Technique is the fifth studio album by English rock band New Order. Released on 30 January 1989 by Factory Records, the album was partly recorded on the island of Ibiza, and incorporates Balearic beat and acid house influences into the group's dance-rock sound. The album was influenced by the then growing acid scene, and Sumner's experiences at Shoom in London.

Technique was the first New Order album to reach number one on the UK charts, and "Fine Time", the first single from the album, reached number 11. Remixed versions of "Round & Round" and "Run" were also released as singles.

Background and recording

In the late 1980s, the band felt that they had to keep on playing with dance-electronic rhythms. Bernard Sumner reflected; "We were in this position of being known for this dance-electronic sound and it would have been daft to have just stopped doing it. That was the nature of the time. The way I saw it was we were still writing band music as well, so we'd reached a compromise." Peter Hook joked that the album was "an epic power struggle between the sequencers and me. I was resisting it valiantly, because I still wanted us to be a rock band." Stephen Morris described the sound of the Balearic beat clubs on the island they began to visit as "mad! They'd put an acid record on and then the next one would be a Queen one—it was schizophrenic, really. It'd be something really Spanish and then something really daft. It was a really odd mix but it all seemed to make sense when you were there. I don't know why that was. Maybe because we were all a bit out of our brains."

Following four months spent in Ibiza (with the album "20% complete", according to Sumner), the band shifted to Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Wiltshire to finish recording, which Sumner referred to as a "much more sober atmosphere". The case was settled out of court.

Music

For Hook, "Technique [is] not an Ibizan dance record. I think it catches a summer sound really brilliantly."

Reception

Technique received generally positive reviews from music critics upon its release. Chris Roberts of Melody Maker hailed the album as "a rare and ravishing triumph", while John Tague of NME wrote that the band had "fashioned an LP of unflinching honesty, free from the masks of false identities of their past." David Quantick of Uncut called it a "powerfully contradictory album: not only is it an Ibiza record that's New Order's least techno-ey, but it's a chirpy, upbeat album with mature lyrics". The A.V. Clubs Josh Modell referred to Technique as New Order's "last truly great album", Keith Gwillim of Stylus Magazine contended that New Order "may have made better records, but none of them defines them, sounds so quintessentially like what they were always reaching for, quite as well as Technique."

Tom Ewing of Pitchfork labelled Technique "magnificent" in 2008 and stated that the album "takes the easy interplay and full-band sound of Brotherhood and drenches it in good Ibiza vibes". NME ranked the album at number 122 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2013. The album is also included in Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Track listing

Personnel

New Order

  • Bernard Sumner – vocals, guitars, melodica, synthesisers and programming
  • Peter Hook – 4- and 6-stringed bass, electronic percussion
  • Stephen Morris – drums, synthesisers and programming
  • Gillian Gilbert – synthesisers, guitars and programming

Technical

  • New Order – production
  • Michael Johnson – engineer
  • Richard Chappell – assistant engineer
  • Aaron Denson – assistant engineer
  • Richard Evans – assistant engineer
  • Trevor Key – cover design
  • Alan Meyerson – mixing
  • Peter Saville – cover design

Charts

Weekly charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ Weekly chart performance for Technique

! scope="col"| Chart (1989)

! scope="col"| Peak<br />position

|-

|-

! scope="row"| Canada Top Albums/CDs (RPM)

| 21

|-

|-

! scope="row"| European Albums (Music & Media)

| 7

|-

! scope="row"| Finnish Albums (Suomen virallinen lista)

| 29

|-

|-

! scope="row"| Icelandic Albums (Tónlist)

| 3

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

! scope="row"| UK Independent Albums (MRIB)

| 1

|-

|}

Year-end charts

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ Year-end chart performance for Technique

! scope="col"| Chart (1989)

! scope="col"| Position

|-

! scope="row"| Canada Top Albums/CDs (RPM)

| 83

|-

! scope="row"| UK Albums (Gallup)

| 89

|}

Certifications

References

Sources

  • Album online on Radio3Net a radio channel of Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company