Best Albums !: Joy Division. Unknown Pleasures (1979)

Unknown Pleasures is the first album by Joy Division, released in 1979. It was produced by Martin Hannett and recorded at Strawberry Studios, Stockport, England.

Unknown Pleasures reached #71 in the UK charts in August 1980 in the aftermath of Ian Curtis' death.

In 2000 Q magazine placed Unknown Pleasures at number 19 in its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. Pitchfork Media placed it at number 9 in its list of the 100 Greatest Albums of the 1970s, and, upon its re-release in 2007, received the rare accolade of 10/10. In his 1995 book, "The Alternative Music Almanac", Alan Cross placed the album in the #8 spot on the list of '10 Classic Alternative Albums'.

The front cover image comes from an edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, and was originally drawn with black lines on a white background. It presents exactly 100 successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered, PSR 1919+21 (often referred to in the context of this album by its older name, CP 1919). The cover design is credited to Joy Division, Peter Saville and Chris Mathan. The back cover of the album contains no track listings, leaving a blank table where one would expect the listings to be.

The original LP release contained no track information on the labels, nor the traditional "side one" and "side two" designations. The ostensible "side one" was labeled Outside and displayed a reproduction of the image on the album cover, while the other side was labeled Inside and displayed the same image with the colors reversed (black-on-white). Near the inner groove of the Inside is etched in script: "I've been looking for a guide", a reference to the song, "Disorder". The Outside and Inside designations were also used on the inner sleeve.