Best Albums !: Joy Division. Closer (1980)

Closer is a 1980 album by Joy Division. It was the band's second and final album, after Unknown Pleasures. It is considered an important album in the post-punk movement. The album was originally scheduled to be released on May 8, 1980, but ended up arriving in stores in July, shortly after lead singer Ian Curtis' suicide. The record was originally released on the Factory Records label as a 12" LP and reached #6 on the UK Albums Chart. It also peaked at #3 in New Zealand in September 1981.

Closer, produced by Martin Hannett, has a sound which is both lusher and more sombre than Unknown Pleasures, with more use of synthesizers and studio effects. Many of its songs have a despairing, funereal feel, and its cover art appears to reflect this, although it was chosen by Peter Saville before he had heard any of the music; both the photo and the bleakness of the music and lyrics amplified the already strong mystique surrounding the album after Curtis's suicide.

The opening track, "Atrocity Exhibition", shares its name with The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard, a book that Curtis read and loved, but only after writing the bulk of the song. It was ranked 10th on Pitchfork Media's Top 100 Albums of the 1980s, 72nd on NME's 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. Music site Digital Dream Door placed it #30 on their list of the '100 Greatest Alternative Albums'^[1].In 2003, the album was ranked number 157 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

This album, along with Unknown Pleasures and Still has been remastered and was released September 17, 2007 (2007-09-17). As with Unknown Pleasures and Still, the remaster comes packaged with a bonus live disc, recorded at the University of London.

The album cover was designed by Martyn Atkins and Peter Saville, with photography from Bernard Pierre Wolff. The photograph on the cover is of the Appiani family tomb in the Cimitero Monumentale di Staglieno in Genoa, Italy, by Demetrio Paernio.