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.

Track Listing

All songs composed by Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Bernard Sumner.

Side one

1. "Atrocity Exhibition" – 6:06
2. "Isolation" – 2:53
3. "Passover" – 4:46
4. "Colony" – 3:55
5. "A Means to an End" – 4:07

Side two

1. "Heart and Soul" – 5:51
2. "Twenty Four Hours" – 4:26
3. "The Eternal" – 6:07
4. "Decades" – 6:10

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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.

Track listing

All songs were written by Joy Division.

Side one: Outside

1. "Disorder" – 3:32
2. "Day of the Lords" – 4:49
3. "Candidate" – 3:05
4. "Insight" – 4:29
5. "New Dawn Fades" – 4:47

Side two: Inside

1. "She's Lost Control" – 3:57
2. "Shadowplay" – 3:55
3. "Wilderness" – 2:38
4. "Interzone" – 2:16
5. "I Remember Nothing" – 5:53

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