Kristen EckMiXeD-Up MeMoRiEs: 6/28/2019
Welcome back to Mixed-Up Memories! When Salford, England’s Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris teamed-up with each other to be a loud aggressive punk-rock band in the late 70’s, fate had a different plan for them.
Signed to indie-label, Factory Records they were paired with eccentric producer Martin Hannett, who saw much more than a punk outfit. He recorded the band through telephone lines & bathrooms, while adding the sounds of smashing bottles, the studio building’s elevator, and other unconventional techniques until they finally created a gloomy masterpiece and a new genre we’d eventually call “Post-Punk.”
The band was Joy Division and that album, "Unknown Pleasures" just turned 40-years-old this month. A 40th anniversary edition is now available on red vinyl with an alternate cover. Though Peter Saville is solely credited with designing the original iconic cover, the image (a graph of the radio waves emitted by a pulsar) was actually created by radio astronomer, Harold Craft back in 1970. When the band first came across the image in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, they wanted wanted a white album cover with the pulsar graph in black. Saville though, reversed the colors against their wishes. The 40th anniversary edition appears the way the band wanted it!
It's hard to pick just one song off this record, but I’m going with the opening track: “Disorder.” It’s waiting for you now on the Mixed-Up Memories playlist. Happy listening! -Kristen
ALBUM: Unknown Pleasures
RELEASE DATE: 6/15/1979
LABEL: Factory Records
#JoyDivision #UnknownPleasures #IanCurtis #BernardSumner #PeterHook #StephenMorris #MartinHannett #FactoryRecords