New Order, olden style: A unique take on Blue Monday
7 March 2022
New Order's Blue Monday was released on 7 March 1983, and its cutting-edge electronic groove changed pop music forever. But what would it have sounded like if it had been made 50 years earlier? In a special film, using only instruments available in the 1930s - from the theremin and musical saw to the harmonium and prepared piano - the mysterious Orkestra Obsolete present this classic track as you've never heard it before.

Orkestra Obsolete: Blue Monday
What would New Order's classic have sounded like in 1933?
Diddley bow

Hammered dulcimer

Harmonium

Zither

Musical saw

Singing glasses

The history of Blue Monday
Blue Monday by New Order is the biggest selling 12” single of all time. It was created using a hand-built Powertron Sequencer driving a Moog Source synthesiser, and an Oberheim DMX drum machine.

Clocking in at seven and half minutes, it's one of the longest songs ever to grace the UK singles chart, where it peaked at No9 in 1983, and at No3 when re-released in 1988. The original artwork, designed for Factory Records by Peter Saville, was famously so expensive to produce that the label lost money on every sale.
Bernard Sumner has said of Blue Monday: “I don’t really see it as a song. I see it as a machine designed to make people dance.”
Related Links
Theremin

Prepared piano

Slit drum

Dulcitone

Other instruments

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