NOT too long ago, few observers would have put their money on ever hearing a new album, let alone witnessing live concerts, from New Order. But that's just what's come to pass, with a new album called Get Ready on release and a string of live shows, including sold-out hometown shows at the Manchester Apollo next Thursday and Friday.

In fact, even bassist Peter Hook wouldn't have expected it ever to happen after the fraught time they all had recording their 1993 album Republic, he admitted recently.

''Pottsy (Hook's partner in his other band Monaco) used to say to me after Republic ''you'll do another album.'' I just said there was no way on earth we would ever do another album. Not a chance.

''Those were awful days. You needed something to hide the pain,'' he says, recalling the sessions for Republic at Peter Gabriel's Real World studios near Bath.

''We were having meetings every day about how Factory was going bankrupt. It wasn't the greatest atmosphere in which to try to create joyous music.''

Megalomania

The other members thought much the same and it's a period all concerned seem to recall with undisguised horror.

''Our business affairs were a mess,'' winces singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner. ''Factory was going under and the Hacienda became a black hole for all the cash we'd been earning on tour. The studio bills were going unpaid and we weren't getting on as individuals. I was off working by myself in the studio and the rest of the band thought I'd turned into this megalomaniac. I wanted them to come and help me out but they thought I just didn't want them there.

''It was horrible,'' he concludes.

But the band have come back from apparent disaster before. When Ian Curtis hanged himself in early 1980, few (especially those who saw their gig in July of that year in a firetrap of a club in Shudehill) would have expected his Joy Division bandmates Hook, Sumner and Stephen Morris to even survive, let alone to regroup themselves as New Order then proceed to transform themselves into one of the key world bands of the eighties and nineties.

''We'd burnt our bridges, we had to carry on,'' observes Bernard with the odd combination of cockiness, suspicion and wry detachment that has always characterised this wayward band's dealings with anyone outside their immediate circle.

''We were consciously making music that people could dance to, even though we weren't going out dancing ourselves,'' he says of the band's pioneering eighties output, including Blue Monday. ''When we were in Joy Division, people didn't go to clubs to dance, they went to headbutt people!''

Get Ready the album

Which brings us back to the new album Get Ready, the first album they've recorded without the guiding hand of their late, lamented manager Rob Gretton.

Finally, it seems, the band, including keyboard player Gillian who won't be touring with them, have managed to get over the problems of business and get on with the making of music.

''We did get stuck in a rut with each other, definitely,'' reflects Hooky. ''We stopped caring about the people you should really be caring about, the ones who have given you everything, the other members of the group. But, even though I don't like making records and I'd rather be playing live, I've enjoyed making this album more than any of them. Through all the years I've been in this band I never, ever thought I'd say that!''

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