Unknown Pleasures

Fresh exploration is still possible 31 years later.

It's possible to hear for the first time. But it is difficult. Where could that opening bass line of Disorder possibly come from if it's not from Hook? And it's best not to discuss hearing Curtis "for the first time".

What I can hear, which has no doubt been heard by many before, is the lethargic urgency of four men who understood time was running out. Listen to Day of The Lords in the moments before Curtis arrives. It might be slow, industrial and every adjective already used by better writers and thinkers but there is a shadow of light flitting under the dour. It runs quickly and lightly but it is there, even if for only two moments.
At 3:17 Curtis howls, Stephen Morris rises - I want to say these songs lead to moments but that's ridiculous, all music is headed for a moment. It just feels more so with Joy Division.

Candidate is so different to what has come before it. That legendary sparseness is in full-throttle from the silent first seconds and then that wonderfully under used fade-in technique. On a side note only Radiohead's Black Star uses it as well. Within the context of Unknown Pleasures, Candidate feels like it is covered by brilliance either side of it and only it's coming in under just over three minutes does that.

The first five seconds of Insight might be mistaken for Candidate as silence is silence but from there nothing could be further. The soundtrack of table top video games played in an abandoned warehouse at 3am with a man you know nothing of. Despite the table tennis being played behind him, Curtis remains focused and innately linked in behind Morris' percussion that starts in an easy 4/4 groove and grows ever more complex as the space slowly fills.

New Dawn Fades, in the digital age, seems less important than it is. In 1979 the song finished Side A and for that automatically matters. A thousand bands echo the song along an ever-growing line. It is songs like this that will be the ones that increasingly draw fresh ears to Unknown Pleasures.