Two things: New Order wanted to move on and everything they wanted to release had been released. Problem: New Order had to answer questions about Joy Division at every interview they did and that wasn't helped by the burgeoning bootleg market that seemed to find something fresh in the attic every few months. Zine-quality books on the band appeared in the dustier corners of indy record shops that detailed (sometimes accurately) all sorts of releases made on forgotten compilations, tossed on to flexidiscs and given to Euro Magazines or sent to radio stations as non retail playlist fodder. And then there was the erroneously titled Warsaw LP. It wasn't finished before it was abandoned so there was plenty of room for old tracks from the early EP and other sources. And it was delivered on discs so untroubled by quality control that they were afflicted with shrieks and jumps.
Joy Division's legacy started at the two impeccable albums, those extraordinary singles, an unpleasantly patchy compilation and a trove of utter shit. By then, everyone who knew knew that there was a treasure waiting for anyone who billed up for some remastering and a decent release. I mean, the band's sudden and early demise made them prime material for bootleggers. Worse, if you got to hear the best of it, the lousy sound of the overpriced discs would make the toughest of us cry.
And so it was that in 1988, whatever was left of Factory Records released Substance on to a world whose margins included a multigenerational ready made fanbase. The LP was a tight package, ending with the band's most famous song Love Will Tear Us Apart. The CD and cassette versions, however, bore seven other tracks. This was wrapped up in new and characteristically mystique-heavy artwork by Peter Saville whose efforts for Factory releases and posters gave a generation the same kind of stylistic template as Hipgnosis did for the previous one. I had the double cassette and it was beautiful.
When you opened it and chucked it on there was more and more and more.
"3 - 5 - 0 - 1 - 2 - 5 - GO!" yells a young strident Mancunian and the down flowing guitar and bass riff plunge us into action as the solid drumming builds to open the door on the raw vocal which delivers statements from a figure duped by power into servitude and brutality. The title Warsaw serves the context and we do the rest. More dynamics than the punk rock it otherwise resembles with a break here and a sense of dramatic cadence. It's not a masterpiece but nor is it cod Sex Pistols or second hand Clash.
Leaders of Men comes in with brooding bass and drums that are joined by a serpentine dark guitar figure and, as rough as it is, we are getting a much clearer indication of the band to come. If there were real arrangement dynamics in Warsaw this one leaves it in the dust. Brief statements over chugging guitar make way for a solidly developing melody and end in a rasping minor key fanfare. Towards the end there is a new progression that adds even more urgency and gravity.
These tracks amounted to half of the first EP, Ideal for Living and I could scarcely believe how good they were sounding, considering the means they were made with and the reputation that the initial 7 inch release was reputed to have very poor sound. So, not only were we getting what felt like pristine presentations we were getting them from the start. (Yes, I know there are earlier tracks on the Warsaw bootlegs but this was from a full genuine release.) I would have settled for the crappiest of garage punk but these were real songs.
And then before anyone could ask if there ever had been a studio version of Digital it started up. This one was one of the live tracks on Still and while it was impassioned and hard it didn't seem to amount to much. The studio recording doesn't either and misses out on the drive of the live version but hearing it alone was like having an old debt repaid. That's what it sounded like.
Autosuggestion begins with crackles, clicks and buzzes as a slow bass figure persists as the delayed drums start. "Heeeeeere, everything is by design..." A distant clicking guitar plays a kind of stuttered drone or breaks out into distorted chords while around it other guitar tracks variously feedback or play harmonics. It's a big grey ambienceas a figure in the centre of it is deciding whether to leave or stay. Curtis' lyric is not making it easy, on one hand encouraging and on the other frowningly suggesting, "lose some sleep and say you tried." This last phrase becomes the taunting chant as Curtis revs his vocal up to a constant yell as the guitar gets as angry while the bass and drums, eerily remain calm and constant. It ends with a few echoing clicks.
The side (on LP and cassette) closes with the mini epic Transmission, the band's first real single. A brief synthetic chord which might as easily be a processed choir is interrupted by Peter Hook's rapid thudding on the bass. It drops a tone and goes back up and starts again. Drums come in with the guitar playing a two note figure which leaps up a fourth and then back down to the E-string. After a tiny respite the bass reaches up to the vocal intro: "Radio. Live transmission. Radio Live transmission." And then the verse begins: "Listen to the silence, let it ring on." A doomed relationship is described. The last line of the first stanza gave Curtis' wife Deborah the title of her memoir of him: Touching from a Distance. Second stanza, "we could go on as though nothing was wrong," leads to the chorus which on first hearing seems unrelated to the situation in the verses. But then it's a lot darker when you understand that the advice he's giving is to forget about all the tough stuff like the emotion and the life and dance dance dance dance to the radio, keep a tight seal on everything actual until it collapses while the automatic responses kick in. After the second chorus, which is screamed by Curtis, the big force of it winds down like an exhausted machine into a large blurring drone, a few snare hits for the final kicking moments.
Side two starts with the version of She's Lost Control from the B-side of the Atmosphere single (it was the A-side in the US!). The rhythm and bass line are the same but the temperature has been lowered to Arctic conditions. Instead of the swirling delay around the vocal it's more of a slapback, almost rockabilly setting like singing in an empty metal barrel. The guitar growls low in the mix and eventually gets swamped by keyboard arpeggios with a middle eastern flavour. It is stark and unfriendly but compelling.
Incubation sounds like the jam the band got into after they finished the previous track. It's mostly a thumping monotone bass and slightly riffing guitar. No words of vocals, just an oddly compelling forward motion.
Dead Souls, the original B-side of Atmosphere when it was given to a French Magazine on a flexidisc sounds as welcome as it did on Still, a strong, articulate rock song with a catchy riff and chorus. "Someone take these dreams away..." Images of oppression, conquest and cruelty call out to him as the chorus progression descends like a squadron of tanks.
The huge icy fog of Atmosphere follows with its cloudy keyboards and thundering tom toms. "Walk in silence. Don't walk away in silence..." Curtis croons a helpless plea to a departing other who is retreating and continuing. Nothing will change. There is no real chorus but a few instrumental breaks begun with a rise and fall, glittering flourish and synth strings playing a two note motif over a first to fourth chord change. These glorious moments feel ecstatic despite the situation of the lyrics. Curtis even starts the next verse a third higher as though more hopeful. Then, after another break the clamorous middle eight barges in with anger: "People like you find it easy, aching to see, walking on air..." This is a view from a window to a desolate world of cruelty and persistent rebuilding. "Don't walk away." The song ends on a break where all the subtle fourths swell up or sing distantly until the full end which feels like an earlier line suggests: set down with due care. The spell of this song always catches me and I can attend to nothing else when I hear it.
A chugging clean electric guitar is joined by a triplet chord played on an acoustic 12 string. The interplay of the two and the drums speeds to a crashing introduction of the theme played high on the synth strings. The motif is also sung in the chorus and played on bass in the verses. "When routine bites hard and ambitions are low ..." Ian Curtis croons under the reported influence of Frank Sinatra, using the power in his lower range without the strain he'd put into the early punky numbers. The arrangement is delicate with the frame of the drums up front supporting skeletal guitar single string strumming, simple modal keyboard movement and constant poignant insistence on the bass. Love Will Tear Us Apart is a perfect pop song. Line it up on a jukebox and people will dance. Listen to it in a dark room and climb down into a personal hell. There is, along with most of the other Joy Division songs about relationships, no warmth or hope here and there won't be in any sung lines but the main melodic motif is so bright and the fade insists on a figure lifted from And Then He Kissed Me and feels like better days. But this is after bad tastes in the mouth, bad things cried out in sleep, failings and static emotions and the plain observation that this, like all other attempts at love, will divide and keep dividing. The fragility of the arrangement almost dares the listener to remove any component and watch as it collapses. Joy Division's best known song is a musical description of the claimed truth of its lyric.
That is where the original LP ended. If you had the money for a player and bought the CD or, like me, the double cassette, you'd also get the following. I'll be describing the tracklist on the download package from an online retailer which adds two further tracks. I'll note them as they come up.
First is the remaining pair of tracks from the Ideal for Living EP. No Love Lost begins with a similar long instrumental introduction beginning with Krautrock drums and brooding bass. The guitar comes in with a sparse riff ending in a tremulous single note attack before turning into barre chord swashes. Repeat then slam into the main punky chord riff. Curtis enters with a strained shout with images from the novel that gave the band its name, House of Dolls. Between the first and second verses there is a spoken word passage which sounds like it might be from the book but wasn't in the translation I read in the 2020 lockdowns (and finally, as I'd found it at an op shop back in the late '80s and always gave it a pass when choosing a next book). This is the same with the different version that appeared on the Warsaw bootleg which has a different again spoken word verse. It presents as harsh punk but there's a lot of gloomy ambience and drama.
Failures, on the other hand is four on the floor punk with the same strained vocal and crashing barre chords with high energy drumming and guitar rifferama between verses. A guitar solo screams out briefly before the second half and that will happen again to the fade. Moments of responsibility through history that only get hard and repeat despite the knowledge of all the failure that lead to them and continues. For all the callow crude textures and force to these EP tracks there is a clear indication of things to come, especially with the Unknown Pleasures album only two years and a genius producer away. The sense of story, setting, atmosphere and dynamics are right here at the start.
Next we get the song that I always zone out to if I can't easily skip it. Glass has all the hallmarks of Joy Division from Martin Hannett producing them onward, modal riffs, a severe Curtis vocal and lyric. A series of instructions lead to a screamed order to do it again and again and again. This is in the Digital camp for me in that it is musically charmless, amelodic and dragging. It's childish in its obviousness in a way that none of the raw and unformed Ideal for Living tracks are. The band clearly found great value in it to put it here as well as on Still but it has never improved to these ears.
From Safety to Where was one of the grail Joy Divison recordings. The haunting bassline, highly creative guitar scaping and assured Curtis vocal put it clearly in the Unknown Pleasures era and the clear stamp of Martin Hannett building a world of boomy percussion and distant cries from instruments. The singer feels lost but is assured that everything has been taken care of. It's the kind of cardigan wearing sci-fi that the BBC was churning out that, for all its dowdy looks, could create horror by the dullest and subtlest of means. Like Glass, it has all the Hannett-era elements of this band but unlike Glass, I'll not only turn it up if I hear it but go to it especially.
Novelty is the song Peter Hook wrote by himself and entered the band's repertoire early on. It was also tried out in the RCA sessions that were compiled for the Warsaw bootleg. This is the Hannett-produced version that appeared on the B-side of the first single, Transmission. It's a much more conventional rock song from the era. After a grinding minor key ascent which is not used again in the song the main chord progression. The chorus slightly modifies this progression and it's played under the solos but everything is close enough to sound as though a single structure is repeating throughout. The lyrics are a kind of taunt to a second person who has taken on a superior air but is due for a fall. It's exactly the kind of song you'd write in your late teens about someone in particular who, when the band takes it and turns it into a part of the set, fades into the recycle bin of history. Like all Joy Division B-sides, it's a corker.
Komakino sounds distinctly like the music on the second album Closer. The guitar starts up a staccato riff that would be funky if it weren't dressed in downward thrusting bass and Steve Morris machine man drums. Think Colony or Atrocity Exhibition off Closer. The lyric is an expansion of another failed romance but set this way in the machine like arrangement it becomes a kind of final diary entry in a long epistolary horror story. "This is the hour when the mysteries emerge..." is the opening line. My favourite, though, is the eerie, "The shadow that stood by the side of the road always reminds me of you." This was the A-side of a flexidisc single given to a magazine. My copy was an Italian 7 inch promotional copy for radio. The song grind on to the bitter end with interplay between the bass and the tattooing tom toms into a clean ending rather than a fade. One of my favourite of the "new" tracks on the compilation.
The B-side was two instrumentals. We've covered Incubation above and the last one was As You Said. Both instrumentals. Incubation is a few minutes of unrelenting force. As You Said, which made its official release debut on the download version of this compilation (meaning it wasn't on the CD or cassette) is a drum loop and a Steve Morris rhythm augmented with some gleaming synthesiser play. It goes nowhere but is perfectly listenable for all that.
These Days I had known from have the Love Will Tear Us Apart 7 inch at the start of the '80s. It sounds like the future of the band. A frenetic treated guitar doodles into the light and supported by echoey drums and a a rolling down bass line. Curtis comes in without his lower mids in a determinedly harsh but clean vocal with lines about training to be ruthless for these days. Skeletal instrumental sections are suddenly enriched with a high warbling synthesiser in a break which, ingeniously gets superimposed on to the final verse, giving the song a cinematic heft and lifting the feel into intrigue and joy. They really didn't waste B-sides. This also sound very Closer era.
The other addition to the online version is the earlier recording of Love Will Tear Us Apart. This appeared on the 12 inch version of the single (with the tombstone angel cover) but it never made much of an impression. The arrangement is essentially the same but not played with as much conviction as the 7 inch release. The quote riff of the end hasn't been discovered yet. Curtis' vocal is also very different and it sounds as though he's trying too hard to incorporate the Sinatra style with almost every line rushed in its second half. The fully described melody weighs heavier and sounds far more poignant, as though, after experimentation they found that what they'd begun with was already right. Still, it's worth having and the song is so indestructible that you can hear it twice in the same compilation without feeling fatigued by it.
This is were I would point anyone curious about the seminal band. It will tell them where they had started with the unrefined punk that yet demonstrated a taste for exploration and then the realisation of that potential as the musicality found its momentum in a brief but astounding and heavily influential career. If our imagined new listener wanted to go further they have two extraordinary albums by a band recognisably the same but advanced beyond expectations in the space of a single year. This record attests to that. Later compilations that mix album tracks with singles and obscurites lack the force of this and the gargantuan Heart and Soul box is long out of print and costs over a thousand dollars. Get this and move on to the albums and reach out to Still for a few further obscurites that will by that stage pretty much delight.
I began drafting this with a personal account of how I stood with this band but it grew so long and floppy I ditched it. Here's the short version. I was intrigued by Love Will Tear Us Apart and bought the single in 1980. I met fans of the band whose fancies and theories about them were so whacked out and overly serious I met them with ridicule. Ideation chic indeed!. After Uni I bought second hand copies of the three LPs available, Unknown Pleasures, Still and Closer and chowed down on them now that the goopy fans were out of the picture. A few years later I skipped Brisbane for Melbourne and took up the cause, finding more articulate fans and became almost the kind of fan I'd already made fun of. At some point I let this fade and just enjoyed the music. I listen to Joy Division to this day and this collection is both a sentimental favourite as it felt like new stuff long after the band had gone and it was good stuff. It was better than that. Still came out less than a year after the band's existence. It was shrouded in grief. Substance came out seven years after, and after seven years of New Order. It felt like a celebration.
