New Order

Power, Corruption & Lies (1983)

Two years after Joy Division's dissolution, New Order arrived at something unprecedented — electronic dance rhythms underneath post-punk guitar textures, polished to a surface that invites the body rather than closing off the world. 'Age of Consent' opens with Peter Hook's melodic bass in counterpoint to the guitars, a technique carried over from Joy Division but deployed here with earned optimism. It taught the entire 1980s underground how synthesisers and guitars could coexist without compromise.

Sleeve notes

Power, Corruption & Lies · 1983

The story of New Order starts with a decision that should have been impossible: three of the four surviving members of Joy Division resolved to continue, rename themselves, and let the music evolve rather than fossilize under grief. What followed is one of the more extraordinary transformations in pop — from the raw post-punk of their early 7-inches to "Blue Monday" (1983), which remains the best-selling 12-inch single in UK history and arrived as if from another genre entirely. The drum machines, Roland synthesizers, and bass-heavy production weren't a betrayal of Joy Division's aesthetic; they were its logical extension into a changed world.

Power, Corruption & Lies (1983) and Low-life (1985) refined the template: dance music with a rock band's arrangement instincts, or vice versa. New Order understood that the dichotomy was false before most people had articulated it. Their influence on the post-punk revival of the early 2000s — Interpol, Editors, the Killers — is obvious. Their influence on everything that calls itself "indie electronic" is equally pervasive, if less often credited.