New Order returned to the Coachella stage on Saturday where they took on the headlining spot on the festival’s Mojave Stage. Before their highly anticipated gig, we joined them in their trailer to discuss what they’ve been up to since the release of 2011’s “Lost Sirens.” During our interview, Bernard Sumner and his bandmates informed us that following the positive reaction to their latest release, New Order is currently making plans to release some fresh material.
“What happened was, we wrote ‘Waiting For The Siren’s Call,’ and we wrote more songs than we needed. The idea was that we were going to write two albums but I think New Order had been guilty of going away a lot and we disappear from the face of the earth then come back a few years later with an album. I don’t think we want to do that this time,” explains Sumner.
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The New Order frontman explained that, following the reassembly of the band in 2011; they plan to remain active both on the road and in the studio.
“What we want to do, is keep a presence and just go away for a bit — like for example, when we finish this small West Coast tour and South American tour, we are gonna go back and we’ve got two months to do some writing. Then we go to Russia, Istanbul, and then we do a bit more writing and then we come back and play in the UK and then we come back and play the East Coast and America.”
The idea, according to Sumner, is to keep up the presence of the band, rather than slide off the radar. “We’ve never tried it before,” added.
Sumner says the new recording projects will follow a different direction than past releases. “We’re going to focus on a couple of tracks at a time. We’re not doing a whole album – not the way we used to,” added keyboardist/guitarist Gillian Gilbert, citing the reason for the new direction as a chance to provide the band with an opportunity to balance touring with providing fans with new music. “Instead of going away for two years and writing a record and coming back, we’re going to do it this way so we still have time to carry on the tour while putting stuff out. We don’t want to give up touring, but we don’t want to give up writing.”
Sumner and his bandmates are in the process of nailing down how they want to handle the release. “We’re thinking about doing about 4 songs at once. We’re still debating but I think what we’re going to try and do is a series of EPs then we’ll probably put them together as an album,” he said.
On the comical front, Sumner has what they consider the “perfect album idea:,” which they were dying to share with Billboard:
“I had an idea where we write an album but you cannot buy it. Instead of giving it out for free, which a lot of bands do now, we make the album. It’s a new concept now really and you write it but nobody can buy it.” Stephen Morris immediately nodded, adding that he is all for the idea. “We’d call it ‘Unavailable In Shops.” The cover would be “Image not available,” added Phil Cunningham.