New Order re-order

There were quite a few complaints about the grotty sound quality of the latest batch of New Order reissues came out in the UK last month. This week, the records were released in the US to pretty much the same sort of complaints, and all of a sudden they've decided to withdraw the products:

"Warner Bros UK, Rhino and New Order regret that the initial pressings of the collector editions of Movement, Power, Corruption & Lies, Low Life, Brotherhood and Technique contain some minor audio problems on the bonus discs," yesterday's statement announced. "We are now in the process of correcting the problems, but it should be noted that due to the age and condition of some of the original source tapes, the sound quality may vary."

It's not surprising that faced with the prospect of the sort of class action lawsuits in which the Americans excel, the label swallowed hard and pulled the collection - especially since even Peter Hook had said the sound quality was dodgy. What is puzzling, though, is given the UK complaints, why the decision to release the stuff in the US was taken in the first place.