When Peter Hook’s Freebass finally released last spring’s debut EP, ‘Two Worlds Collide,’ on CD last week, the band also issued a digital-only EP featuring five new mixes of the Tim Burgess-sung ‘You Don’t Know This About Me’ by longtime New Order collaborator Arthur Baker.

This week’s new releases include a pair of EPs from Killing Joke and the Peter Hook-led Freebass that already were issued online earlier this year, plus a new digital single from Tears For Fears’ Curt Smith.

Andy Rourke of The Smiths is no longer part of the Manchester triple-bass supergroup Freebass, which also features Peter Hook of New Order and Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield of The Stone Roses, according to a note posted on the band’s website.

Crooner Bryan Ferry enlisted a star-studded cast — including Roxy Music bandmates Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay — for this fall’s ‘Olympia,’ his first album of new material in eight years and his first recorded collaboration with those ex-bandmates since 1973’s ‘For Your Pleasure.’

Last night, bassist Peter Hook marked the 30th anniversary of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis’ death by performing the band’s 1979 debut ‘Unknown Pleasures’ in its entirety — plus assorted other Joy Division and Warsaw songs — at his Manchester club FAC251 The Factory.

Less than a month after dropping its debut EP, Peter Hook’s triple-bass supergroup Freebass — which also features The Smiths’ Andy Rourke and Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield of The Stone Roses and Primal Scream — today released its five-years-in-the-making album, ‘It’s a Beautiful Life.’

Ex-New Order bassist Peter Hook’s long-gestating Freebass — a triple-bass supergroup featuring The Smiths’ Andy Rourke and Gary “Mani” Mounfield of The Stone Roses and Primal Scream — today released its debut EP and will make its official live debut in London and Manchester in June.

Peter Hook last night christened his new Manchester club FAC251 — housed in the former headquarters of Factory Records — with members of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays helping perform a career-spanning set that included the live debuts of an unfinished Joy Division song and a New Order outtake.

Turns out Peter Hook’s Freebass may not be the only Stone Roses/Smiths collaboration afoot: Ex-Roses vocalist Ian Brown this week told the BBC he’s planning to write and record an album with Johnny Marr, the Smiths’ erstwhile guitarist.
According to Brown, he and Marr hope to write soundtrack music for a friend’s in-the-works TV series: “The [...]

Former New Order bassist Peter Hook’s long-gestating Freebass project — which also features the four-stringed talents of The Smiths’ Andy Rourke and Gary “Mani” Mounfield of The Stone Roses and Primal Scream — is poised to release its debut EP, dubbed Two Worlds Collide.
The four-track collection will be released “soon” by Hook’s just-launched — and [...]

 
The Stone Roses last week marked the 20th anniversary of the band’s classic debut — arguably one of the best British albums of all time — by reissuing 1989’s The Stone Roses in multiple formats. To mark the occasion, we’ve rounded up some of the extensive press coverage of this undoubtedly historic event, including reviews [...]

With Peter Hook having acrimoniously split from New Order, the rest of the legendary synthrock act has enlisted Blur bassist Alex James for a new project dubbed Bad Lieutenant.
The BBC reports the new band — featuring Joy Division/New Order members Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris, along with late-era New Order guitarist Phil Cunningham and singer-guitarist [...]