New Order: Education Entertainment Recreation - Live Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

New Order: Education Entertainment Recreation - Live Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 22, 2021

It's kind of a tragedy that New Order was born in part out of the suicide of Ian Curtis of the perhaps ironically named Joy Division, a band which had also included Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Peter Morris. This surviving trio picked up the pieces as best they could (Curtis' suicide came just when Joy Division seemed on the verge of international success) and went on to form New Order, which has continued to grow and evolve its sound far beyond the kind of proto-punk atmosphere that at least some of the early Joy Division music offered. This concert was filmed on November 9, 2018 at Alexandra Palace in London and features the band wending their way through a rather appealing variety of music, even if some of the band's highest charting singles like "World in Motion" are kind of oddly in absentia. There are callbacks to the beginnings of the band vis a vis Joy Division, which may make longtime fans of the group(s) excited. There's a kind of almost EDM current running through the set list, with washes of synth and regular "four on the floor" percussion, keeping energy levels nicely high throughout the performance. Once again some may wish that the audience wasn't encouraged quite so much to join in "sing alongs", but there's a nice party atmosphere running through the concert. The band includes Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert, Phil Cunningham and Tom Chapman.

New Order's set list includes the following material:

1. Das Rheingold: Vorspiel
2. Singularity
3. Regret
4. Love Vigilantes
5. Ultraviolence
6. Disorder
7. Crystal
8. Academic
9. Your Silent Face
10. Tutti Frutti
11. Sub Culture
12. BLT
13. Vanishing Point
14. Waiting for the Sirens Call
15. Plastic
16. The Perfect Kiss
17. True Faith
18. Blue Monday
19. Temptation
20. Atmosphere
21. Decades
22. Love Will Tear Us Apart

New Order: Education Entertainment Recreation - Live Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

New Order: Education Entertainment Recreation is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of New Order Limited and Warner Music UK with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This is a striking looking presentation due to the almost nonstop onslaught of really aggressive stage lighting that is utilized, and while the palette here is appropriately suffused, often quite vividly so, some of the lighting choices don't necessarily support great fine detail levels. Some of the blue and green lit material in particular tend to wipe away things like wrinkles and facial pores. There are very occasional tips toward posterizing when the camera is aimed directly at a lighting source, as can perhaps be made out in screenshot 13 in particular. The combined use of strobes and projections don't lead to any really major resolution issues, but again can mask detail levels at times.

New Order: Education Entertainment Recreation - Live Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

New Order: Education Entertainment Recreation features winning DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 tracks. Once again I'm in the position of wishing that the vocals could have been mixed just a little more forward in the surround track in particular, but that said, even on the CDs, Bernard Sumner's vocals can occasionally get slightly buried in the wash of synths and the rhythm section in general. That one qualm aside, both tracks on the Blu-ray disc offer great clarity and the surround track in particular really provides some great mid-range and low level "oomph" that helps keeps things like the ubiquitous use of the kick drum energized. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are no subtitle options on the disc.

New Order: Education Entertainment Recreation - Live Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

While there are no on disc supplements included, this is a beautifully (if potentially inconvenient due to its unusual measurements) packaged release that is kind of like a wide digibook, with a number of kind of interesting, and potentially perplexing, stills included. There are also 2 CDs of the concert housed in the packaging along with the Blu-ray disc. For the record, and for those who need to examine their shelving situation to see if this thing will fit somehow, the package (in its slipcase) measures approximately 7 3/4" wide by 5 3/4" high by about 1" deep.

New Order: Education Entertainment Recreation - Live Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's refreshing in a way to see a band who takes the stage that admittedly has a huge projection screen and a battery of lights producing all kind of effects, but which is otherwise kind of shorn of "arena rock stagecraft". The band sounds nicely energized in this concert, with assured playing and some plangent vocals by Bernard Sumner. The concert's nonstop array of lighting changes sometimes keeps fine detail levels at bay, but does provide some visual interest. Audio is outstanding. The packaging, while quite distinctive and weirdly provocative (in terms of the photos included in the quasi- digibook), may provide obstacles for those wanting to house this with the rest of their Blu-ray (or even CD) collection. Recommended.