I just did the exercice of putting all the songs from New Order on a list and cut them to those I would included in a Top 20 so I can narrow it down again, and I finished with 21... so here is my top 21 of New Order songs.

But as I said on the forum, from 5 to 20, you can switch any songs and put it higher and lower, they are pretty all on the same level.

01 - Run

Run is my favorite New Order song from my favorite New Order album. Why? You'll see in this top 20 that I like mellow songs, as simple as that, and I find the ending of Run simply fantastic. The breakout for me was when I saw the video and everybody started spinning when the break starts... awesome.

02. Bizarre Love Triangle

I heard Substance for almost 2 years before I heard the album version, and I always enjoyed this song. One of the few pre-1990 I knew actually, it was simply purely enjoyable. When I heard the album version, I fell in love with the bass on it, and I just love the instrumental ending...

03. Your Silent Face

I can't be wrong, but this is a pure gem, the music is awesome, I can listen to it forever and never get bored. I prefer the actual live version as the one on In Sessions, as the melodica at the end is pretty good.

04. Waiting For The Sirens' Call

I was expecting too much of this track when I first heard it, but future proove it's a grower, and as incredible as it might seems, they managed to do killer remixes of it in a total different style. This is pure class and the proof that New Order are still able to do wonderful songs that will be there for ages.

05. All Day Long

One of the best instrumental piece out of all New Order's album... and with Run, probably the best instrumental ending of it all. Never cease to amaze me each time I listen to it.

06. Leave Me Alone

Once again, awesome music... can't get enough of it. Could last 20 mins and I wouldn't get bored of it. A pure gem.

07. Temptation

How can it be otherwise? Could be ranked anywhere in the top 20. Although I do prefer the 87 and 98 versions to the original.

08. Lonesome Tonight

My only problem with this track is I keep asking myself why did they release that as a b-side... it's purely enjoyable, and I love this a lot more than Thieves Like Us.

09. Ceremony

One great proof that this is a classic: I never heard a bad cover of it. Enjoyable, pure joy.

10. True Faith

Classic, big classic. The song that actually made me buy my first ever New Order related album. I don't like the current live version, but the original and Shep Pettibone's remix are ace.

11. Mr Disco

Once again, pure musical orgasm... I love this track, and always will. Some find it cheesy, I find it wonderful.

12. Turn My Way

This is my kind of songs. I still think today this is a missed opportunity of a solid Top 40 hit in America. I am a Billy Corgan fan, so it helps, but Hooky's bass is just wonderful on this one. Very difficult to sign in key I might add.

13. Dreams Never End

Vocals are, hum, generic, but the music of this one is pure genius. Hooky did a lot better with Monaco and Revenge than on this one. This has to be one of the best intro ever.

14. Dream Attack

The big duo from Technique coming up. No real reason, I just love them both.

15. Vanishing Point

Same as #14.

16. This Time of Night

Low Life's hidden gem according to me. Bernard might not be very on tune over it, but it's very catchy and enjoyable.

17. Everyone Everywhere

Guitar is amazing on this one, very good song to relax to.

18. Round & Round

I prefer the 12" version, though the ending of the album version is ace. Very catchy New Order song.. I just can't believe this was ignored here, should have been a hit.

19. Regret

I had my issues with this track... never really get to enjoy it..I don't dislike it and I don't love it.. and I listened to it way too much before Republic was released. Has to be one of Hooky's finest moments, and just for that it diserves a spot on my top 20.

20. Here To Stay

Another missed opportunity according to me. I just don't get why this song was not a massive hit, it had all the elements... this should have been on Get Ready and the 2nd single off the album, it would have been huge.

21. Crystal

Rockier New Order never felt so good. Purely enjoyable, and for once, backing vocals do work on a New Order track. I don't like the album version, cuts the power.. the radio version is just awesome, the piano break is pure joy.

I finally managed to do it, the first ever video podcast for NewOrderOnline Radio.

...and please don't expect too much, I did all this with my digital photo camera :-p

I have started to use Google Video to put some of the videos I have, to archive them and make them a little more easy to view for our members.

The first video is at the Aragon Ballroom on May 5th 2005. I was granted a photo pass by the band and a backstage pass as well, I couldn't believe my luck when I was right up there in front of the front row for the first 3 songs.

I managed to took a view video snippets,  for my own personal use, decided a year later to let it out so people can see it a little. The idea was to have a snippet of each song to remember the track listing, and at the end I decided to film the full Blue Monday to fill my memory card.

2 days later, on May 5th 2005, I was in New York City at the Hammerstein Ballroom and again with a photo pass. I did get a few clips, but I didn't do it on the rest of the show, especially since it was being filmed, but here are a few snippets since I was so close to the stage that I had to film this for the memories.

Once again, big thanks to New Order and their management for 2 nights to remember. Kudos!

Since some people are not able to use the media streaming server of NewOrderOnline, I had the idea today to post the videos on Google Video, which works with Flash, a technology every computer is able to run.

So I'll use the embedded player, and hopefully it will work, so here are the competitiors, and don't forget to vote before July 31st for the first round of voting. To vote, go on community.neworderonline.com and click on "Video" on the menu.

The Videos





 

Directed by Jonathan McCarthy of La Belle Alliance

Directed by Holger von Torne

Directed by François-Marc Loze, our french forum moderator.

Directed by David Church (aka His Holiness, The Pope on NewOrderOnline)

Directed by Daniel Hayes of Significant Effects

Those guys worked very hard and we were plesantly surprised by the outcome, and we are hoping you all are as well. I sent a DVD of the videos to Michael Shamberg, who is the producer of all the videos done by New Order, and he should submit his comments on the video. I have no idea if it will be soon or not, depends of his availabilty of course.

Good luck to all contestants!

I just posted episode 22 of NewOrderOnline Radio on the RSS podcast feed.

Somebody sent me tonight the full show in mp3 direct from the internet stream of the Summercase festival, and I thought sharing it with everybody was the best thing to do.

If you still don't know how to subscribe to the podcasts of NewOrderOnline Radio, I suggest you read this, this will explain to you how to do it with iTunes.

In case you haven't noticed, I entered a design in the Community 2 sleeve competition, and I thought I'd add a little "before/after" blog post. Explaining what I did.

First of all, I have seen a Joy Division wallpaper once that I liked very much, which is this one:

I really enjoy this picture and my original idea was to do something very similar with New Order and Joy Division streets, meaning that's the crossroad of their career.

In my quest of finding the best sign possible, I was unable to find one that would do the job, seriously, it's like in the city I live it, they put signs on stop panels, so there has been no way to find something that would work, although I could have continued hunting...

I decided on a rainy day to go to a place called "Le centre de la nature", which is the equivalent of Central Park for the city of Laval where I live, although obviously much smaller. I was alone in the park due to the rain and I know there would be wooden signs there, so I started to walk along the park, looking probably stupid to the park guards around. I decided to shoot all the signs from many angles. (The rest of the photo session can be found here).

When I got home, I decided to go with this one:

My original idea was simply to replace a few text by "New Order" and "Joy Division" so it wouldn't look altered, but when I started to play with it in Photoshop, I had new ideas, and this is when I started to play with New Order artworks and included them as well, this was actually pretty long to do, and I am not an expert with Photoshop, I turned the picture into sepia because I wanted to give it an edge, and here is the result:

This thing was done before my vacation in 1 day and I've been so busy that I have not been able to finish it, you can clearly see song text are not aligned properly and the reflections aren't all correct... but I promise that if I win, I'll fix everything...

If you enjoy it, you know what to do ;-)

Thanks.

I did change the interface to match what I did on my personal website, I really hope you will like it.

A few features are missing, which will be the rss feeds and the search, these should be added when I will upgrade NOOL to the new platform by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, enjoy this new interface, and hopefully this will create more activity in the blogs!