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kottke.org posts about New Order

How Disco Made Pop Songs Longer

In the latest episode of Earworm, Estelle Caswell notes that the length of a pop single was rarely more than 3m30s because you couldn’t fit any more than that onto a 7-inch 45rpm single without sacrificing audio quality. But in the 70s, DJs in NYC clubs started playing longer songs for a prolonged dance floor groove and eventually the higher-capacity 12-inch single was born.

Fun fact: the bestselling 12-inch single of all time is New Order’s Blue Monday, which was released in 1983 and clocked in at 7m29s long. Take a listen.


Old Order: Blue Monday

Watch as Orkestra Obsolete plays a version of New Order’s Blue Monday using only instruments that would have been available in the 1930s, including the diddley bow, the harmonium, the zither, the theramin, and the musical saw. (via @tcarmody)


These are not the fonts you are looking for

Peter Saville, the British designer closely associated with Factory Records, is offering free downloads of some of the fonts he used in designing record sleeves and other work for New Order, Joy Division, and other Factory Records artists (see update below).

Saville Fonts

(thx, mark)

Update: Several Peter Saville fans from around the world have written in to say that the above site is not Peter Saville’s official site (this is). It’s also unclear whether those fonts were indeed made by Saville (probably not) or ever offered for download free of charge (probably definitely not). But they’re still neat fonts, so download at your own risk.

Update: Kai has identified some of the fonts offered as shoddy versions of the following:

Joy Division Closer - Trajan (Adobe)
Blue Monday - Engravers Gothic (Bitstream)
New Order 1981 - Futura (Bauer)
New Order 1993 - Handel Gothic (Linotype)
New Order Ceremony - Albertus (Mecanorma)
New Order 316 - BT Incised 901 (Bitstream) = Antique Olive (Linotype)
New Order Regret - Rotis Serif (Agfa)

In this case, you get what you pay for, I guess.