New Order - Power, Corruption & Lies

This is just wonderful. This is where New Order finally left behind the post-Joy Division sound of "Movement" and discovered something all their own.

Power, Corruption & Lies is revolutionary. Little like this existed at the time, and even now this LP has something different about it.

"Your Silent Face" is great, and "Ecstasy" is brilliant. The Peter Saville cover gives nothing away, which just adds to the album.

What looks like a colour wheel on the sleeve back is actually a key to deciphering the codes on the sleeve edges of Blue Monday, Confusion and this release. The outer ring of the wheel represents every letter in the alphabet with the solid bars doubling as numbers 1-9. The solid light green strip pointing "north" represents the letter "A" (and 1) the solid yellow bar to the right is "B" (and 2)and so-on ending with the split bar of pink and yellow for "Z". The first four boxes on Power Corruption and Lies decode as FACT, the last is split into two for the numbers 7 and 5.

I personally think this is New Order's best long player - with 'Age of Consent', '586' and 'Your Silent Face' you just can't go wrong for an introduction to THE best band in the world. And of course, it's all produced by Martin Hannett - bloody genius.