Joy Division and New Order Drum Machines: Stephen Morris’s Gear

Stephen Morris once said he’d always wanted to be a drum machine. Across Joy Division and New Order he got his wish, one box at a time: a drum synth on Unknown Pleasures, a frustrating Roland on Closer, a cheap Boss on New Order’s first album, and an Oberheim on “Blue Monday”. Here’s the gear, in his own words where I could find them, and how to get the sound yourself.

Hexagonal electronic drum pad with knobs on a small stand beside a snare drum under a spotlight — A drum synth beside a real snare: the Joy Division mix of human and electronic. (Illustration)

Joy Division: real drums and a Synare

Let’s clear up one myth first. Unknown Pleasures (1979) doesn’t use a drum machine. Morris played a real kit, which by then was a Hayman bass drum with Premier toms and snare, and producer Martin Hannett recorded it in pieces so he could process each drum separately.

The electronic sounds come from a Synare 3, a drum synthesiser you hit with sticks. Morris told Attack magazine it’s on “She’s Lost Control”, “Disorder” and “Insight”. The “Insight” sound is the bit he describes as “a flock of pigeons”. On “She’s Lost Control” he says he used it for the “tschak-tschak” noises, “not playing a snare drum like a snare drum”. Several accounts add that the famous hiss on the song includes a can of aerosol tape-head cleaner sprayed in time. That story is widely repeated, but I haven’t found Morris confirming it himself.

Closer: the Roland CR-78

Hannett didn’t like the Synare. For Closer (1980), Morris said, Hannett told him to get a drum machine for “Decades”, and he ended up with a Roland CR-78 CompuRhythm, the box behind “Heart of Glass” and “Enola Gay”. It drove him “potty”. He’d bought the start-stop pedal rather than the programming one, so it never did what the manual promised. He’s said that experience put him off computers for years.

Unbranded vintage rack drum machine with rows of square buttons and glowing red LEDs — Program the beat, then let the machine play. (Illustration)

New Order’s Movement: the Boss DR-55 on “Truth”

After Ian Curtis died, the band carried on as New Order. On their first album, Movement (1981), Hannett got them a deal on “a little battery-operated Dr. Rhythm”. Morris has said it was easy to program because it only had two buttons. That’s the Boss DR-55, and he has confirmed they did the song “Truth” on it. He’s also said he tried a version of “In a Lonely Place” with it that “didn’t work out too well”.

It’s the same cheap box that started the Sisters of Mercy’s Doktor Avalanche, and the one fans credit for The Cure’s Carnage Visors. There’s more on both in my Sisters of Mercy guide and what drum machine The Cure used.

Blue Monday: the Oberheim DMX

“Blue Monday” (1983) is the big one. Its juddering intro beat was programmed on an Oberheim DMX, and MusicRadar says the band based it on a pattern from a Donna Summer album track produced by Giorgio Moroder. The voices on the track came from an E-mu Emulator sampler, Morris says.

You’ll often read that Morris forgot the original beat, or kicked a lead out and lost it, and had to reprogram it. He says the forgetting story is “not true”. The lead story, he says, came from a roadie bringing a cable only a foot long, so he had to program the machine sitting on the floor.

When the band went to New York to record “Confusion” with Arthur Baker, they turned up with no gear and used Baker’s Roland TR-808.

Empty nightclub dance floor with magenta and blue light beams in haze behind a mixing desk — Where the drum machines took them: the dance floor. (Illustration)

Later years: Drumulator and Akai samplers

By “True Faith” (1987), producer Stephen Hague brought an E-mu Drumulator. By Technique (1989) the band were running a Mac with simple drum software and “loads” of Akai samplers. Before quantising was easy, Morris said, they would sample every drum and reprogram the whole backing track: “I basically turned myself into a drum machine.”

How to get that sound

Separate everything. The Hannett approach: record or program each drum on its own track, keep them dry, then add delay and reverb to each one separately.
Swap the snare for noise. For a “She’s Lost Control” feel, replace or layer the snare with a short white-noise burst from a synth or drum synth.
Use toms as the groove. Joy Division beats ride on the toms, with cymbals kept low.
Go cheap for early New Order. A DR-55-style kit of kick, snare, rim and hats, and nothing else.
Go punchy for Blue Monday. DMX-style samples, a sixteenth-note kick fill and a sequenced bass locked to it.

For hardware ideas, see my Gear Desk on the Roland TR-606 and the older Post Punk Drum Machines and Other Gear. If you’d rather prompt it than program it, try How to Get a Goth/Post-Punk Sound in Suno.

Sources: Stephen Morris, “A Career in Gear”, Attack Magazine (2019); Stephen Morris interview, The Electricity Club; MusicRadar on “Blue Monday”.