Joy Division Unknown Pleasures

It even looks like something classic, beyond its time or place of origin even as it was a clear product of both – one of Peter Saville's earliest and best designs, a transcription of a signal showing a star going nova, on a black embossed sleeve. If that were all Unknown Pleasures was, it wouldn't be discussed so much, but the ten songs inside, quite simply, are stone-cold landmarks, the whole album a monument to passion, energy, and cathartic despair. The quantum leap from the earliest thrashy singles to Unknown Pleasures can be heard through every note, with Martin Hannett's deservedly famous production – emphasizing space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub – as much a hallmark as the music itself.

Unknown Pleasures is the debut studio album by English rock band Joy Division, released on 15 June 1979 by Factory Records. The album was recorded and mixed over three successive weekends at Stockport's Strawberry Studios in April 1979, and was produced by Martin Hannett, who incorporated a number of unconventional production techniques into the group's sound. The cover artwork was designed by artist Peter Saville, using a data plot of signals from a radio pulsar. It is the only Joy Division album released during lead singer Ian Curtis's lifetime.

L'histoire du groupe Joy Division, qui a revitalisé le rock à l'ère du post-punk, à la fin des années 1970. …

Joy Division is one of the definitive bands from the rock culture. With their dark poetic inception and a sound marked by a new way of thinking about how music should be created, the Manchester band served as a model for countless artists. Today, just as it marks 35 years of the death of Ian Curtis (the legendary singer and lyricist of the group) The Many Faces Of Joy Division shows the hidden world behind the group, their rare recordings, side projects, their influences and the Manchester scene where the band bloomed. With a wonderful cover art, remastered sound and extensive liner notes, The Many Faces of Joy Division is an album not only for fans but for anyone who wants to understand the influence (and enjoy the music) of a truly transcendent bad, which made beauty out of sadness.

If Unknown Pleasures was Joy Division at their most obsessively, carefully focused, ten songs yet of a piece, Closer was the sprawl, the chaotic explosion that went every direction at once. Who knows what the next path would have been had Ian Curtis not chosen his end? But steer away from the rereading of his every lyric after that date; treat Closer as what everyone else thought it was at first – simply the next album – and Joy Division's power just seems to have grown. Martin Hannett was still producing, but seems to have taken as many chances as the band itself throughout – differing mixes, differing atmospheres, new twists and turns define the entirety of Closer, songs suddenly returned in chopped-up, crumpled form, ending on hiss and random notes.

With the exception of Joy Division's last single, Love Will Tear Us Apart, which faded out gradually into the anguished silence of singer Ian Curtis' suicide, none of the band's songs ever really ended; they either fell apart or collapsed, as if to bring about a proper end to something beyond their grasp. Joy Division couldn't stand still…