New Order – Peel Sessions (1990) – LITTLE LOST CLASSICS

It’s really crazy to listen to the Peel Sessions of New Orderrecorded in 1981 and 1982, later released separately as EPs (1986 and 1987) and in 1990 compiled in a single album, this one that runs on PCP’s virtual record player now.

The band was still crawling amid the shadow of Ian Curtis’s death, after all the first session was recorded just six months after his suicide, and they don’t even sound like “Blue monday” would sound in a few years. They walked in search of their new identity, which appeared discreetly in the last song of the album, “5-8-6” (as shown a year earlier in “Everything’s gone green” and a year later openly in “Temptation”).

The 4 songs presented in the first session, “Truth”, “Senses”, “ICB” and “Dreams never end” (with Peter Hook’s vocals) would go a few months later – transformed by the hands of Martin Hannett – to New Order’s debut , Movement; already of the songs presented in June 1982, only two entered “Power, corruption & lies”: “We all stand” and the aforementioned “5-8-6”. “Too late” and “Turn the Heater on” never came out on an official album, the latter being a version of track originally released in 1975 by Keith Hudsonrecorded by NO as a tribute to huge reggae fan Ian Curtis (yes, young padawan, he was from tchaca tchaca).

So here’s the baby New Order taking its first steps. Listen on the stalk!