The late nineteen eighties was responsible for some of my most favourite albums including My Bloody Valentine�s astonishing �isn�t anything� and A.R.Kane's �i� and �69�. Who can forget the Cocteau�s incomparable �Blue Bell Knoll�? (independent music�s equivalent of �Rumours� anyone?)

But one thing I will never forget is around the time that I started to �get� �Technique�. Many music journalists have covered the ground that Technique was special as it saw the band embrace the embryonic ibizan dance scene there is no doubt there is an element of truth in this but I believe that what makes it the album it is the sum of New Order�s parts in their past but operating on a level not seen before, namely Hooky�s fantastic bass lines, Gillian�s ambient keyboards, Stephens drum rhythms and Barney�s extraordinary guitar solos and existentialist lyrics.

I am biased of course I once spent the best part of two week holiday in Tenerife listening to �Substance� on my walkman.

Baleric-ly influenced it well could be but what makes Technique the complete masterpiece is the sense that it is break up music: the opening couplet of �Round and Round� is:

�I just can't help thinking what you've done to me,
You built a wall of love and tore it right down in front of me.�

There just seems to be an air of something guided effortless and cool about the proceedings and it had a nice purple cover.

The format owes much to the New Orders of previous eras just done with aplomb, mid paced guitar songs with lovelorn lyrics and rumbling bass-lines and real and synthetic drums.

Some of the lyrical concerns on the album concern the limitations of communication, for example:

�I used to feel what language cannot say�.

The guitar breaks on �Run� sound like the whole world is going to crash in.

�My life ain�t no holiday� sighs Barney amid swirling keyboard motifs and a faux Italia piano riff. As I said it�s break up music, but only of the very best kind.

Still, they so rarely put a foot wrong, from �World in Motion� to the excellent first Electronic album, and �Regret�, best single of the 90�s by a country mile, through to �Waiting for the Siren�s Call�.

And �Technique� just seems to cover so many of the bases that other acts tend to miss out.

Ally May was described by Brendan Cleary as the "William Carlos Williams of Fenham". Ally has done many readings and has also undertaken collaborations such as performing poetry with a trip-hop band and writing poems about an art exhibition to be performed at its launch. He received a Northern Arts writers award in 1998 and was a participant in New writing North's writer's brief scheme the same year. He says that his poems are about colours, the seasons and the weather. His poem dumbstruck was published in blissed out for 5, in 1997 by Neruda press (Glasgow). The Ally May Book of Shapes was published in September 2003 under the north-east based Sand imprint.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.