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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
No, DO pay attention to the negative reviews!, February 18, 2003
By A Customer
I didn't, bought the CD, and suffered the consequences. I love Joy Division, but as mentioned, the mastering is atrocious, part of a bad trend in how reissues are mastered these days. Like some sick disease, many labels are compressing the hell out of their reissues, losing the dynamics, musical information, and often creating digital artifacts just so the music can be loud, as if nobody had a volume control on their stereo. LISTENING TO THIS CD IS LIKE READING A BOOK IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. AFTER AWHILE, YOU JUST CAN'T TAKE IT.The CD is also a pretty poor compilation. For example, there's an inferior remix of "Love Will Tear Us Apart." They do include the original mix, except in addition to the extra compression, they edit out a few seconds in the intro and some more time towards the end, so it's not even the full version. The track selection is also haphazard, painting in an incomplete picture of this band. I think a good single CD best-of is possible, but this isn't it. You're far better off starting with their best album, Closer, and getting the singles collection, Substance. If you love them and want more, pick up the rest; it's not like they have that many CD's (just two or three more) so it won't ruin you financially.
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23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not as substantive as Substance- but get the box set!, February 3, 2005
There seems to be some kind of fanboy debate in here as to which is preferable for JD newbies: Substance or Permanent.
The correct answer is: neither.
Such maudlin, needlessly tendentious posturing is not cool, oh my brothers. I think we can all come together and say, "Hey y'all- just go's on an pick up the damn box set and be's done with it." Hey- you're gonna buy it anyway once you pick up one of these and become enthralled. So... Save yourself the time and effort and money of getting this or that retro-comp only to have to give it to a younger sibling or ex-girlfriend or something, once you get Heart and Soul..."
At any rate, Here's my two cents on the CD at hand.
OK- This here... it's one buck more than Substance, and one track shorter (actually, two tracks shorter once you discount the worthless retread of LWTUA): that's strike one. The remastering isn't quite so bad (pick up some old blues CDs by Son House or Skip james or Charlie Patton and then bitch to me about sound quality here), but it's not as good as the releases proper or Substance, and seeing as how their producer, Martin-ZERO Hannett's sound is certainly tainted to say the least- strike two.
Finally: the track selection... While I have problems with certain omissions on BOTH CDs (Substance ain't got day of the lords, shadow play, and disorder, Exercise one, this doesn't have the last two either, not mention to mention Digital- maybe THE quintessential JD song)... I have more of a problem with track selection on this one. Most glaring is, again, the remix version of LWTUA: ugh. To compound that rather serious blight on the project are some tunes of dubious importance. The fact that Novelty (the only decent recording of which is a punked out raw as hell version on the Warsaw demos) somehow made its way onto BOTH releases never ceases to disturb me. Failures really bothers me too. As does The Only Mistake. And Passover. Not bad tunes, but to put them on and leave off so many other so much more interesting/visceral stuff- strikes four through ten.
No Colony. No New dawn fades. No Ceremony (that's kinda ok as it only exists for JD as a rough demo and live track, more a New Order tune). No Wilderness. No Insight. No Komakino. No Decades. No Candidate. No Atrocity Exhibition. No Ice Age. No Interzone. Nothing good here from the Warsaw days, whereas Substance has two nice tracks- No Love Lost and Warsaw.
All in all- if you must save your cash... your better off with Substance.
But really- just fork it over for the box set. I'll hold your hand and promise you it will be ok. And so will Ian. He will drag you along, kicking and screaming- and in the end- you will thank him...
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just think of this one as a good mix tape .........., July 7, 2005
Ignore the whining weenies who insist this collection has no merit. This is a very good intro to the band. Ordinarily I DO prefer albums, especially if they capture a time, place, theme or something else that holds the songs together in some way. But I don't feel that UNKNOWN PLEASURES or CLOSER (the band's only 2 "official" album releases during and shortly after their brief lifespan) necessarily make coherent wholes, although they both maintain a certain doom n' gloom atmosphere. I think PERMANENT is a stronger collection of songs than either of these individual albums, taking key tracks from them both as well as some essential non-album material.
Overall, I think it's also better than SUBSTANCE. Even though that collection has some essential material that's lacking on PERMANENT, it also has some early songs that sound too much like run-of-the-mill rock n' roll. Some good ones are duplicated on both.
I agree with other reviewers that the remix of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is a useless re-hash. Personally, that one's far from my fav Joy Division track anyway, although it may be their most popular.
This band rocks (rocked), but in a very cold and detached way. Their music is definitely from the dark, often depressing side of the fence. Ian Curtis had an alien-sounding voice like no other. Hardly virtuosos and not always the most melodic band, but their music often has propulsive energy and intriguing rhythms, and they really were something unique (that is, until the various newer Goth bands jumped their coat-tails, some of them great, some not-so-great-to-pretty-awful). If you're new to Joy Division, PERMANENT is probably the best single disk introduction you can buy. After listening to it, you'll be in a good position to know whether or not you'd like to pursue listening further, in which case I'd go ahead and pick up their 2nd album CLOSER, or you might want to go ahead and spring for the box set as another reviewer here recommended.
NOTE - The reviewer complaining about the mix being poor may have a good point. All I can say about the sound is this: the cassette tape I have (which I picked up back in '95) SOUNDS well mixed to me except for the fact that it plays a little faster than it should. Strangely, I still think it sounds good (maybe even better - the slightly faster pace is more rockin' and the slightly higher pitched vocals are icier), but hey, I'm no perfectionist/audiofile. Still, I would think in all likelihood that the CD has been reproduced successfully without this little problem. But if this still sounds like something that might annoy you, then pick up CLOSER, the SUBSTANCE collection or their debut UNKNOWN PLEASURES - all quite worthy. But there's not a bad track on PERMANENT, and since the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" remix at the end can easily be skipped in favor of the original - 5 stars. Assuming new copies of PERMANENT were transferred properly, it's the introduction to the band I would recommend to a newbe.
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