The album was a commercial and critical success, spawning originally three singles "Get The Message", "Tighten Up", & "Feel Every Beat", the 1989's "Getting Away With It" was later included, this aided the album to reach number 2 in the United Kingdom and selling over a million copies worldwide
The alliance between Marr and Sumner first dated back to 1983 when Bernard was producing Quando Quango and asked Johnny to contribute to two tracks – Love Tempo and Atom Rock. Although mutual admirers of each other's work, both had reservations about whether they would actually get on. Sumner thought Marr would be “a stuck-up little twat who lived in Altrincham”, while Johnny's perception of Barney was as a "post-industrial doom merchant who wore jackboots".
Surprising to both parties, they shared a lot musical influences and that became the basis for a long-term (if often long-distance) friendship. Over the course of the next few years, their paths occasionally crossed as each traversed their own path to musical infamy (they next shared a bill at Manchester's G-Mex for the Festival of Tenth Summer in 1986), or discovered the latest happenings in each others' lives as they were relayed via Chinese whispers throughout Manchester’s incestuous clique of artists, roadies and liggers. Everyone knows everyone in Manchester,” Sumner said. Even though it’s a big city, it’s like a village with a small musical community. The Smiths and New Order nearly always used the same road crew.
By 1988, both Sumner and Marr had found themselves in a state of limbo. Relations within New Order were fractious to say the least, with the band's creative disagreements turning their recording sessions into a pressure cooker environment threatening to boil over at any minute.
Feeling his ideas to introduce a more up sound into the next New Order record were too good to waste, Bernard began working on tracks with a view to releasing them as a solo album (an early version of Gangster was one of these ideas), but the solitary nature of spending drawn-out days in New Order's rehearsal rooms, ostracised from any other signs of life – literally, as the studio backed onto a huge graveyard, proved too much for him.
Meanwhile, the death of The Smiths was equally problematic for Marr, who dragged himself out of an alcohol and drug-fuelled quagmire to act as professional guitar-slinger for artists such as The Pretenders, Billy Bragg, Bryan Ferry and Kirsty MacColl before joining Matt Johnson's The The.
"Playing guitar as a session musician was all I wanted from life at the time," Marr later told Melody Maker. "I'd had enough of being in groups – I didn't want the responsibility. With Electronic, I set out to prove something to myself – that I needn't be so disillusioned making and putting out my own records."
After hearing that Bernard wanted him to collaborate on some music he was working on, Johnny flew to San Francisco where New Order were on tour with Echo & The Bunnymen to discuss it, with the idea of a union emerging as an attractive prospect for both. Sumner realised he hadn't worked well in exile and "needed someone to bounce off", while it was an opportunity for Marr to flex his creative muscle again on a commitment-free basis after two years of playing sessions. After discussing a direction, the pair agreed that the project should be electronic in nature as well as name, with an emphasis on dance music, a genre they were both passionate about.
After wrapping the New Order tour, Bernard returned home to begin work with Johnny on Electronic. Though they developed an instant musical rapport, Electronic got off to a few false starts with both frequently called on to fulfil obligations with their other bands – Bernard with New Order's World In Motion, and Johnny with The The. Finding themselves restricted to odd weekends or short periods of time to work on music, they deduced if the band was to succeed, they needed to allocate lengthy periods to focus solely on their new venture, at which point everything began to click into place.
While working on artwork for a forthcoming Pet Shop Boys release, Factory Records designer Mark Farrow mentioned Electronic to Neil Tennant, who contacted the guys to express an interest in working on the project, too. A hastily arranged writing and recording session with the Pet Shop Boys resulted in Electronic's debut single, Getting Away With It.
Materialising within hours of their first meeting, Sumner referred to the session as "coming up with the goods on demand" as time in the studio together was limited. Released in December 1989, it reached No.12 in the UK, sold over 350,000 copies and made an impact Stateside, marking the official launch of the group.
The release of the single offered a beacon of hope to fans that an album was imminent while the truth was it was nowhere near completion. Though they had worked on music, the manner in which they did so meant that there were very few complete songs ready. The main concept behind the album was independence – a sense of freedom away from groups, sessions and preconceived notions, Bernard explained: "The album wasn't actually demoed – we kept everything on computer as long as possible to enable arrangements and keys to be altered when the vocals were written. On parts that were performed live, there was no rehearsal. Once the words were written they were recorded immediately to tape."
With endless hours of music recorded during jam sessions and get-togethers with musician mates, Bernard and Johnny were forced to begin formulating it into finished tracks in the spring of 1990 when they were presented with the offer of opening for Depeche Mode on the Los Angeles dates of their mammoth Violator Tour. "Basically, we committed ourselves to playing a gig in LA in front of 60,000 people so we thought we’d better finish the songs off,"
By the time they took to the stage at LA’s Dodger Stadium on 4 and 5 August 1990 (both, they later admitted, off their faces – Marr on acid and Sumner so drunk he "filled the shower in the dressing room full of puke" afterwards, they had not only completed the tracks, but also had to work out a way to create the studio wizardry live. Having formulated a semblance of what the record was going to sound like, Electronic played eight new songs at the gigs, alongside Getting Away With It.
While fans and critics alike raved over the new tracks (even though some were adapted further and/or renamed before release), the shows revealed aspects to some of the songs that Johnny and Bernard weren’t completely happy with.
Upon returning home, they worked tirelessly to finish the album. “In the early stages, we were taking our time, messing about and collecting ideas because we were enjoying it,” Johnny told Melody Maker. “But later we worked really hard on it – we’re both perfectionists.”
The album opener "Idiot Country" was audacious and daring, in an arresting manner befitting its subject matter – the criminalisation of public gatherings in the late-80s that was a direct attack on the rave scene. It fused blistering beats and Marr’s wah-wah guitar, over which Sumner delivered an impassioned rap lamenting the downfall of rave. "Reality" was the first song Marr and Sumner wrote together, cementing their instant musical chemistry. Based on a sparse beat, it draws heavily on a Euro-dance influence and bears a passing resemblance to Sumner’s Rockin’ Over Manchester Remix of Technotronic’s Rockin’ Over The Beat, next was "Tighten Up", typified the sound expected by fans when Electronic was first conceptualised – a seamless fusion of The Smiths' guitars and New Order's emotive dance. An opening salvo of stabbing synths dissipates to give way to a classic slice of guitar-driven punchy-pop with Marr's unmistakable strumming evoking some of his best work with The Smiths.
"The Patience Of A Saint" as if the alliance of Sumner and Marr wasn't enough to justify Electronic's supergroup credentials, the addition of the Pet Shop Boys’ Tennant and Lowe was affirmation. Regarded by many as the weakest of Electronic’s Tennant-voiced trilogy, The Patience Of A Saint was nevertheless a solid slice of dance pop, with a hypnotic dance beat and lush synths pulsing beneath a subtle exchange between Tennant and Sumner about insensitivity and selfishness, "Gangster" was one of the earliest tracks written for the album, Gangster began life as a solo Bernard Sumner composition when he was planning to release an album. It was later reworked with Marr for the Electronic album. Dealing with the subject of injustice, Gangster was born of frustration after a friend of Sumner's was jailed for minor drug offences, receiving a harsher sentence than criminals who had committed far worse crimes. "Soviet" perhaps the most harshly criticised song on the album – with many complaining that earlier single Getting Away With It would have been better on the record – this two-minute instrumental represented the political issues in Russia at the time. "Soviet was a point where we met in our love for Ennio Morricone and instrumental mood music, not ambient but atmospheric music," said Marr.
Next was "Get The Message" which was the perfect
fusion of The Smiths' guitar pop and New Order's electro leanings,
completed by a typically acerbic delivery from Bernard Sumner, before
culminating with an incredible vocal from singer Denise Johnson,
previously best known for her work on Primal Scream's Screamadelica.
According to Sumner, Marr created the music first and he recorded the
lyrics as he wrote them, "Try All You Want" was based
on a house beat, a strong synth line and emotive vocal dealing with the
complexities of relationships. The final version of the song differed
wildly from the original idea, which was much more guitar-based. It had
some really great guitar on it, but I took it off, and that’s the only
time I’ve ever done that, Marr recalls, "Some Distant Memory"
was an album highlight, lamenting the disintegration of a meaningful
relationship, longing for a return to the euphoria of new love with a
clipped beat before succumbing to an unexpected glorious oboe finale,
concluding the song on a sombre note, and finally "Feel Every Beat" it was raw, funky groove, a dance-rock hybrid which only opener Idiot Country
can competed with stylistically, the pair of tracks acting as sonic
bookends to the emotional journey that takes place between them.
The album received the maximum five stars cause its strength is in conflict ... The inexorable pounding of the beatbox versus the fragile sadness of Sumner's voice and the he's/she's leaving stories; the symmetry of the synthesized or sampled sounds versus the sheer blood and bone physicality of Marr's guitar", same praise receives in the USA regarding the record as an impressive and irresistibly tuneful.
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