Live From Jodrell Bank With New Order 2013

Jodrell Bank is considered by many to be somewhat of a Northern institution. You may affectionately remember or, perhaps, exert a great deal of effort in attempting to permanently expunge vivid recollections of wandering the site on field trips during bitterly cold winters. It’s a setting that inspires awe and a gawping, slack-jawed wonderment as you come to grips with just how truly colossal the Lovell Telescope which looms menacingly over the site really is.

Science isn’t usually synonymous with rock ‘n’ roll. Yet, the events held at this magnificent site flawlessly merged those two entities together. It feels as though they shouldn’t co-exist, which is, bizarrely, why it worked so perfectly. A wonderfully diverse, cross generational audience had turned out early on an absolutely glorious afternoon - even treated to, or subjected to, depending on how you’d view it, to a brief onstage, avant-garde lecture by astrophysicist, Tim O’ Brian. Initially greeted with rather ironic cheers, Tim admirably attempted a brief ‘layman’s’ lesson in radio pulsars to thousands of inebriated students. CP1919, discovered by Jocelyn Bell in 1967, is recognised as the first radio pulsar ever discovered. As the image of the wave slowly began to take shape on the screen, the previously ironic cheers now slowly morphed into a stunned muttering, as it became clear to many that the image strongly resembles that of the artwork which adorns the cover of Joy Divisions seminal album, ‘Unknown Pleasures’. As impressive as the avant-garde 101 in pulsars was, the vast majority had come to see two far more familiar Northern institutions and post-modern Mancunian icons.

Ex-Smith Johnny Marr is looking reborn at present. With his latest solo LP ‘The Messenger’ well received by both the press and, more importantly, the fans, it seems to have instilled a new sense of vigour within the honorary Salford doctorate. His set, littered with Smiths classics ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’, ‘How Soon Is Now?’ and ‘Stop Me’, nestled tidily in and amongst the new material -both greeted equally with the foot stomping nod of the “oldies” who experienced it the first time around, and the youthful, exuberant pogoing of teenagers clad in Hatful Hollow t-shirts with smiles dripping from their faces as they experienced these gems of popular music history for the first time. The Smiths tracks inevitably retain that classic feel, yet are demanding a new lease of life after all these years. With Marr’s Jaguar slung over his shoulder and low to the waist, his inimitable playing style seamlessly merged the old with the new, before being joined onstage by Bernard Sumner, and drawing the set to a close with an extended version of ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’.

The strange and ethereal setting only grew in mystique as a picturesque day was followed by a similar evening. The telescope, which had lay all but dormant throughout the day, had now moved subtlety to face the crowd full on. Or, as subtle a 3000-tonne steel structure can be, at least. As New Order took to the stage, smashing through hits ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Ceremony’, ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ and ‘Regret’, the telescope began to slowly flicker into life, with faceless bowl now being transformed into a 250ft projector.

Dazzling green lasers emanated in circular rays from the centre of the dish beaming down onto the crowd, while smoke machines bellowed from corners of the arena until the dish and the entire site became shrouded in a dense layer of smoke. It made the structure so dimly visible, the ultra modern art projected onto the screen looked as though a giant vortex had opened in the night sky, mimicking that of a Hollywood blockbuster alien invasion. It was, to put it simply, possibly the single most spectacular visual display I’ve personally ever seen. New Order returned for an oncore, which featured no less than three Joy Division classics – ‘Atmosphere’, ‘Shadowplay’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ – to which a montage of haunting images captured of the late Ian Curtis was then shown and greeted with the fanatical devotion that Joy Division fans are usually attributed with for their beloved icon.

Two Door Cinema very recently bemoaned older acts simply relying on nothing but nostalgia and accused some of being over the hill. Which, quiet frankly, isn’t a fair assumption. Nor is it as big a problem in reality as it must be in their collective mind. These songs are clearly still as relevant today as they were at the time of their release, and as they will be in another twenty-years time. A new generation always comes in to search for a counterculture that wasn’t their own, yet feel it best represents them. So, if tonight was what it’s like to experience nothing but pure nostalgia…I want more. And, so did everyone else.