electronic :: news

monday 15 june 2009 :: johnny marr was interviewed for the talking shop segment on the bbc news website on saturday. he again singles out get the message as the best song he’s written: “it’s great because i have no idea how it happened—i can remember starting with a bassline. ten minutes later the backing track was done, and then this person who i find interesting and unfathomable came in and wrote these words which were interesting and unfathomable with an amazing atmosphere. it seemed like it belonged to somebody else. what was great about that song was that it didn’t sound like the smiths, and it didn’t sound like new order. that was why i thought we’d done something really unique.” thanks to nick mckay for the heads up.

sunday 15 march 2009 :: brief mention of the los angeles gigs in this colourful pet shop boys interview conducted by johnny marr. neil tennant: “this was after chris and i had co-written the patience of a saint and getting away with it. you invited us to go because you were supporting depeche mode for two nights at the dodger stadium. it’s very big, about 60,000 people. i just remember chris and i had a different expensive designer outfit for each day, we were so different from you. we had a make-up artist, we were pop stars. you and bernard turned up in what you were wearing. on the second night, in the winnebago, backstage, bernard was lying on the bed with a sign on his chest: ‘don’t wake me up until it’s time to go on stage’. he used to have to drink pernod to fire him up. and a bucket beside him to be sick into.”

monday 9 march 2009 :: emi have recently put several electronic videos on youtube, all from the best of dvd: getting away with it (us), get the message, feel every beat, disappointed, forbidden city, for you and vivid. all are available in high quality. other uploads seem to have been deleted, including late at night and the first version of getting away with it.

thursday 5 march 2009 :: bernard sumner was interviewed by will hodgkinson for the sky arts programme songbook, broadcast today at 8pm gmt. he also played acoustic versions of four songs with phil cunningham and jake evans, including electronic’s getting away with it. view this thread on new order online for further airdates and video downloads. update :: watch an excellent upload of getting away with it here.

wednesday 13 february 2008 :: johnny marr talks about some of his best albums in this month’s uncut magazine, in a piece quite similar to last august’s retrospective in q. on electronic’s first album (‘the supergroup special’), he says: “bernard and i had always known each other—i played with him in 1983 on a quando quango record! but madchester, that time was pretty amazing and somewhat unfathomable, really. there was an incredible explosion of creativity and newness in fashion and music and design—backsmack in the middle of my hometown. and often backsmack in the middle of my kitchen! it was really necessary. the smiths and our aesthetic dominated the underground music scene so much that when we stepped aside the inevitable change was allowed to come blasting through.

“i remember what would often happen with electronic is that we recorded at my house and, after having worked all day, i would say to the engineer, ‘you can work on the hi-hat sound and i’m going to go and hang out for a couple of hours.’ and about 3:30 in the morning, three cars would arrive outside my house with a bunch of people falling out, or dancing out, and we’d all pile into the control room. and i’d start working on the track. i looked over and in the corner bez was talking to someone, and i got the pitch wheel of the tape machine and slowed one of the tracks—it was ‘feel every beat’—down until he started grooving. i knew then that was the right tempo. i used him as a human metronome. at the time he was probably the best indication of when something was in the right swing.”

tuesday 4 september 2007 :: as well as the aforementioned first album, eight other electronic records have been given the itunes treatment: getting away with it, get the message, feel every beat, raise the pressure, for you, second nature, until the end of time and vivid. raise the pressure includes the five b-sides from the ’96–’97 era, while each single features a host of remixes, many of which have been unavailable for years. click here to go to the main artist page. update :: unfortunately these don’t appear to be available in the usa, although the following are: the getting away with it maxi-single, raise the pressure, twisted tenderness::deluxe and the get the message best of. thanks to aamir qazi for this info.

wednesday 29 august 2007 :: on 3 september the first electronic album will be available from itunes as a special edition digital release, priced £9.99. the bundle will comprise the 11-track remaster from 1994 plus twelve single tracks: lucky bag, free will (7" edit), feel every beat (7" remix), lean to the inside, second to none, disappointed (original mix), disappointed (7" mix), feel every beat (dna remix), disappointed (12" remix), lucky bag (miami edit), idiot country two (aka ultimatum mix) and gangster (fbi mix). heads up to kim pedersen on new order online. in other news, david nolan’s authoritative biography of bernard sumner—confusion: joy division, electronic and new order versus the world—is published tomorrow by independent music press. as well as comprehensive research and a wealth of fresh interviews, the story is complemented by candid and illuminating comments from sumner himself.

thursday 23 august 2007 :: johnny marr in issue 55 of the word: “with electronic, our ambition with every song was to have the beauty and drama of ennio morricone, the innovation of kraftwerk, the attitude of a young british rock band and be super-catchy and modern too. i’m super-proud of electronic but we tied ourselves up in knots, day after day and week after week, developing ideas to fulfil that ambition. i don’t agree that electronic was an out-of-time oddity—the best of is a really great record—but we were never going to be able to sit with new order and the smiths. the weight of our history meant we were always going to be judged as second best before we even played a note. let me see someone cross the smiths with joy division, in all its forms, with all the characters involved; it’s not going to happen. but i’m alright with that.”

tuesday 7 august 2007 :: the ubiquitous johnny marr appears in this month’s q magazine (issue 254) to talk through several highlights of his career; among the records spotlighted is the first electronic lp (the ‘techno pop album’). “i didn’t get into a partnership with the best electronic musician in the uk to sound like the kinks, but i think bernard would say the mirror of that. he wanted to hear kinks riffs and i wanted to hear kraftwerk. there’d be times i’d stop playing guitar because it sounded a bit too johnny marr and he’d have his head in his hands. but in spite of us trying to write acid house 12-inchers, the singles forced themselves out. feel every beat was something i’d written for a planned solo album that never happened, and i’m immensely proud of get the message. that’s maybe the track i’m most proud of out of my whole career. electronic was bernard’s name. we came up with it the day peter saville came down and begged us for a name so he could finish the sleeve. bernard took it off an air-conditioning unit. lucky we didn’t end up being called electronic heat. before that, he wanted to call us sell your body. can you imagine?”

thursday 7 june 2007 :: johnny marr was interviewed for this month’s mojo magazine, pdf files of which can be found on his official website. electronic are given the customarily brief mention: “with the first album, there are some things in there i really love. i think get the message is sublime. but we wanted to do something of the times, the idea being that pop music is supposed to be absolutely of its time. on a much more personal level, there were very few people who i’d’ve been able to relate to at that time, who understood what it was like to be in a diy, indie, worldwide-successful northern band, who were burned out, and who wasn’t particularly impressed by that. and the thing that was gratifying was that i got higher in the charts with electronic than i ever did with the smiths. it was a fucking great time.”