New Order: Low-Life Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.5

New Order: Low-Life Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 20, 2026

Those who are self confessed rabid completists (ahem) may be slightly bothered by the fact that Warner Music's UK division has for unknown reasons decided to skip over New Order's second album, Power, Corruption and Lies, in its recent trifecta of hi res audio Blu-ray releases of the band's early work. The recently reviewed New Order: Movement was their first foray under their "rebranding", and Low-Life came after that aforementioned sophomore effort and was in fact the band's first album to chart in the good old United States. Low-Life shows some interesting growth from the band in terms of general style and songcraft. As with the other albums in this first wave of releases, Low-Life offers new(ish) remixes, including an Atmos track, by the venerable Steven Wilson.

The album's tracklist can be seen in screenshot 9 of the disc's submenu showing the tunes. Screenshot 10 shows the main menu the disc boots to.

New Order: Low-Life Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Perhaps appropriately as with the correctly titled Movement, there is a bit of animation on the video side of things with Low- Life. As with the earlier disc, everything is one a loop, but in this case that involves more than mere geometric shapes moving around the frame. Here both photos and the band's name enter and exit (photos laterally, band name vertically). I've attempted to give a variety of screenshots to help indicate what happens.

New Order: Low-Life Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

New Order: Low-Life features Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and (several, including instrumental only) LPCM 2.0 options. Much as with the previous album's hi res audio outings, in the surround mixes Steven Wilson can offer both simultaneous engagement of all the surround channels for shared sonic information and at other times clearly discrete channelization, including some really fun ping ponging effects. Songs like Love Vigilantes and Sunrise can tend to exploit simultaneous emanations from all of the channels of a lot of the same material (Sunrise does later start to offer more discrete use of various channels). The album's second track, The Perfect Kiss, offers arguably the first really fun and noticeable moment of what might be called a 21st century riff on the old wide stereo imaging strategies of early pioneers like Enoch Light, though in this case the opening percussion and then added instrumentation ping pong both front to back and side to side. Face Up opens with some of the same really enjoyable ping ponging action that has sections of riffs kind of assaulting the listener from different directions. Tunes like This Time of Night and others tend to position vocals toward the front channels, leaving the side and rear to pick up instruments. The gentle opening of Elegia, probably my own personal favorite track on this album, wafts noticeably through the soundstage before the guitar solo takes command front and center. I frankly didn't hear a whale of a lot of difference between the 2023 and 2024 stereo iterations, though I might be cajoled into saying that somewhat like with Movement, albeit this time with the newer 2024 track, there's maybe a bit more brightness in the upper midrange.

New Order: Low-Life Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

All three of the New Order audio Blu-ray come packaged in cardboard sleeves (no plastic trays, hence not Digipaks). An insert booklet is housed in the left pocket which includes an interesting interview with Stephen Morris. Morris also offers a separate piece on Atmos audio which audiophiles should find fun. Steven Wilson adds a bit of background vis a vis one unavoidable omission in the 2024 mixes as well:

As Stephen refers to in his notes above, the sample of Jeffery Bernard that gives the album its title, and which occurred at the beginning of 'This Time of Night', could not be located for the remix. It's not present on the multitrack tape, so we came to the conclusion that it must have been 'flown in' from another source when the original stereo was being mixed down. Despite the band attempting to recollect exactly where it came from, and subsequent trawling of the internet and BBC archives for any all 3.B. documentary footage, we just couldn't locate the exact piece of dialogue. We also tried to use extraction software to remove the voice from the original track, but it's just too quiet in the mix to make this possible. So what you hear in the nex mis is a few words before the drums tart which are taken from the original stereo master, after which the voice is not present.

New Order: Low-Life Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Low-Life maybe ironically given its title finds the band in decidedly more elevated spirits than in their first album made in the wake of Ian Curtis' suicide. Steven Wilson has worked his considerable magic once again with the surround mixes, and Low-Life comes Highly recommended.