A bonus post for Saturday night, just because. Lots of people I know are off to Castlefield tonight to watch New Order. I hope they have a great time. I'm not going (wife is away overnight so I'm here with the kids) and I'm not getting into the whole debate I've spent some time having with different people about the current incarnation of the group.
In 1985 New Order released Lowlife, one of their many, many 80s peaks. On it, opening side two, was an instrumental called Elegia, a tribute to Ian Curtis. The version on the album was under five minutes. When the Retro boxed set came out in 2002 the bonus fifth disc contained the full length seventeen minute version. It is very beautiful and very long. And here it is...
Elegia (Full Length Version)
3 comments:
Never heard that version before. Wouldn't download as my computer showed it as "unsafe"
Hmmm. Dunno why that is. Zippyshare can be a bit of a pain at times.
Lowlife is the high point of New Order for me.
Elegia is such a moving piece of electronica, building out of the darkness in a sort of "John Carpenter-esque" way that is both chilling and entrancing. The specter of Ian Curtis cast a strong and intense shadow over the music of New Order five years on from his death and in many ways still to this day. Elegia certainly reflects a recognition of this fact. At the full version midpoint there's an unnerving rawness that begins to overwhelm music before the chaos is taken back up by the somber melody that drive the song to it's end and then begins to lift back up wards into a musical nether-space.
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