previous "stash" tapes posted, 2012 masterings all:
7 July 1984 Barcelona
7 Dec 1985 Slough
13 Dec 1985 Orleans

Here's another one.  There are two common circulating variants of this - that from our 2004 "stash" tape seed (muddy), and that taken from a circulating video of the gig (not very good for general listening).  The version here is mastered from the 2004 source, and shines.  It's night and day in terms of clarity and listenability.  One minor issue with the stash source is that it's missing the last ten seconds of "The Village", which is where a C90 cassette would split.  The 2004 seed patched the last ten seconds with the audio from the video; I've not done so here as it's just too clashing and impure (I've faded out instead).

"Let's Go" features a lovely bum note from Gillian when she falls on the keyboard at approx. 2:05.  "Atmosphere" - while featuring wonky keyboards - sounds stellar.  "Blue Monday" simply has to be heard to be believed, it's probably my favorite performance of this along with that from Orleans a few nights previous.  Barney channels Jimi between "Subculture" and "Atmosphere", which I've tracked separately.  Barney drops lyrics all night, most notably on "Blue Monday".  All said, it's a lovely little gig that certainly I've neglected for far too long; now I don't have to!

01 Let's Go
02 Age Of Consent
03 Thieves Like Us
04 The Perfect Kiss
05 State Of The Nation
06 Confusion
07 As It Is When It Was
08 The Village
09 Subculture
10 All Along The Watchtower (snippet)
11 Atmosphere
12 Temptation
13 Blue Monday

FLACs here.  Starting with this post, the linked track above is a full-length MP3 of the mastering presented, so you can sample before pulling down the FLACs.

Enjoy!

20 June 1981: Glastonbury CND Festival, Somerset

New Order
Glastonbury CND Festival
Worthy Farm, Pilton, Somerset
20 June 1981

source: soundboard
lineage: low (first?) generation dub of cassette master
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

This gig was one of the earliest New Order soundboards to be "released" - longtime fans say it was available in Camden stalls in summer 1981, and became the source for many a vinyl bootleg over the years.

Because it's been available so many places, and sources, contrary to belief this makes it that much more difficult to track down an early, low-generation source.  Seems like *everyone* has a copy, but it's always an Nth generation noisy and muffled dub, or mono, or what-have-you.

So when this version was provided, it was a revelation.  The originator of the source cassette, that I've mastered this from, says he purchased it at the festival and it arrived by post several weeks later.  The question is if it was a dub from the master reel, or a dub of a dub from the master reel.  We'll never know.  It seemed just "better" than any other I'd heard, and I'd heard a LOT of versions over the years.

It took wonderfully to my patented procedures for mastering.  I haven't much else to say, the results will certainly speak for themselves.  It is a bit bass heavy in the drums/drones on "In A Lonely Place" but it is what it is.  "Everything's Gone Green" is a brilliant, seductive workup of what actually became "EGG" - the lyrics are nascent, the performance spellbinding.  It's a 13-minute sequenced jam.

Bernard, on the other hand... It's pretty well known that he was well out of it here.  Oh he starts out OK, his outbursts in "In A Lonely Place" actually enhance the overall forbodingness of the track, but as the show progresses he, shall we say, regresses.  In one sense it's embarrassing, but it's New Order.  It certainly makes for an interesting gig, one that is a favorite of many.

Retro took "In A Lonely Place" from this gig.  Ours is far better (as usual).  Though why a version completely sans Hooky (amp/instrument problems that didn't repair themselves until a bit into the following track) was chosen, when the bass is part of the allure of this song, is beyond my ken.  I suppose I could ask...

Again, you should bin all previous copies of this (unless you've sat on the master reel for 31 years...).

01 In A Lonely Place
02 Dreams Never End
03 Truth
04 The Him
05 Procession
06 Senses
07 Little Dead
08 Everything's Gone Green

FLACs here.

Enjoy!

12 March 1983: Recreation Centre, Tolworth

New Order
Recreation Centre, Tolworth, UK
12 March 1983

source: soundboard
lineage: second generation dub
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

This gig, while not a "stash" tape, for all intents should be.  It's classic New Order, raw, with one of the band's greatest in-jokes included.  It's also terrifically difficult to find in good quality, for some reason.

It's said that the speed this soundboard set made it to the Camden market stalls, after the gig, was ridiculously fast.  One longstanding rumor - and knowing the nature of the parties involved, probably more than rumor - is that manager Rob Gretton quietly leaked the soundboard tape immediately after the gig, to cause further embarrassment to journalist/writer Mark Johnson.  Johnson had been stalking the group for some time at this point, trying to write the ultimate trainspottery tome about Joy Division and New Order (An Ideal For Living), an effort that would find him - according to wags - cornering some poor band member backstage with ridiculous questions along the lines of "now did you play "Song X" in Buttfuckshire, October 1978 or not?!?" among other acts of sillyness.  In retaliation, the band arranged to have Johnson's scooter - for he had been in attendance at this gig - strung up from a forklift, blocking the band's truck, and then had the promoter come on-stage mid set with the following legendary quip:

"Sorry to interrupt you here but we got a very important announcement here. There's someone who owns a scooter, SMG643Y, that's SMG 6 4 3 Y, now if they can go and remove it, because it's causing obstruction to one of the trucks. Thanks a lot, and don't spit at me."

The gig is full of little Hooky/Barneyisms too, one of the better collections of them I must say:

Hooky (before In A Lonely Place): "This is the brass section. If the Jam can do it, I'm sure we can."
Bernard (introducing Age Of Consent): "This one's a fast one for all you bollock brains."
Hooky: "You shouldn't swear, there are several big blokes here that'll RIP YER FUCKING 'EAD OFF!"
Bernard (introducing the final encore):  "Listen, we've only come back on because the door's jammed and we can't get out."

I think one would be hard-pressed to find a better performance of "Dreams Never End" than this gig.  It is, in a word, superb.

This set came to me as a CD-R of a 2nd generation tape.  It was dull, noisy, and just screamed for help.  I first worked on it in 2005 or thereabouts, and set it out on Dime at the time.  Listening to it now, I cringe and sincerely apologize for subjecting folks to it.  It sounds completely amateur in terms of "mastering".

Not so this version.  In fact they couldn't be any more different than night/day.  I used a LOT of tools in my toolbox on this one, this time, but it needed it to be more than just something you'd listen to once, say "eh, that's cool" and file it away. 

There are only a couple niggly bits about the tape; "Blue Monday" starts out a bit uneven, but it's more than likely just to be old tape as much as anything.  There's a pretty significant dropout in the right channel for a decent chunk of "Everything's Gone Green", but all known copies of this gig have this problem too, so it was probably an issue with the original board tape.  Even Retro's "Everything's Gone Green" - from this gig, sourced from an unknown generation dub, and far (FAR) worse quality than we have here, has the dropout.  Other than those two bits, the tape itself was in fine shape.

All in all, a gig that I played, at best, once a year suddenly becomes something that won't be leaving my iPhone for a long, long time.

01 Blue Monday
02 In A Lonely Place
03 Chosen Time
04 Dreams Never End (with SMG643Y following)
05 We All Stand
06 Leave Me Alone
07 Age Of Consent
08 Temptation (false start)
09 Temptation
10 586 (false start)
11 586
12 Everything's Gone Green

FLACs here.

Enjoy!  And thanks to my buddy Johan (Species) for the artwork.  You would think there would be a decent photo of either the venue or the gig somewhere online, but no... the venue is one of the most boring buildings I've ever seen, based on the Google!

7 Sept 1980: Western Works, Sheffield demo session, 2012 mastering

 
Longtime readers know that daddy blog TPoIT brought the band's legendary September 1980 Western Works demo session to light, from the presumed master reel, several years ago (meaning we all threw away our 30-year-old Edison wax cylinder recordings we'd had previously).  It probably was the most popular post on the blog, after the (subsequently DMCA'ed) REM Cassette Set demo tape.  It has seen close to 10,000 downloads.  Amazing.

That said, the 2009 version was not well mastered.  At least to my current skill set and critical ears.  So, I got to work again, and here we are with a much-improved set for you.

I direct you to the two posts (master post; followup post) over on TPoIT for essential background and my long-winded writing about these gems.  I direct you to the Mediafire page for downloads of the pristine files, made stunning.  They are now properly EQ'ed: drums sound like drums, etc.  They are just all around more better.

enjoy!

01 Dreams Never End (mix 1)
02 Dreams Never End (mix 2)
03 Homage
04 Ceremony
05 Truth
06 Are You Ready Are You Ready Are You Ready For This (feat. R. Gretton, vocals)

Get 'em here.

Feed to the world, spread the news, delete the old versions.

welcome.

Welcome to the New Order Archives.

Until now I have been hosting my professional masterings of various and sundry New Order gigs and demos over at my main blog The Power of Independent Trucking.

In just three days of the "stash" tapes being posted, my blog has seen thousands of hits and a huge number of downloads of the three "stash" tapes posted so far.  Clearly there is interest in this.

So, since I can - and the band/label dropped the opportunity they had to do this themselves in 2008 - I've started a new blog for these New Order projects only.

What will you find here?  My mastering contributions to the community:  community-sourced demos, soundboards, other high quality (read: no audience recordings, or IED/ALD sources) recordings, all from the "classic era" of New Order.  By this, I don't intend to go beyond 1993, and even that is a stretch.  By "community-sourced" I mean stuff not taken from true bootlegs-for-sale, not taken from band-sourced-to-me-or-associates material, not taken from commercial sources.  These are truly those "tapes in the wild" that have found their way into collectors' hands.  That said, if management wants to feed things to the blog, I will certainly comply ;)

I hope you enjoy this.  I intend this to be a labor of love; there will be no posting schedule except for when I have something to post.  There are a LOT of tapes out there that need airing/mastering, some in better shape than others, and they all deserve a wider audience.  This is not something that'll see 50 posts a week - there may be spurts of activity, and there may be months of silence.  But it will be lovingly attended to, and curated, and to the best of my ability feature only material of the highest, as-best-as-possible commercial release quality.

So please... if you feel you have material to contribute, please contact me at analogloyalist at gmail dot com.  If it's common, I have it, so don't bother UNLESS you have the master or a known-quantity first-generation dub.  If you have that proverbial "tape that's been sat in a closet for 25 years" and it's a soundboard, please, stop what you're doing, and contact me ;)

I start off with the only "want list" item I can think of off the top of my head, as I type this introduction:  A high-quality recording of the band's Volkhaus, Zurich 1984 gig that was (I believe) broadcast on Swiss radio.  I have a few middling copies/sources of this, but all have their faults, and none are really ready for polishing.  Anyone with a low generation copy of the broadcast - or, lord help me, a copy of the radio station master - please contact me.  It's a great gig otherwise and needs exposure.

I hope you enjoy, and settle in for a wonderful ride through the archives!