Listening to New Order was like what going online feels like now - a solitary experience that strangely links you to others.

In the early 1980s when New Order broke, New Order was a great way of being with three hundred people on a dance floor and still feeling alone: a happy kind of alone.

(Douglas Coupland)

If the music's got soul, it really has got soul, then it hooks into your soul and stays with you for the rest of your life. And I think some of New Order's music's got that. I don't know why. I don't know why.

(Bernard Sumner)