Of all of the Salford foursomes' albums between Movement and Republic, Technique seems to be regarded by certain critics, and even some of their most rabid fans, with a degree of rare noncommittal apathy. Dismissed at the time as the “Ibiza” album, the widely held perception on it's release was that it embodied the pitfalls of their over indulgence in artisan remixers, with the resulting concoction sounding like it was a remix of a New Order album.
Even speaking in "True Faith: An Armchair Guide to New Order", the less than critically reproachful Dave Thompson describes it as “…unquestionably a child of it’s time” (The period in question being the Madchester era – despite Technique’s release predating The Stone Roses eponymous debut by almost 10 months) and then by his own standards going on to opine savagely that it “…loses much of it’s appeal if you should ever tire of the epoch it evokes”.
Much of that opinion was formed, you may think, in reaction to the band’s well publicized activities whilst on the white island, as an initial four months located at Mediterranean Studios resulted in a few drum tracks, but primarily a newly gained public reputation for rock star entertainment. Finished off (Or more accurately started) at Peter Gabriel’s studio in the less hedonistic British city of Bath, if Technique is to be associated with any place in the world other than Manchester, it should surely have been Detroit; had opener "Fine Time" been stripped of it’s cliched blaxploitation vocal and then quietly released under a pseudonym by say, Juan Atkins or Marshall Jefferson, it would've immediately been hailed as a techno classic.
Two and a half years after the at best patchy Brotherhood, it also probably suffers in purists eyes from being the first New Order album which commits the crime of sidelining the group's traditional chassis. This heresy – neutering Peter Hook’s blood-axe in preference for banks of computer generated melodies whilst the rhythm giver fumbles around in the mix sounding like a lost child – is in fact what made Technique so compulsive and accessible. Look, it’s still patently a New Order album; "All The Way" sounds like a cleaned up cousin to anything on Brotherhood, "Run" takes the thread back even further to Low-Life and "Guilty Partner" into eons past via Power, Corruption and Lies.
Article comments
1 - zingzing
hmm. i've nearly always heard of technique as one of their best. maybe lowlife gets a bit more street cred (god knows why...), but this one is usually in the mix.
really, you must have read everything written about the album that i haven't, and vice versa. it's a divisive album in many ways. those people who don't like it really don't like it. but most people seem to like it a lot. i think it might be their best, but it depends on what mood i'm in. it is, at least, their most solid album, front to back.
as far as it being stuck in a certain time, that may be true for fine time... but not much of the rest of the album really screams ibiza. i think that part of its history is given a little too much credit. fine time was certainly made in 89 (or 88), but the rest sounds like a new order album made in the 80s (when they were gods), nothing more.
(and the vocal on fine time is cliche... but hilarious--and i think the hilarity wins out.)
good review, even if i don't think your tone is properly reverent of one of the greatest albums of the decade... blahblahblah. going to check and see if you've reviewed any of the other reissues... i've heard the sound quality on some of bonus tracks is just terrible, like it was mastered from the vinyl... got any words on that?
2 - Andy Peterson
Hi, thanks for the comments (I think!). I don't have any words on the other re-issues or the sound quality of their "bonus" material - Stephen Morris had already described much of that content pre-release as coming from tapes which had been in storage unplayed for more than 20 years so my expectations weren't very high. I'm not sure I should show anybody any "reverence", I like what I like - don't forget that once a song is realeased it's no longer the property of the artist but the person who's consuming it. Technique means the most to me as a New Order album only because I finally got what I thought they were trying to do. It was also - if nothing else symbolically - their last release on Factory, although having written that I'm not sure I'm just swapping revisionism for nostalgia, wishing the label could somehow still exist whilst choosing to ignore some of the dross Wilson's curio released. With the band on permanent hiatus however, it seems that leftover anachronisms are the best we can hope for.