Bleep

Joy Division’s debut album ‘Unknown Pleasures’ arrived in 1979 and its influence has been so various and far-reaching that it is difficult to fully articulate. It seems, however, a particularly good time to take another look at this album in the wake of a new breed of dark electronic music from the likes of Powell, Blackest Ever Black and others in recent years, which has drawn from post-punk’s disillusioned dread by the bucketful.

‘She’s Lost Control’, which describes an epileptic patient suffering a fit, evidences phenomenal drumming and the kind of crazed, desperate vocal delivery which Ian Curtis brought across so potently, rendered particularly poignant given the fact that the singer’s suicide two years later would be partly caused by his inability to sufficiently deal with his own epileptic condition.

‘Day Of The Lords’ and ‘Candidate’ still crawl with a claustrophobic melancholy which is overpowering to listen to, made all the more incredible given the group’s use of the most basic playing techniques in the lineage of the punk bands which had inspired them to form. Album closer ‘I Remember Nothing’, however, is harrowing and chilling in a way unmatched by the band ever again, and almost never by those who followed them. Here Curtis croons like a demented Sinatra into unanswering space, while sparse beats and guitars churn amongst the sound of Manchester industry.