"Procession" is the second single by the British group New Order, released in September 1981 on 7" vinyl record. It is a double A side with "Everything's Gone Green". The single's Factory Records catalogue number is FAC 53. Bernard Sumner, at the request of Hannett, re-recorded his vocals at least forty-three times. In retrospect for his book Substance: Inside New Order, Peter Hook wrote: "Procession was a good song and Barney was doing a good vocal. The only problem in the studio that night was Martin." Hannett additionally requested the backing vocals from Gillian Gilbert; Hook was against it, but was outvoted by the rest of the band.</blockquote>
Availability
The song does not appear on any of New Order's studio albums; it does, however, appear on the EP 1981–1982, the CD, cassette, and Digital Audio Tape releases of the 1987 singles compilation Substance (where it is erroneously listed as a B-side), the 2005 compilation Singles, and the 2008 Collector's Edition of the band's debut album Movement.
Artwork
Similar to the album cover for Movement, the artwork is taken from a "Dinamo Futurista" magazine cover done by Italian futurist designer Fortunato Depero. Notably, the UK release's sleeve came in nine versions, all with different colours: black, blue, aqua, yellow, red, brown, orange, green and purple. The second side of the single contains a shortened version of "Everything's Gone Green", the full-length version of which was later released as a 12" single on its own.
Although the original UK single does not indicate which is side A or B (the runoff matrix simply lists "SOFT" and "HARD" for each side), the French edition of the single actually has "Everything's Gone Green" labeled as the A-side track, and some Spanish and Portuguese pressings have reversed labels.
Track listing
Chart positions
{|class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Chart (1981)
! Peak<br/>position
|-
| UK Singles Chart
| style="text-align:center;"|38
|-
| UK Independent Singles Chart
| style="text-align:center;"|1
|}