"Unknown Pleasures", Joy Division, 1979
Dia: 1
Mês: Maio
Ano: 2013
Ano: 2013
The Trouser Press Record Guide – Fourth Edition (Collier Books, 1991): Unknown Pleasures contrasts the message of decay and bemused acceptance of life's paradoxes with the energy and excitement of a band set loose in a studio for the first time. The tension of originality constrained by inadequate instrumental skills – simple synthesizers and guitar set against the Peter Hook/Stephen Morris rhythm section's more obvious punk roots – gives the record a powerfully immediate air; Hannett glazes the chilling, despondent music (including the classic "She's Lost Control") with a Teutonic sheen, fusing medium and message into a dark, holistic brilliance. The grim songs are punctuated by the sounds of ambulance sirens and breaking glass, picturing a world speeding towards incomprehensible chaos. Very highly recommended.
The A to X of Alternative Music (Continuum, 2004): Local TV celebrity Tony Wilson used inherited money to fund the recording of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album and was lucky that it was a relative success. (...) Thanks to some extensive touring and John Peel support, Unknown Pleasures soon became an essential purchase for those punks who had not got the retro ska or soul bug, and were keen to discover and entirely new approach to music. Curtis' songs dealing with dark shadowy forces and the loss of individual control – "the bodies are tamed" — were matched with heavy bass, guitar work, and a drum sound never heard before on record. Martin Hannett's digital delay echo system working in tandem with Morris' powerful drumming brought the drums to the centre of the overall sound and had the effect of isolating the voice, bass and guitar from each other instead of holding them together.
The Rolling Stone Album Guide – Third Edition (Random House, 1992): For all the harrowing detail of Curtis' obsessed monotone, Joy Division breathes fresh musical ideas into punk rock. Unknown Pleasures and Closer obliquely acknowledge the demon disco: deploying space and silence around Stephen Morris' (barely) syncopated beat, emphasizing Peter Hook's melodic bass lines and reducing Bernard Sumner's guitar to a textural blur. When Ian Curtis' inner vision gets claustrophobic, the music opens up a window. ★★★1/2
The Virgin Encyclopedia of Indie & New Wave (Virgin Books and Muze, 1998): They were signed to Factory Records and placed in the hands of producer Martin Hannett. Their debut, Unknown Pleasures, was a raw, intense affair, with Curtis at his most manically arresting in the insistent "She's Lost Control". The album captured a group still coming to terms with the recording process, but displaying a vision that was piercing in its clinical evocation of an unsettling disorder. With Morris' drums employed as a lead instrument, backed by the leaden but compulsive bass lines of Hook, the sound of Joy Division was distinctive and disturbing. ★★★
AllMusic: All visceral, all emotional, all theatrical, all perfect – one of the best albums ever. ★★★★★
Pitchfork: Simply put, the group's debut full-length Unknown Pleasures, released in 1979, sounds like little that came before it. At its most familiar, it vaguely approximates the cold claustrophobia of Iggy's The Idiot or David Bowie's Low, but from the first notes of "Disorder" on, the music is almost as alien as its iconic cover art. [10]
Rolling Stone: By the time of their first LP, Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division had tempered their style, planishing it down to a doleful, deep-toned sound that often suggested an elaborate version of the Velvet Underground or an orderly Public Image Ltd. In its most pervading moments – in numbers like "Day of the Lords," "Insight" and "New Dawn Fades," with their disoriented melodies and punishing rhythms – it was music that could purvey Curtis' alienated and fatalistic sensibility. But it was also music that could rush and jump and push, and a composition like "Disorder" – or better still, the later single "Transmission," with its driving tempo and roiling guitars – seemed almost spirited enough to dispel the gloom it so doggedly invoked. ★★★★
Pitchfork – 100 Best Albums of the 1970s [N.9: 'Unknown Pleasures']: I will say this: Unknown Pleasures was the second CD I owned, having been improbably drawn in by only the band name and cover. I feel fortunate to have experienced the urgency, foreboding, and perfection of this album — from the distance of Martin Hannett’s production, to the driving smack of Stephen Morris’ snares, to the grim pulse of Peter Hook’s bass, to Bernard Sumner’s brittle guitar — having never seen the name “Ian Curtis” outside of the liners. All I knew was that his alienation seemed impossibly close and more earnest than any music I had ever heard. And, yeah, I — like so many others — felt I could relate.
Rolling Stone – 100 Best Debut Albums of All Time [N.20: 'Unknown Pleasures']: This breathtaking 1979 set was to punk what The Velvet Underground & Nico was to psychedelia – a reveal of the seething dark underbelly of a cultural movement. Produced by Martin Hannett, who makes the band sound like they're performing in a meat cooler, it introduces Ian Curtis, who wails the Manchester existential blues with a despair so powerful, it somehow transcends hopelessness.
BBC: Following the first kick of drums and bass come the vocals: "I’ve been waiting for a guy to come and take me by the hand". This young band was the ‘guy’ to take post punk music by the hand and lead it to 80s electronica. Joy Division were unlike anything that came before them and anything that has ever come after them.
PopMatters: Unknown Pleasure opens with "Disorder", the track that absolutely changed everything.
Scientific American – Pop Culture Pulsar: Origin Story of Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures' Album Cover: The cover image became an icon but remained mysterious. Even as knowledge spread about the band’s inspiration point – a preexisting pulsar data visualization – the true origin of that visualization continued to be a bit of a riddle. Somewhere along the way, I became obsessed with the narratives behind pulsar discovery and stacked plots, along with a growing desire to learn all that I could about the image and the research it was connected to. What follows is an abridged story borne of that obsession, starting with a video screened at a data visualization conference and ending with an interview with Harold (Hal) Craft, the radio astronomer who created the plot from data collected at the Arecibo Radio Observatory.
Miguel Esteves Cardoso, O Jornal, 11-12-81 (retirado de "Escrítica Pop", Assírio & Alvim, 2003): A história dos Joy Division começa em 1977, numa cidade (Manchester) que era então um viveiro pululante de talento e donde iria sair a vanguarda que levaria a febre do Punk para o suave delírio da New Wave. Não é possível apreciar a profunda tristeza da música dos Joy Division sem compreender a claustrofobia de cimento e tijolo daquela sempre-cinzenta cidade, severamente esfaimada de felicidade paisagística.
Em Maio desse ano, uma banda chamada Warsaw (nome retirado da faixa “Warszawa” do LP Low de David Bowie – é ainda preciso voltar a ouvi-la para descobrir as raízes remotas dos Joy Division na sua perfeição acabada) estreava-se no Electric Circus, salão velho e sujo tão cheio de pó como de história, apoiando um cartaz com os Penetration e os Buzzcocks (cujo líder, Pete Shelley, havia sugerido o ridículo nome de Stiff Kittens para os futuros Joy Division). Segundo os relatos da época, nada tinham de notável ou sequer interessante, à parte a novidade da sua apresentação (cabelo curto, camisa branca com todos os botões abotoados, calças pretas à anos 40) e a estranha maneira de dançar de Ian Curtis, epiléptica e robótica…
(…)
O ano de 1978 foi um ano de ensaios intensivos, em que a banda procura avidamente a personalidade, sempre “ao virar do próximo acorde”. Tocam no Factory Club, um velho armazém em Hulme, sinistra área de arranha-céus degradados onde o município esconde as suas famílias “difíceis” (desempregados, negros, doentes), que pertence a Tony Wilson. (...)
Conseguiram chegar a cabeça de cartaz no Factory Club, graças aos esforços mercenários e dedicados de Gretton e Wilson, mas, salvo a antevisão enfeitiçada destes dois únicos fãs, os Joy Division continuavam os pouco ilustres desconhecidos de sempre. Ausentaram-se do Factory Club durante dois meses e foi quando voltaram que se observou a transformação dada no som dos Joy Division. Pete Hook e Bernard Albrecht haviam conseguido pegar as duas guitarras, tecendo as largas faixas de insistente melodia que se haviam de tornar a base da sua música; Curtis abandonara as tonalidades vocais herdadas do pesadelo Punk e desenvolvera um estilo a meio caminho entre o canto gongórico de Jim Morrison e o romantismo entranhado de Scott Walker e Steve Morris roubara do ar uma forma percussiva completamente original em 1978 – uma batida apertada e tribal com tanto de dançável como de claustrofóbico. Estava feito o som dos Joy Division.
(…)
Tony Wilson dá-lhes um lado do duplo-EP A Factory Sample, que preenchem com "Digital" e "Glass". É importante este registo, por marcar o início daquilo que será a mais importante colaboração musical do pós-Punk: entre o genial produtor Martin Hannett e os Joy Division. Adivinhava-se um casamento perfeito, que chegaria à fruição com o caos organizado de Unknown Pleasures e Closer.
Unknown Pleasures funciona com duas camadas de som. Uma, subjacente, constituída por ruídos (vidros partidos, gritos, gemidos) parcialmente ocultos, e outra em que se constrói a obsessiva música, profundamente triste e preocupada, “espevitadamente trágica” dos Joy Division. Unknown Pleasures, com toda a sua rudeza de alma-posta-a-nu e renegada, é contudo um LP com boa música de dança (macabra, gloriosa) que sobreviverá graças à sua grande nobreza.
O LP é recebido com todas as honras pela Imprensa e, quase dum dia para o outro, os Joy Division tornam-se na banda que importa cultivar e seguir. «A melhor estreia desde os Roxy Music», foi como o New Musical Express, ávido de novidade, classificou Unknown Pleasures. A moda nos meios estudantis é rigorosamente Joy Division: austeridade de jovem intelectual berlinesco no fim dos anos 30. O corte de cabelo é curto e severo, a roupa é segunda-mão de loja de caridade, com calças largueironas, camisa dum branco cuidadosamente encardido – a imagem, enfim, de um sofrimento ensimesmado e ascético. (...)
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