In point of fact it wasn’t Joy Division that was responsible for the over-all sound of the Unknown Pleasures LP.
With an offer of a 50/50 split, the band headed to the studio to produce an album, the album that would become Unknown Pleasures. In any case, Punk took hold in a moment of fury and bands rode the wave, one being Joy Division, which released its own EP, leading to the band being signed by Tony Wilson’s Factory Records label. Joy Division was not unique then in their admiration for the loud, aggressive, simple, almost reductive music of the Sex Pistols, and their live music recordings from that era show why: in a washed-up world, with little hope, a future suspect, it’s cathartic to say fuck you, and this is everything that the Sex Pistols were about. This small show (12 song set) is purported to have launched the Punk era and the story goes that half in attendance went on to form their own bands. The movie tells the story of a 1976 gig by the Sex Pistols playing to a sparse crowd at the Manchester (UK) Lesser Free Trade Hall, including Joy Division members Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook (later joined by Curtis and the incredible Stephen Morris on drums to form Joy Division). The Factory Records story was told in the 2002 fun flick worth seeing, 24 Hour Party People starring Steve Coogan. Following his suicide on the eve of a US tour, the surviving members, based on past agreement, renamed themselves New Order, and continue playing to this day. Unknown Pleasures, released in June 1979 under the Factory Records label, was the only full length LP commercially released during Ian Curtis’ lifetime. So it makes sense to re-visit two ground-breaking albums that in recent years have been remastered (you don’t remaster junk) and deserve continued evaluation: Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures and Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Kaleidoscope. Punk and Post Punk music remains as relevant as ever – we’ve reviewed several bands recently all playing to packed crowds, each unleashing a catharsis of sound after a year plus of life in the time of a pandemic.
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