JOY DIVISION

"If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

No other band ever displayed a greater heart of darkness than Joy Division, who did not so much explode out of the post-punk Manchester scene of the late seventies as stared it down with the hollow-eyed intensity that befitted Ian Curtis's blackened soul. Of course, it is always easier to judge authenticity when the author takes the conclusive step of ending the miserable existence they were so desperate to hark on about and when Ian Curtis killed himself in May 1980, a week before the release of only their second album, Closer, the band's place in the annuls of morbid rock music was secured. That is the reason the sincerity of the Cure or the Smashing Pumpkins will always been doubted, whilst the likes of Joy Division, Nirvana, and early Manic Street Preachers can sit pretty in the knowledge that their self-obsessed fans can always claim they were '4 real'. That said, although Ian Curtis enjoys pride of place at the top of such a dubious podium of artists it should not be forgotten that there is artistic justification for such an honour, given the startling eloquence with which he articulated such bleak and desperate emotions. As a lyricist he stands alone and it is from his desolate imagery and nihilistic observations that most subsequent artists have taken their cues. His vocals, too, are unique in the way he expresses such negative thoughts and emotions in a deadpan monotone, not so much crooning as intoning, singing as sermoning.

Of course, Joy Division were not a one man band but it is somewhat ironic that the other three members went on to enjoy a fame and fortune that far outstripped that which JD experienced while Curtis was alive in their subsequent incarnation as the ghastly overrated New Order. That guitarist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook, and drummer Stephen Morris have achieved such popularity through their banal new wave material, rather than the unique and seminal gothic industrial machinations they created in the late seventies is grossly injust, if hardly unsurprising. None of the trio were particularly great musicians when they started out but, as a consequence, the dynamics they created with just Morris's sterile, hypnotic drum patterns, Sumner's sparse, grinding guitar and 'Ooky's prominent, simple-yet-effective driving bass have come to be rightly regarded as one of the most unique musical creations in rock history. Indeed, the focus on the bass as the primary instrument has influenced a huge number of artists, from the Cure to Placebo and more recently Interpol. Although it would be overstretching it so say JD were the most innovative band of the new wave scene, they were certainly one of the most distinct and combined with Curtis's peerless lyrics and robotic vocals it is no surprise that the band stood out from their contemporaries and, even today, listening to Joy Division remains a unique and unforgettable experience.

From: Ian Winpenny

The song "Twenty Four Hours" is more like an advancement of the song "Insight" the bass line is basically an open string D drone (I know this cos I learned how to play by trying to figure out JD albums a few years back. "Transmission" is a close relative of "Shadowplay" with blues bends here and there. The song "Atrocity Exhibition" well the drums are heavily influenced (i.e nicked!) from Can's "Tago Mago" and feature Stephen's favourite trick of using the hi hat(stamp) where the snare beat usually goes see also "Atmosphere" & "In a Lonely Place".
I hate to point it out but no- one's totally original "New Dawn Fades" is probably ripped off "Gimme Danger's" long outro. Actually "Auto-Suggestion" is ace and downright disembodied strange like an inverse of early P.I.L. Bye - Ian "from the soon to be famous Herr Pablo (see Hermann Hesse)"

Having struggled to produce many bands of note during the seminal years of rock'n'roll in the sixties and the rise of hard rock in the seventies Manchester finally came to prominence in the late seventies, becoming the most important musical centre outside of London and producing a batch of bands that, arguably, surpassed those swanning round the capital. For biographical purposes, the film '24 Hour Party People' accurately portrays both the original movement and the 'Madchester' scene which subsequently followed it a decade later (which I absolutely LOATHE). Of course, the most important Mancunian band belonged to neither era - the Smiths - but the general consensus is that without the Buzzcocks and Joy Division Morrissey would never have left his bedroom and Marr would be bumming around in sixties cover bands. As with all sudden emergence of scenes there were a slew of similar bands trying to get noticed but there is no doubt that it was a whole different matter when Joy Division took to the stage. The gothic grind of the band set them immediately apart from the three-chord chainsaw guitars of most punk groups but it still formed but a background to Ian Curtis's time immemorial vocals, dark and desolate lyrics, hollow stare and spastic dance; the latter often eclipsed by the epileptic attacks he was prone to. Of course, the live experience, particularly with such a unique band, is distinct from recorded music and it was still something of a challenge to capture such intensity on record, particularly given the overwhelmingly amateurish ability of the young musicians. After an initial EP, An Ideal for Living (contained on Substance and far more raw and punky than the two albums), the band were produced by Martin Hannett who did such a wonderful job capturing the space and distance between the instruments that he was lauded as 'the only genius in the group' by self-appointed svengali Tony Wilson (who, for all his egotism, still presents my local news). Whilst that is a typical piece of attention-grabbing bullshit by Wilson there is no doubt Hannett was an inspired choice as producer as Curtis's vocals sound like intonations from Hell itself, whilst each instrument is put at a distance from the other but yet the overall sound is still cohesive and self-contained. The mournful "Day of the Lords" and "New Dawn Fades" both take time to come together from seemingly disparate arrangements, with Hook's bass changing from a plod to a march on the latter and the skeletal grind of Sumner's guitar riff echoing even that of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs". Curtis is at his most compelling on both, raising his vocals from a murmur to a cry on "New Dawn Fades" and imploring 'where will it end?' to an empty room in "Day of the Lords". What made this band stand out so much, though, is that things are just as dark and compelling on the higher tempo material, with "Shadowplay" crashing along on a wave of tortured guitar and Curtis's desperate-yet-deadpan vocals. Indeed, the latter is essentially a punk song but the fact that it is so distinct and unique from any other punk song underlines exactly why JD were so special. The fact that Unknown Pleasures was their debut means their 'sound' has not been developed to the extent of the peerless atmospherics of Closer and therefore the band remain somewhat more rooted in the more everyday aesthetics of punk music. The opening "Disorder" is almost new wave pop, and all the more impressive for it, and "She's Lost Control" is practically childlike in its simplicity but that only makes Curtis's detached narrative even more unsettling. Although some tracks do suggest the band had not yet reached the pinnacle of their artistry there is still so much innovation on here, exhibited through such a high level of songwriting ability, that it remains a key release in the British new wave movement and one of the few albums so unique that only one band, and one man, could have been behind it.

Unknown Pleasures was a debut of immense originality, resonance, and innovation and although it showed as much proven ability as promise it is unsurprising, if no less impressive, that Joy Division reached the stratosphere of post-punk with their funereal follow-up. The album is not so much a collection of songs as a forty minute bottomless abyss of darkness and despair. Curtis grew as a lyricist in a short space of time, with the verse on here far more disturbingly focused on his view of the world as a loveless, parasitic vessel within which he is forced to endure his cancerous existence. Of course, Curtis famously took the grave decision to end the ride and a week before the release of this album, with the accompanying single "Love Will Tear Us Apart" about to enter the UK Top Ten, he was found hanging in his family home. Ironically, for someone who expressed such cynicism towards love and the value of romance it is often suggested that his extra-marital infidelity had been playing on his mind, with him torturing his meek wife Debra through his relationship with a more pretentious and forceful foreign artist. In any event, Curtis was clearly a troubled young man and although through his subsequent suicide he unavoidably hangs a shadow over the material, as with the Manic Street Preachers' The Holy Bible, there can be no doubt over the sincerity of his document of despair. "Isolation"'s conclusion is one of the most uncomfortable moments in modern music ('mother I've tried, please believe me/I am doing the best that I can/I am ashamed of the things I've been put through/I am ashamed of the person I am') whilst "Twenty Four Hours" is a manifesto of relentless misery and his dying declaration to a world he can no longer exist upon ('destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away'). What makes this album truly exceptional, though, is the contribution of his backing band ('Ian Curtis and the New Order', perhaps) who, whilst still hardly virtuosos, have taken their creativity to the next level with the entire album cohesing together as a unique soundscape of gothic industrial grinding and tribal rhythms. If "Isolation" and "Twenty Four Hours" represent the peak of the exhibition it is equally through the wonderfully incongruous cheap synths on the former, making it sound like Euro-pop from Hell, and the galloping guitar on the latter, which comes out sounding like the ugly, older brother of "Shadowplay" with an intensity that it is utterly paralleled. Although Curtis was repulsed with himself he was also horrendously misanthropic and his world view is summed up with disturbing clarity on the opening "Atrocity Exhibition" in which Curtis delivers a description of the putrid, rotting stench of humanity backed primarily - and superbly - by an almost anti-music combination of Sumner's tuneless, grinding guitar and Morris's tribal drumming. Even though 'concept album' is a tarnished term it would somewhat aid the description of the depth of this album, even if it fails to do it justice. After Curtis's portraits of thwarted desire and nihilistic despair, the set comes to a close with the elegaic funeral march of "The Eternal" and the almost religious "Decades", with its repetitive, claustrophobic keyboard line echoing a hymn played on an old harpsichord. Curtis is again the key man as he brings the album to a close with such world-weariness that it simply seems inconceivable that the man intoning 'here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders' is but a young man himself. Of course, the day after you die everyone is of the same age (an eternal age) and Curtis did not wait long to deliver upon the implicit promise contained throughout the album. Even without his ultimate gesture of authenticity, though, this album would have gone done as one of the most compelling, unique, and uncomfortable listens in music. One can only hope that when one comes to pay one's final respects to the world one can do so without such a level of bleak, desolate despair and unflinching misanthropy towards a population that co-exists in a world without hope and value.

From: Jmerenivitchsr@aol.com

From what I've read, Ian Curtis killed himself because of some weird epilepsy type disease he had. He was pretty happy until that started happening. Add that with the love triangle thing and he really got pushed over the edge. Anyway, on a less depressing note this album is really good, and WAY better than Unknown Pleasures which sounds like a really cheaply recorded Post-Punk Black Sabbath. The terrible instrumental ability of the band really shows through on that one and the only really good song on is the poppy "Disorder". Closer, meanwhile, sounds like a really good version of PIL's Metal Box/2nd Edition. With actual atmospheres, arrangements and melodies instead of one long Dance Pop bloop with John Lydon screeching over it. Other than Curtis' subpar, out-o'-tune, English Jim Morrison vocal antics, I give it a ten.

From Ian Curtis's death came the birth of New Order who went on to become one of the biggest British bands of the eighties with their inoffensive synth pop. The brief but brilliant memory of Joy Division proved to be indelible, though, and fans were keen to get their hands on as much further material as possible. Thankfully, there proved to be enough in the vaults for two excellent compilations, with Substance compiling every song featured on singles and EPs and the earlier Still welding together nine unreleased studio tracks with a complete recording of the band's last ever gig, at Birmingham University, a week before Curtis killed himself, and an orphaned cut of them covering "Sister Ray" in London. This compilation does come in for criticism for being ill thought out and, although the quality is mostly admirable, there is a slap-dash nature to it. The sound quality of the concert is nowhere near as bad as some people make out but the performance is not totally commanding. The punkier stuff on Unknown Pleasures stands out, with Curtis in fine fettle, but the Closer material unsurprisingly suffers without Hannett's incredible production, with the bass at times anonymous and the synths, particularly on an excruciating "Decades", horribly out of tune. It does give a hint at the heights Joy Division reached on stage, particularly thanks to Curtis's intensity, but without the glaring, empty eyes and the spastic dancing the impact is only implicit. The inclusion of the cover of "Sister Ray" is the biggest oddity, though, and one can only assume it serves to show Ian Curtis was capable of cracking at least one joke in his miserable life ('you should hear our version of "Louie Louie"'). The first half of the CD, the first record on the original double-vinyl edition, is generally more impressive and is where much of the worth of the compilation can be found. Although the cuts appear finished in studio form a handful do feel a little embryonic and could do with being fleshed out a little more. Still, the overall effect is an impressive one and I suppose one should not be surprised that a band that produced two great albums should have plenty of similarly excellent material left in reserve. Most tracks sound like they could have easily fitted onto certainly Unknown Pleasures, even if Closer is rather more unaccommodating. That said, some do reveal elements to Joy Division's sound that were played down on the albums, with "Ice Age" and "Walked in Line" the most overtly gothic tracks the band performed, both relying on Curtis's demonic mantras. "Dead Souls" and "Glass" both appear also on Substance, with the latter's teutonic guitar riff showing up the band's debt to the Krautrock pioneers, the likes of Kraftwerk, Neu, and Can. "Dead Souls", of course, spread the other way with it becoming a hit for Nine Inch Nails and defining much of Trent Reznor's artistry (used in the rather loose sense). "Something Must Break" and "The Only Mistake" continue on in the vein of "Shadowplay" and "Twenty Four Hours" and are carried along by Hook's escalating bass. Indeed, Joy Division are one of the those very few bands that burned so brightly, so quickly that practically everything they produced came out shining from their golden touch. In tandem with Substance Still succeeds in forming a four part series of releases that lay bare the riches of one of the most innovative, original, and influential bands in rock music.

Although often mistaken for a Greatest Hits package Substance collects together every song Joy Division released that was not included on the two albums, in effect all the a-sides, their b-sides, and their original four song EP (An Ideal for Living). In fact, 1995's Permanent is the purported 'Best of' collection but with a mere two albums, and with the additional material contained on two cheap compilations, its relevance and usefulness is zero. It is, of course, testament to the quality of this release that so many people think it is a Greatest Hits collection, although that is no doubt partly due to the fact it contains their two biggest hits - "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "Atmosphere" (two of the last singles they released). "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is, of course, THE classic with its timeless keyboard hook and Curtis's croon showcasing a sentimental vulnerability that is utterly at odds with the misanthropic misery of the accompanying Closer, which was released to coincide with it. It is perhaps the only lyrical document of Curtis's anguished love triangle and, in some ways, its submission to the shackles of romance are even more chilling when put within the context of his subsequent suicide. "Atmosphere", too, is one of Joy Division's most atypical releases with its epic stride and booming snare drums transforming it into an arena rock anthem; which it later became when New Order adopted it. Again, Curtis appears to abandon his bitterness for empathy and it again places Closer and his suicide into a more ambiguous context. To jump back to the start, however, this compilation kicks off with the EP the band first released before their full-length debut, An Ideal for Living. In fact, we should pause a second as this compilation was originally released on vinyl in 1987 (the same year as New Order's Substance compilation) and did NOT comprehensively compile everything the band had released. Instead, it merely gathered together ten highlights (although I would not quibble with the selection). However, the CD issue in 1992, making good use of the extra space, added a seven song appendix that included the second half of An Ideal for Living, as well as the remaining a- and b-sides. The chronology is therefore cut in half, progressing in abridged form up until "Love Will Tear Us Apart", before beginning again with the 'unlucky' cuts. The sensible thing would have been to sequence the entire CD chronologically and, being behind only Bob Geldoff and Bono in my altruism, I have listed the correct order below for those sad enough to programme their CD player (ie. me). If we are to consider An Ideal for Living in its four song entirety it shows the band to have begun in a much more punk-orientated style. Without Hannett's production Sumner opts for the chainsaw buzz and amateurish, squealing guitar solos and Curtis shouts rather than sermons, with his Mancunian accent hideously exposed. For all my pedantry, though, I deign to admit the best two songs from the EP were included on the 'good' half, with "Warsaw" and "Leaders of Men" showing the band's debt to Bowie (with the title of the former and "Queen Bitch"'s chord progression on the latter). Both, in any event, even with the more standard punk template are impressively dark and visceral and show JD to be a class apart even in their infancy. Nearly all of the singles are impressive, particularly the up-tempo "Novelty", the robotic tension of "Digital" (like "Glass" obviously heavily in debt to krautrock), and the glorious, climatic "Transmission" with Curtis's immortal cry of 'dance, dance, dance to the radio'. Some tracks do slip by unceremoniously, and "Autosuggestion" is nothing but a boring waste of space, but the majority of this compilation is exceptional and, almost as much as Unknown Portraits and Closer, presents a portrait of a band utterly on their own, both in terms of style and quality. For a band that only spent three years in existence the experience, even now, seems endless.

[Chronological CD track-listing: 1. 11. 2. 12. 3. 13. 4. 14. 5. 15. 6. 9. 8. 16. 7. 10. 17.]

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Email me at: jackfeeny@yahoo.co.uk