Released 40 years ago this week (listen to the original EP version here), New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ became, according to the BBC, ‘a pivotal link between Seventies disco and the dance/house boom that began in the late Eighties. .” If you frequented a dance club in the 80s, you know the song.
The original “Blue Monday” never quite won me over. I’m much more Rolling Stones than New Order. But I am interested in the adaptation above. This version, created by the “Orchestra Obsolete”, attempts to imagine what the song would have sounded like in 1933, using only the instruments available at the time – for example, the BBC writes, a theremin, a musical saw, a harmonium and a prepared piano. Quite a change from the Powertron Sequencer, Moog Source synth and Oberheim DMX drum machine used to record the song in the 80’s. Enjoy this little thought experiment put into practice.
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Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2016.
Related Content:
Radiooooo: A music time machine that lets you hear what was played on the radio at different times and places
Soviet inventor Léon Theremin demonstrates the Theremin, an early electronic instrument that could be played without being touched (1954)
Meet the “Telharmonium”, the first synthesizer (and predecessor to Muzak), invented in 1897
