Unknown Pleasures

Martin Hannett was an eccentric, difficult, visionary producer with a singular obsession: the perfect drum sound. When he went into Strawberry Studios in Stockport with Joy Division in April 1979, he dismantled Steve Morris's drum kit, put the individual pieces in different parts of the studio, and rebuilt the sound through microphone placement and effects processing rather than volume. He then sent Ian Curtis into the studio elevator to record his vocals on "Insight," routing the signal through the studio to achieve what he called the "requisite distance." He later said Joy Division were a gift to him as a producer because, in his words, they didn't have a clue and they didn't argue.

The band hated the finished album. Bassist Peter Hook said it sounded like Pink Floyd and he could not hide his disappointment. Bernard Sumner felt Hannett had stripped out all the heavy energy their live show had. They were wrong. What Hannett created was something so atmospherically precise and so unlike anything else being recorded in 1979 that it effectively invented a new sonic language. The space between the instruments, the treated reverb on the drums, the cold isolation of Curtis's voice — all of it built an architecture of dread that nobody else had thought to construct. Hook later conceded: "There's no two ways about it. Martin Hannett created the Joy Division sound."

Unknown Pleasures is also the only studio album Ian Curtis recorded. He died in May 1980, the night before Joy Division were due to leave for their first North American tour. The weight of knowing that gives every track a retroactive gravity that is almost unbearable. "Disorder," "She's Lost Control," "New Dawn Fades" — these are not songs that require that knowledge to devastate. They manage it anyway.