Recorded live at Granada TV Studios in Manchester, in April 1981, New Order had an opportunity to put forward their new songs in front of a live audience. The show went out on the Celebration programme, but only after extensive studio overdubs to correct sound problems in the recording.
The producer behind some of the most important records of the past four decades began studio life carrying cups of tea.
Mark Ellis was a junior staffer at Morgan Studios in 1978 when producer Chris Tsangarides, watching one runner keep the tea coming while the other vanished, named the pair “Flood” and “Drought.” The nickname stayed with the man who kept coming back with the cups and spoons. He is now one of the longest-serving producers in British music, and the list of bands whose sound he has shaped runs from Cabaret Voltaire to U2.
Flood had already been the vocalist in a band called Seven Hertz and the tape operator on Rick Wakeman’s album, 1984, before he became Morgan’s house engineer and went freelance in 1981. His first album credit was as assistant engineer on New Order’s first album, Movement. A series of assignments for Stevo’s Some Bizzare label followed, with engineering tasks for Cabaret Voltaire, Psychic TV, and Marc and the Mambas. That experience delivered him to Daniel Miller’s Mute Records, which kept him busy as one of the label’s go-to producers for Depeche Mode, Erasure and Nick Cave.
The scale of Flood’s credits since then is impressive: the studio bands of the eighties gave way to the stadium acts of the nineties, and a second career in the 2000s brought Sigur Rós, Orbital, and Interpol into the his workspace. In 2006, he shared the Album of the Year Grammy as co-producer of U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, who made three albums with him, described him as “very masterful with the sonics.” His secret skill, according to Corgan, is that he knows how to find “an ambiance of the song that you don’t necessarily see.”
10. New Order – Dreams Never End
Movement, the first album New Order made after Ian Curtis’s death, credits Flood as assistant engineer under Martin Hannett’s studio leadership. The tea-carrier from Morgan had become the second pair of hands on one of the 1980s’ most scrutinised records.
Movement was a difficult album. Hannett was trying to keep the band in the box he had built for them as Joy Division. Movement suffers from a claustrophia that is impressed into every groove. It was also beautiful in the way that a butterfly struggles to emerge from a chrysalis. The band’s wings wouldn’t reach their full magnificence until “Temptation,” but the colours could just be seen.
9. Cabaret Voltaire – Just Fascination
Flood’s first full production credit of consequence arrived with the Sheffield duo, Cabaret Voltaire. He co-produced their 1983 meisterwerk, The Crackdown. It was the album that carried Richard Kirk and Stephen Mallinder from industrial experimentation on Rough Trade to a major label (Virgin) and a harder dancefloor posture.
“Just Fascination” signals the change in approach: clipped samples over a sequencer with no give; Mallinder half-chanting on top. Flood’s part in the record began the pattern that recurred for decades: the studio man who could make machines groove like a band.
8. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – From Her to Eternity
Flood engineered the Bad Seeds’ debut, From Her to Eternity. It was the first project of a relationship that ran through The Firstborn Is Dead, which he produced, and on to mixing work for the band until the late nineties.
The title track is all forward lean – piano hammered in runs above a drum stomp that does not vary, with Cave in full cry over the top of it. The record put Flood on the desk for a band playing as if each take were the last of their lives, and he kept the levels honest through all of it.
7. Erasure – Sometimes
Mute paired Flood with Vince Clarke and Andy Bell from the start. He produced Erasure’s first two albums, Wonderland and The Circus, building the glossy half of the label’s 80s output, while Daniel Miller’s other acts darkened the other half.
“Sometimes” gave the duo their first substantial hit, and the production is key: bright programmed bass under a chorus that opens on the first line, with Bell’s voice carrying the melody. The warmth of the programming did the label proud without softening the synthpop.
6. Nitzer Ebb – Hearts and Minds
Flood produced the middle run of Nitzer Ebb’s career – Belief, Showtime, and Ebbhead – and returned decades later to finish Industrial Complex. No other producer worked the EBM seam so thoroughly from the inside.
5. PJ Harvey – Down by the Water
To Bring You My Love credits Flood as producer, engineer and mixer – the fullest control he took over any record of the decade. The album widened Polly Harvey’s writing from guitar records into slower, stranger material.
“Down by the Water” turns on its organ figure and the small, drowned vocal on the bridge. The mix keeps the low end loud and the voice dry, so the nursery-rhyme menace of the words never softens. Flood returned to Harvey for Is This Desire?, White Chalk, Let England Shake and her later records – one of the longest partnerships of both careers.
4. Smashing Pumpkins – Zero
Flood co-produced Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness with Alan Moulder, the double album that carried the Smashing Pumpkins from clubs to arenas.
Corgan’s verdict on their working method is instructive: Flood would “really fight with us”, in Corgan’s words, to find “another vibe” the band could not yet see. “Zero” shows the band being forced out of its comfort zone: the downstroked riff; a taunting chorus; and a cheap keyboard line given teeth. The production argues with the songs until they stand up straight.
3. U2 – Numb
Flood engineered and mixed Achtung Baby alongside Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite; and then took a full production credit on Zooropa, with credits for loops, engineering, and mixing with Eno and The Edge. Thirteen years later came the shared Album of the Year Grammy.
“Numb” is the clearest case for his hand in the band’s sound and success: The Edge’s flat, deadpan vocal over a mesh of loops and percussion, with the guitars held back until their impact was really needed. The track showed a stadium band taking its electronics seriously – and the producer’s credit sat at the front of it.
2. Nine Inch Nails – Head Like a Hole
For Pretty Hate Machine, Trent Reznor assembles his dream cast. Flood produced and engineered the album’s opening pair of songs, “Head Like a Hole” and “Terrible Lie”, alongside Keith LeBlanc, with additional synth programming scattered across the rest. He joined the sessions late, after finishing Violator for Depeche Mode, which made “Head Like a Hole” one of the last tracks completed – partly at Blackwing, the studio Depeche Mode and He Said had made alluring to Reznor.
Reznor built the drums from samples lifted out of his record collection, and Flood’s production gives the track its shove: the churn of the synth bass under guitars broken out for the refrain, and all of it carrying the aggression Reznor wanted. Flood came back for Broken and The Downward Spiral, where his credits extended to hi-hat and synthesizer. He had engineered Ministry’s synth-pop debut, With Sympathy, years earlier; with NIN he built the industrial mainstream that followed.
1. Depeche Mode – Enjoy the Silence
Violator credits Flood as producer alongside the band, Daniel Miller and Alan Wilder, and his fingerprints are on the whole record.
“Enjoy the Silence” is the concentrated case: Gore’s demo was a ballad; Wilder proposed an up-tempo version; and Wilder and Flood assembled the new arrangement while the rest of the band were out of the room. Gore came back, gave in, and played the guitar riff that rides the single.
Gore acknowledged that, “Flood in tandem with Wilder was a great team.” That’s a conclusion that holds across the album. “Enjoy the Silence” became the band’s biggest single, and it required the composer to be out of the room. What Flood helped the production team to do was lift an absorbing demo into a song that will live long after them.
Bernard Sumner never planned to sing for New Order. As a young man, he wanted to play guitar in his band, Joy Division. That was going well, until frontman Ian Curtis did something unthinkable to the sounds of an Iggy Pop record. Sumner found himself thrust into the spotlight; shouldering Curtis’ legacy while creating new music with a group of similarly anarchic Mancunians.
Truth is, Sumner grew into the role just fine. He relied heavily on intoxicating substances to get him through the first few decades, but his songwriting and studio skills delivered a string of hits. He also worked with fellow Factory Records artists and mates from the industry to create innovative dancefloor material. Barney, as he was known, turned out to be able to program a computer and compose the perfect rhyme. No wonder he ended up with him from the Pet Shop Boys and Johnny Marr, who had the inclination and the time. Together, they made lots of money.
The relationship that didn’t survive was the one with his prickly frenemy, bassist Peter Hook. The Sumner-Hook axis was at the core of Joy Division and New Order, but resentments, jealousies, pettiness, and drugs eventually led to Hook being nudged away from New Order and Sumner consolidating the band around his own vision.
What followed was The Battle of New Order Biographies, as Sumner and Hook traded blows through the promotion of competing narratives. The picture that emerged was of two Salford lads trying to get one up on the other, while living rock star lifestyles under the watchful eye of their coke-crazed manager. The fact that they lost enormous sums to fund the hobbies of Rob Gretton is something both resent but also shrug off. The main thing was that they had fun.
10. Joy Division – Digital
The band that was Warsaw (sometimes billed as Stiff Kittens) and became Joy Division was unique. Inspired by the Sex Pistols, they quickly transcended punk to create two magical albums that gleamed like cat’s eyes in the greyness of 1970s Lancashire.
Sumner’s contributions sound primitive today – as, to be fair, do those of the other members of the band. The one thing they knew was that they didn’t want to go to work in offices. Music was their way to escape that fate, as well as a great way to meet girls. Ian Curtis summoned the courage to tell off Tony Wilson to his face, and what happened next has spawned a million t-shirts.
9. New Order – Everything’s Gone Green
Martin Hannett was regarded as a bit of a genius, as a recording engineer, but he was also hard work. The sound of Joy Division was sculpted by his techniques, but the members of the band were subjected to random acts of cruelty in the studio. There came a point where, following the loss of Curtis and the reconstitution of the group, New Order gathered the strength to move in a new direction.
“Everything’s Gone Green” is the band in transition from post-punk gloom to euphoric pop. It is also the sound of them outgrowing their producer. It was the last single they recorded with Hannett, and it is strikingly modern. From the stutter of Sumner’s home-made synths to the whoop as ice was put down his shirt, this is New Order emerging from their chrysalis. After this single, nothing would be the same.
8. 52nd Street – Cool as Ice
Sumner’s skills as a composer and producer have often been outshone by his role as New Order’s lead singer. He has worked with a number of artists to craft iconic electronic music, outside of the band, under his own name and as Be Music.
52nd Street were fellow Factory Records artists. Rob Gretton, a Factory partner and New Order’s manager, put Sumner together with the group to give an electronic sheen to their soul. It worked.
7. Section 25 – Looking from a Hilltop
Section 25 was another fellow Manchester outfit, sharing space on Factory Records. Sumner leaned in to help with this track when – as he tells the story – the engineer didn’t show on time for their session. The result was a dancefloor-enhanced version of the band, lifted by Sumner’s growing confidence as a producer.
6. Electronic – Getting Away with It
Sumner’s interest in programming sequencers didn’t catch on with the other members of New Order. In 1988, he turned to Johnny Marr of The Smiths to work on a dance music side project. This was the first result of their collaboration, Electronic, which turned into a supergroup with the addition of, variously, Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys and Karl Bartos, the ex-Kraftwerk composer.
5. Happy Mondays – Freaky Dancin’
Sumner got his hands dirty working with Happy Mondays. The band famously rescued his Chinese take-away from the bin, when Sumner was finished with it. You can kind of tell from this track.
3. Bad Lieutenant – Sink or Swim
Named for the film starring Harvey Keitel, Bad Lieutenant was another of Sumner’s side projects. It drew in guitarists Phil Cunningham and Jake Evans. It functioned as a surrogate New Order, in some contexts, also involving drummer Stephen Morris and bassist Tom Chapman.
2. Shark Vegas – You Hurt Me
An evolution of Die Unbekannten, Mark Reeder’s subversive project was remixed by Sumner from the tapes originally recorded at Conny’s Studio. Notably, Reeder is the only person who appears in photographs alongside New Order in biographies by both Sumner and Peter Hook.
1. New Order – Atmosphere
Written while a argument was raging between Martin Hannett and the Cargo Studios manager, Atmosphere is Joy Division’s most sublime creation. Sumner sings it here, out of necessity and love – the two qualities he brings to music like few other.
Sweden’s legendary act, Twice a Man, have released a tour of their output between the years 1982 and 2022. The material is collected on Songs of Future Memories, a 3-CD compilation from Germany’s Dependent label, with two new songs and thirty-two from the band’s extensive back catalogue. The physical edition also includes a 72-page hardcover book with notes from Ecki Stieg.
The importance of Twice a Man to Swedish and European pop and theatrical music cannot be overstated. From the point at which they transformed from Cosmic Overdose, at the insistence of New Order’s promoter, the band has led from the front; both in terms of their styling and in their messages about the social and natural environment. They might have changed their name, but the group – organised around the core of Karl Gasleben and Dan Söderqvist – didn’t give up their affinity for psychedelic soundscapes or explosions of surrealistic energy. Instead, they set up structures within which new sounds could be formed and social concerns could be channelled.
As this compilation shows, Twice a Man have taken a much wider perspective than many of their peers; adapting to the shifting sands of fashion while maintaining a Brechtian distance that prevents them from being pigeon-holed. Are they prog or new wave? For the theatre or the dancefloor? Do they look at internal psychology or social movements? The answer is: any and all of the above, depending on the moment. There is no one truth about Twice a Man, but there is an organising principle to their material: it isn’t like anything else.
From the proto-techno of “Russian Tractors” to the pulsing symphonic movements of “High in the Clouds,” this collection is a master-class in European electronic music. Spanning forty years of work, Songs of Future Memories draws on an exceptional tradition of experimentation and composition. The two new songs presented here, “Lotus” and “Dahlia,” emerge from that crib impressed with a unique inheritance. Twice a Man remain a work in progress.
Primitive Heart is back with “Underground,” a minimalist and sensual pop track. The vocals of Dani Mari float in the ether, while the electronics walk their path with determination. It has an 80s vibe that is on-trend, while dancing in the shadows on the edge of the floor.
The EP features mixes by Chasm and Fawns of Love – the latter going full New Order with a Hooky bass and Sumner sequencer line.
(Photo: Josh Lee, https://www.byjoshlee.com/)
The Manchester scene that revolved around Factory Records didn’t completely spin apart after the label’s demise. New Order found their way to Mute Artists, replacing Depeche Mode as a marquee act, while A Certain Ratio took up their position as a respected but less commercial label-mate.
That assessment of ACR might be a little unfair, as this new release shows.
“Houses in Motion” is taken from a Martin Hannett recording session that was intended to draw in Grace Jones. In the end, the Amazonian goddess didn’t add her vocals, so the track was left on the shelf.
Unearthed from the archive, dusted off and reworked, it turns out to be a missing gem. It’s funky fun for all modern slaves to the rhythm.
If you’re going to call your band Cosmic Overdose, you’re going to have to deal with some preconceptions. The first is that you are a bunch of hippies, sitting in fairy rings and tripping on mushrooms. The second is that your material consists of overblown guitar solos. If your music is actually varied and complex, inspired by dada, punk and experimental electronics, and you are meant to be warming up for New Order, then it might be time to rethink the name.
That’s not the whole story of Twice a Man, but it is how it usually opens. Before the Swedish godfathers of alternative music adopted their current guise – prompted by the promoters of the New Order show they were scheduled to join – they swam in many of the streams that were converging or competing in the second half of the 1970s. Punk was a rebellion against the high-art extremes of prog rock, but Cosmic Overdose found something to appreciate in both. Experimental and industrial music provided an antidote to pop, and the band absorbed the textures and freedom of the former while maintaining the accessibility of the latter.
If there is a surprise in the recently issued Cosmic Overdose box set from Progress Productions, it is just how much groove there is in their material. Over the course of two studio albums, the band belied their name with sets of jaunty, angular material that did as much to shake hips as expand minds. There are passages of smooth, prog-influenced pop, but they are respite between slabs of pure energy generated with a provocative spirit.
If English comparators were sought, then Blurt, Brian Eno and Cabaret Voltaire would figure, but the points of intersection would be limited. Cosmic Overdose defied definition as craftily as those artists, even if they sometimes drew inspiration and confidence from similar sources. The three albums packaged in Koko Total don’t fit a template, nor do they bear direct comparison to others. Cosmic Overdose were true originals.
The first album they shared with the world was Dada Koko. From the opening number, “Investera i Framtida,” with its synthetic waves, it was clear that something new was being born. “Modern Dadaister” isn’t a million miles from XTC’s jerkier sound, when it starts, before growing into something trippier. There is a moment of calm in the arc of the album before “Tanten” explodes with a burst of dark energy. The Arp synth returns on the album closer, “Råttan,” a track tailored for the alternative dancefloor.
The second album, 4668, showed that the Swedes had absorbed something from Joy Division. As the Manchester doom-meisters had done, Cosmic Overdose were starting to push through the punk chrysalis to emerge as something more electronic. Their transformation into Twice a Man would put them at the forefront of the Swedish synth scene and keep them in its top tier for a generation. In the meantime, fans had the brooding “Android,” the well-crafted “Nina Fontanell” and the charming “Liten Storsint” to contemplate.
The third CD in this package collects live recordings, singles and strays from the archives. “Observation Galen” from 1979 is here with its B-side, “Isolatorer.” Then there are live versions of “Suicide Case,” “Ruta Nr 1” and “Läckan” from a show the same year in Kalmar. They reveal a band confident in its presentation with spellbinding material. Further live sessions follow from shows in Oslo, Lund and Stockholm (with an appearance by Lars Falk on “Väx och Njut”) before the album closes with the single, “To Night.”
The quality of the recordings is excellent, and they open a window into the short time when art and punk overlapped with the electronics of the Futurists and the psychedelia of the proggists. Wire unpacked that confluence methodically over four decades, but Cosmic Overdose concentrated it into two albums and two singles and changed their name. What came next is a story for another day.
The second preview from New Order’s upcoming album, Music Complete, is “Plastic.” After the lukewarm “Restless,” this reveals New Order in full Moroder mode. Click below to listen.
On paper, New Order‘s re-emergence on Mute is a marriage made in Heaven. The departure of Depeche Mode left Mute without a flagship act, and New Order’s path into the stratosphere had run on a zig-zig path that was essentially parallel to the Basildon trio’s own. They even used the same record plugger for many years. The link-up allows New Order to maintain an indie base while getting the label’s full attention, which can’t be good for smaller acts like Polly Scattergood but will give Manchester’s best export long-term presence.
Bassist Peter Hook has left to pursue a Joy Division/New Order tribute project of his own, but that works out well for fans: New Order (Official) don’t play much from the back catalogue, so Hook’s New Order (Provisional) – also called Peter Hook & The Light – fills an enormous gap. Although some fans can’t accept a New Order without him, the reality is that it is Bernard Sumner’s voice and songwriting that is at the core of the band now.
“Restless,” the first single from Music Complete (Mute), arguably comes across better in this Agoria remix than in the original version: Sumner’s voice is even more fragile and languid with the synthetic bass and orchestration behind him. This is promising, indeed.
New Order have unveiled the first of their tracks recorded for Mute. “Restless,” which is taken from the forthcoming Music Complete album, is a breezy MOR rock song that certainly sounds like late-stage New Order but lacks the crackling electricity of their best work. Some fans have put this down to the absence of bassist Peter Hook, who is in permanent exile, but much of Bernard Sumner’s songwriting fits into this groove. The question is what is being held back for the release of the album on the 25th of September.
