Trivia / Movement

• Creator Backlash: In a questionnaire interview with the fanzine Artificial Life (No.2, Nov. 1982), the band were asked if they were happy with the album to which they replied, "We were happy with the songs, not all happy with the production." Peter Hook later revealed:
  We were confused musically ... Our songwriting wasn't coming together. I don't know how we pulled out of that one. I actually liked Movement, but I know why nobody else likes it. It was good for the first two-and-a-half minutes, then it dipped.
• Creator Breakdown: The album was recorded less than a year after Ian Curtis' suicide, and the lingering grief felt by his bandmates is very much present in the songs' expressly dour tone. If Closer was a prolonged suicide note, Movement can be considered a case study into the aftermath of a suicide.
• In Memoriam: The album as a whole is New Order's tribute to Ian Curtis.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: In April of 2019, the album was reissued in a "Definitive Edition" package. This bundle included not only remastered CD and LP copies of Movement, but also an extra CD filled with previously unreleased demos, alternate versions, and the 7" version of "Temptation", a DVD chronicling various live performances from 1981-1983, and a 48-page hardcover coffee table book filled with various photographs, posters, prints, an essay on the album, and a transcript of New Order's first press interview.
• Troubled Production: The recording of Joy Division's first two albums were fraught enough, thanks to their Mad genius producer Martin Hannett, but this paled in comparison to New Order's debut. Following the suicide of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, the band, now re-christened New Order, struggled to write new songs without their singer and de facto musical director. Unwilling to outright replace Curtis, the surviving band members took turns singing (to varying degrees of success), before eventually settling on guitarist Bernard Sumner, and recruiting drummer Stephen Morris' girlfriend, Gillian Gilbert, to assist with keyboards/guitar. These struggles were exasperated in the studio by Hannett's heavy alcohol/drug abuse, his deteriorating relations with their label, Factory Records, and his belief that the musicians were 'talentless wankers' without their former singer. The resulting album was a critical and commercial disaster on its release but has now somewhat been Vindicated by History. In the wake of its failure, New Order ditched Hannett and struck out on their own, resulting in their Signature Song "Blue Monday".

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