Analogue #02: In the studio with Joy Division and New Order’s Stephen Morris

Presenting the second episode in our short film series Analogue, a profile of the musicians whose love affair with analogue sound has come to define the way they work.

“I just like that you’ve got a machine that’s very physical and tactile and this thing that if I do this, I don’t really know what it will do but it might be good.”

Following our short film inside Matthew Herbert’s beach-side studio retreat, we travelled up to Macclesfield to visit Joy Division and New Order drummer Stephen Morris.

Finding a home for his studio in a converted farm house over-looking the Peak District, Morris has, by his own admission, build a charmingly haphazard recording environment, marrying his love for analogue gear with a live set-up, supplementing his work with New Order (whose new album dropped last year) with that of an active producer.

Inheriting this passion from legendary Factory Records producer Martin Hannett, who, along with German producer Conny Plank, pioneered the use of the studio as an instrument in recording, Morris finds kinship in the very human inconsistencies of analogue equipment, paralysed by the surfeit of choice in digital production, which he believes has had a homogenising effect on modern music.

Look out for the next episode on Analogue and the extended transcript from this interview, forthcoming on The Vinyl Factory.