New Order lights the way: Dance floor innovators open SXSW Music Festival

Puffs of smoke machine haze-sharpened lights swirl in otherworldly patterns, while a big screen at the back of the stage plays images of divers gracefully flipping in the air. A recording of an ebbing synthesizer reaches a classical climax and — as electronic music pioneers New Order walk onto the stage for their South by Southwest Music Festival headline set — the divers on screen splash into the water.

“It’s nice to bring a little bit of Manchester to a lot of Texas,” lead singer Bernard Sumner said March 13 before launching into “Crystal” from the band’s 2001 album “Get Ready.”

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And so it began. The group that was introduced by the mayor of Manchester, U.K., as “the ultimate Manchester band” led the audience through an electronic odyssey that clocked in at a little over an hour and 40 minutes. It was a sensory experience propelled by frenetic electronic drum pads and triumphant synths. At times, the spectacular light show coupled with the band’s palette of Atari effects created the immersive sensation of existing inside a video game.

All the original members minus bassist Peter Hook (whose ugly split with the group culminated in a lawsuit over royalties in 2016) performed for full house, but not a capacity crowd at ACL Live. In the spacious concert hall’s mezzanine, badge holders were forced to stand behind empty seats that were reserved for VIPs who never arrived.

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As the band moved around through their catalog, the classics received the biggest cheers. Fans bopped along as keyboards soared over grungy guitars on the early track “Age of Consent” and cheered wildly as the familiar keyboard line on “Bizarre Love Triangle” broke through the skittering drum pads.

The band closed the main set with a nostalgia bomb. Icy breakup raver “Blue Monday” segued into an epic rendition of “Temptation.” The latter was accompanied by dizzying lights from a spinning disco ball that swirled the audience into an emotional tailspin.

As they left the stage, the crowd cheered wildly, prompting the band to return for an encore of songs by Joy Division. With a picture of lead singer Ian Curtis — who died by suicide days before the group’s second album dropped, forcing the remaining band members to reconvene as New Order — they played heartfelt versions of “Atmosphere” and “Transmission” before taking the show home with a full arena singalong of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

To be perfectly frank, Sumner has never been a traditionally powerful singer, but he delivered just fine. (In his book, “Substance: Inside New Order,” bassist Hook talks about how Sumner became the group’s lead singer almost by default after Joy Division's Curtis died.) But those exhilarating sound beds the band created as they eagerly embraced electronic drums and synthesizers decades before it was trendy to do so absolutely stood the test of time. Their innovation helped forge a path to the dance floor for countless bands who followed.

The showcase was sponsored by Beyond the Music, a new festival that launches in Manchester later this year.

The band will talk about their career and the new festival in a keynote address at the conference at 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: New Order opens SXSW music festival with an odyssey of light and sound