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New Order in Berlin: Timeless and Timely

In Berlin, dance-rock legends New Order prove once again why their music draws attention nearly 40 years on.

                                      
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PopMatters is moving to WordPress. We will publish a few essays daily while we develop the new site. We hope the beta will be up sometime late next week.

In Berlin, dance-rock legends New Order prove once again why their music draws attention nearly 40 years on.

A-list rockers headline Germany's second Lolla installment

The first part of our examination of the 100 Greatest Alternative Singles of the '90s, starting with 100 through 81.

New Order return to the U.S. for a short tour in support of their latest album Music Complete and visit the Late Show for a performance while in New York.

Guitarist Bernard Sumner shares his recollections of Joy Division and New Order, both seminal post-punk outfits whose influence cannot be overstated.

Bernard Sumner artfully describes where the music of Joy Division came from; distilled to a single cold, bleak, industrial Manchester night.

Songs of anxiety, paranoia, freak-outs, chilling verses, feverish desire, harrowing lyrics -- they all make for damn good music.

"Restless" will appear on New Order's upcoming Peter Hook-less album, Music Complete, releasing via Mute Records on September 25th.

Sadly, New Order doesn't quite have the same old spark any more...

Lost Sirens is a timely reminder that New Order and Peter Hook need to work things out.

Not every band borne out of a great predecessor can measure up. Here are five that do.

Even when the Submarines try to strip their material down, they still sound fussy and slickly polished.

New Order's debut album, Movement, celebrates its 30th birthday this month. To celebrate, we're counting down the classic group's 15 best tracks.

Today, the intersection of dance music and rock music seems only natural. However, the process has been in the making for decades, and this list provides an introduction to ten of the best albums this genre combination has to offer.

Freebass: You Don’t Know This About Me presents five remixes of a song by a group featuring three bassists from some of Manchester's greatest bands.

If the singer in your band suddenly died, would you call it quits? New Order did the opposite, proving in an endless stream of brilliant music that Joy Division was merely a warm-up on the path to pop greatness.

Wherein our curmudgeonly record shop owner realizes that his store with its bins full of vinyl was his own personal iPod long before the iPod was ever invented.

When asked about how he feels about the term "icon", Bernard Sumner tells PopMatters that "I don't think I'm a legend. I think I've just got an interesting history." This, his time with Joy Division, New Order, and new band Bad Lieutenant are all a part of this epic interview ...

A new, guitar-based band from these Manchester vets. It's New Order minus Peter Hook! Or 1/2 The Other Two + Bernard Sumner!

Factory Records was as influential in design, sound production, and defining what a label could be as it was in music.

The full sweep and glory of New Order's accomplishment -- from the static gloom of Movement and “In a Lonely Place" to the happy, confident likes of Technique and “Run” -- cannot be underestimated.

The Silly Kissers are making dense and accessible synth-pop that will be stuck in your head forever.

The first posthumous release from the post-punk/dance pioneers proves that New Order was a great live band, after all. But that wasn't always the case.

Anton Cobijn's movie biopic has triggered the largest revival of interest in Joy Division in nearly a decade.

This new two-DVD set from New Order reveals a band comfortably situated between art and commerce.

On 'Get Ready', New Order create a new sound out of their own past. Mining the subtleties of melody and rhythm that were so pronounced throughout their career, New Order seem to have crafted themselves anew out of nostalgia and the timelessness of pop sensibility.