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146 of 162 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
into darkness; into creation, October 27, 2000
Joy Division's `Unknown Pleasures' arrived in 1979 without warning or fanfare. Product inwards, this group was immediately different: austere, minimal graphics; monochrome, formal clothes; ascetic, modernist titles. And then there's the music, whose beauty, power, and long-term importance is hard to measure. In 1979, many things didn't exist in rock, and Joy Division, with this record, brought them into being. First, the idea that rock music could express emotions other than drugs, rebellion, youth, love: `Unknown Pleasures', for the first time in rock, expands the palette to include sadness, murderousness, self-hatred, despair; without apology, without embarrassment - like the entry of Greek Tragedy onto the rock stage. Without this, no Nirvana. No Husker Du. No Metallica, even. Second, an entirely new vocabulary. Melodic, dolorous bass, treated as a lead instrument. Baritone vocals, harsh, deep and dramatic, but with no interest in theatrics. Metronomic, disinterested percussion. Textural, ambient guitar that also bites, warps, and attacks. Third, production-as-aesthetic. The sound emerges out of inky blackness, prismatic like shards of broken glass: Noise and noise effects are as important as structure. Many genres and many bands owe their existence and their careers to the simultaneous, unprecedented innovations this record makes. It is as groundbreaking and original - if not more - as Revolver, Axis: Bold as Love, Fun House, or Ziggy Stardust, in whose company it should be kept. In other words, a fundamental, utterly essential work for any rock music enthusiast.What about the songs? A brief glimpse into two key tracks (my favourites): `Shadowplay' follows some kind of imagined urban murder, charging through neon-lit darkness on the back of Albrecht's guitar: alternatively chordally violent, or flying through systemic solos that cycle like Reich or Glass. This will make your heart beat faster. `New Dawn Fades' starts up with bits of backward guitar-detritus, turning left into a requiem sung by a 20-year-old for his own life. It is utterly resigned and moving, and that would be enough; but towards its end it shifts up a gear and climaxes like no other song in rock; like despair finally expiated. Again, this one will have your hair standing up. Possibly the greatest single song in all of rock music, `New Dawn Fades' hits you with the Shock of the New. All these years later, it simply sounds thrown out of the void at us, fully-formed and totally unprecedented, and new with the original hurt every time. (Perhaps the nearest relative is `Tomorrow Never Knows'.) Unknown Pleasures is new-minted like nothing else in rock, utterly astonishing, and timeless. Off the scale in terms of creativity, emotional expression, dynamics, and the power to excite and rejuvenate, this record does everything a rock record has to do to be called classic, and then goes way further: into darkness; into creation.
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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hugely Influential to Modern Music, July 10, 2003
Joy Division, originally called Warsaw, was formed in 1977 by a group of Mancunian lads (Ian Curtis, Bernard Albrecht [later changed to Sumner], Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris) that were hugely influenced by Bowie, Iggy Pop, and the punk-rock explosion that was engulfing Britain in the late `70s led by the Sex Pistols and the Clash. After teaming up with Tony Wilson's Factory label and with producer Martin Hannett, they released "Unknown Pleasures" in 1979. Little did they know that they were changing music forever. The end result is an album that combines Albrecht's discordant punk guitar riffs with Curtis' ever-present brooding tension and monotone deep voice, that can be exhilarating at one moment and the voice of doom the next. The album's opener "Disorder" combines all of these, along with Morris' fast drumming and Hook's never-ending bass hooks. "I'm looking for a guy to take me by the hand" Curtis explains, rushed and almost carefree. The next track, "Day of the Lords" proves almost to be the complete opposite, where the drums have slowed down, the guitars are lower, and Curtis sings like the town crier announcing the end of the world.
Some of the songs on "Unknown Pleasure" have a slower pace rather than the frantic quality many other bands at the period had, which made Joy Division be labeled as "post-punk" to the British music press; the guitar, bass and drums could still surprise you with pounding riffs, but could also march along at much slower paces. But even in the slower songs, like "Candidate" or "New Dawn Fades," the instruments, despite being slower and quieter, echoed and give a general eerie and brooding feeling that might be distant but is still ever-present. To add this all together with Curtis' nihilistic vocals and British working-class pessimism, the songs can become four minute-long journeys through closed factories, failed economics, bleak connected-house neighborhoods and dismantled relationships that were plaguing late '70s Britain--a time when many punk groups were crying out in bold capitals No Future. We hear occasionally distant samples of breaking glass, shut doors and footsteps leading to nowhere. Some of the true gems of this album, as well as in Joy Division's entire career, like "She's Lost Control" or "Shadowplay" combine these themes and are truly memorable. Even though the group later claimed that producer Hannett ruined their sound on "Unknown Pleasures," to listeners the music and moods are perfect; dark, but never dark enough to make you turn away. Sadly, singer Ian Curtis killed himself in mid-1980 before completing the group's second and last album "Closer." The survivors later joined together and created New Order, who virtually created modern dance and rave music in the '80s and '90s. Meanwhile, Joy Division itself became credited with influencing the Gothic scene in music. Although influential on many goth and later indie rock, Brit-pop and alternative groups, the group never intended to be "goth." Joy Division was coming from an England where the Sex Pistols had broken up, where Thatcherism and the Tories was bringing new meaning to carelessness, where the Falklands War was just on the horizon, unemployment and worker unrest was acute, and skinheads were frighteningly becoming more popular. Certainly, there's no bats, vampires or haunted castles here. Instead, these are songs that come from the industrial grime and nihilism of Manchester circa 1979, with a tortured working-class bloke trying to make sense out of his life. One listen to "She's Lost Control" confirms all of this.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dark and beautiful. You know the rest., October 14, 1999
By A Customer
What happened to punk anyway? Didn't it used to mean something, back in the day when people believed in one last real rebellion, a handful of great bands changed music forever, and then it all sputtered out? We should mourn it, but then, it wasn't all bad that punk died. We got Joy Division at the funeral, after all. In 1979, the original punk explosion's dying year and the year that post-punk, goth, and all of those other related genres began to emerge from the cacaphonous ooze, Ian Curtis and his band Joy Division came up with Unknown Pleasures, a dark proto-goth gem in dark times. From the raw, spooky-punk of "Disorder," "She's Lost Control," "Shadowplay(the reason I bought this and as good as anything Ian ever wrote)," and "Interzone" to the quieter, more eerie ruminations of "Day of the Lords" and "New Dawn Fades," this album fits the definition of a classic perfectly. The whole album is incredibly stark, almost too stark on the first listen, just like the images of a barren wasteland it evokes. At the same time, a powerfully dark and morose atmosphere smothers the listener, leading him/her into the stygian depths of Curtis' own mind. Just as all great albums do, this one gains power with each listen. Some may call it a bit dated, but I call it timeless. RIP Ian. Too bad the world was too much for you. It was beautiful while it lasted.
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