It’s a striking opening line to the first song on your first album: “I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand”. Searching, yearning for direction, for counsel. The song is called “Disorder”, a one-word summary of the singer’s internal state. A plea for human contact: take my hand. Please. Welcome to the dark electro pop of Joy Division. Welcome to their first album, 1979’s Unknown Pleasures.
Singer Ian Curtis offers a greeting floating on chill breath; not so much “welcome to my nightmare” as “enter my prison”. The refrain of the second song, “Day of the Lords” asks “where will it all end”; asks four times; asks repeatedly, insistently, desperately. With a spare sonic attack, Joy Division were both post-punk progressives and synth-pop disrupters. In the fragile, desperate voice of Ian Curtis the band (comprising guitarist/keyboard player Bernard Sumner, bass player Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris) had an anti-frontman, a child-man suffering from mental anguish and physical illness; his epilepsy made live performance an incredible challenge. A lonely outsider, Curtis was a mesmerising, doomed focus for Joy Division’s music. And the music is equally intense; sparse yet penetrating, with deft use of synthesisers adding tonal colour to the monochrome canvas.
Unknown Pleasures is an album that flows with a consistent mood of introspection. Mostly anguished rather than raging, it broods and sometimes buffets. Sumner’s guitars are edgy and abstract while the percussion foundation is both of its time, and timeless. “She’s lost control” has an insistent, echoing disco beat that is eminently danceable, leavened by avant-garde guitar squalls. These combine with a lyric exploring the terror of life as an epileptic. The song was released as a 12” single; quite a paradox. By comparison, “Shadowplay” is a powerful, relatively straight-ahead rocker with guitar breaks and some neat synth spikes, like a late-70s Manchester version of The Doors “LA Woman”. The LP ends with the downbeat “I remember nothing” where the isolation is palpable. Glass shatters, bass notes fall like droplets into a silent pool; a fitting album closer.
The Greeks believed theatrical presentations of tragedy—loss, suffering, death, anguish—could cleanse an audience. That via the storm of controlled emotion on stage, humans could be released from their suffering. They had a word for it, κᾰ́θᾰρσῐς. Cartharsis. Ian Curtis, heartbreakingly, was not purged of his inner darkness by music. But in Unknown Pleasures we have a powerful and affecting album offering us the chance to do what he was unable to: let the potency of the music unknot our own heartache and rinse out the stains. That is a gift that can connect us, both to ourselves and to others.
First published at Discrepancy Records, November 2020. Reposted with kind permission.
vinylconnection.com.au 
I know the name Joy Division bit that is all. You make a compelling case, but I will wait for a change of mood before exploring this one.
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Very wise, DD.
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One of my favorite bands! And Bruce has done an exceptional job here painting their first LP. I started with the compilation Substance and found that a great introduction.
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I found a YouTube vn for breakfast and was shaking around the kitchen within 17 secs. Great opener. Will listen more on a proper system when I return from work.
Thanks for the extra push
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Shaking around in seconds? Sounds like you’re bashing on the epileptics man ha ha!
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a breakfast shakr
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I enjoyed the 33.3 book on this if I’m remembering right, and the role of Martin Hannett on the band and of course the music, and this album. If my recall is accurate I think he kind of bullied the young band a bit but boy did he have a sonic vision. It isn’t just the sound of Joy Division but how they sound on these records, in the production. For me I discovered it in a gloomy part of northwestern Pennsylvania near one of the big lakes, a town called Erie. First time I felt truly oppressive clouds when fall hit, and JD was the perfect soundtrack. Odd too that I came to them from New Order first, so I was really surprised at the difference, and subtle similarities, between the two. I love this piece and am clapping vociferously, in the morning dark, with the dryer tumbling, and the sound perhaps would be pleasing to Ian—the way the dryer drum warbles and shakes.
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It’s pretty amazing, although I like Closer even more. There was a quote I read somewhere about the other members not picking up on Curtis’s struggles, even though he spelled them out in his lyrics.
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The lyrics are, as you say, pretty clear. As were the signs of depression and the ravages of epilepsy. I guess they were young and clueless regarding mental health, as were we all. No ‘RU OK’ day back then.
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Also one of the most striking and looks-like-it-sounds LP covers ever.
You really haven’t lived until you’ve walked around a northern British city listening to this in the rain Bruce.
Really enjoyed this one.
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Given the right ‘wet weather’ gear, that actually sounds great. Any particular damp town you’d recommend?
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