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Sounds 14/7/79 Album review by Dave McCullough DEATH DISCO JOY DIVISION 'Unknown Pleasures' (Factory Records Fact 10)***** Andrew looked out through the misty, murky curtains and saw that morning was on it's way like a messenger of doom. The street-lamps were still flickering but the pale light of another day was climbing majestically above the nightime gloom. He turned back into the room. For three days he had been here, a prisoner of choice wrapped up in a room of permanent, chilling, deathly silent nightmares. The radio cacked in a chaotic disorder, pillows lay strewn on the carpet like fluffy corpses, the clock ticked with knowing assurance. A newspaper three days old was on the floor engulfing something bloody and thick. He picked up a record sleeve. The sleeve was completely black save the inscription of small white waves on the front and the tiny writing of 'Joy Division' - 'Unknown Pleasures' on the reverse. The thing was blank and inviting so he walked dizzily to the record player that sat by the bed and placed the stylus down on the hard, liquorice black plastic. 'Outside' was the title of the first side of songs. 'Disorder' opened the side. Clicking electronic drums hissed and spat, a bass rumbled in, fat and heavy, a guitar pinged trebly into a weaving, jittery pattern of ragged chords. 'Day Of The Lords' followed, the music black and unworldly, spreading images of unaccountable evil and destruction; "Where will it end?" that full-blooded, eerie voice screamed hoarsely. The voice reminded Andrew of Jim Morrison at his best. "I tried to get to you... I tried to get to you... I tried." The next song, 'Candidate' flickered mystically to a close, the guitar and bass going further and deeper into the sound mix like great black claws searching diabolically into the record player. Andrew looked out the window again. Still no-one appeared, there was not a sound outside. Even the birds had gone forever... 'Insight' began, the bass trickling pointedly along the tale of despondent remembrance. It's funny how we always look back, Andrew thought. Our lives are one long tunnel of nostalgic longing. "I remember...", the song emphasised the gloom of the time, the music rolling like some stark answer to the fate of what was punk, like a memorial to something real and furious. The songs were short but as taut as the sliding bass-lines with seething emotion. Have these people lived as I have, thought Andrew? He lit up a cigarette and turned the thing over to the second side. The mess on the floor still worried him... This was the 'Inside' of Joy Division, it said. 'She's lost Control' was the song. Aaah! They DO know, he mused! Electric drums hissed sarcastically over the wailing, flailing, fuming guitar, the song climbing ominously to a climax, the Joy Division technique, it seemed to him, an r'n'b rooted adventure into primitive ascending emotiveness whereby the song is finally brought to a tense, embittered conclusion. "To the centre of the city at night, waiting for you," the phrase of 'Shadowplay' rolled madly round his brain, the gladiator guitar interplay cutting a sheet metal path through the room's half-light semi-consciousness. 'Wilderness' was black as the devil, a dirgeful streak of vengeful, quite beautiful melancholy on a plateau of total desolation. Still the mess remained... 'Interzone' spluttered like rifles across the border, a jagged rock and roll panorama of noise. "Violent more violent his hand cracks the chair..." 'The Waiting Room' mournfully rejoices in the violence of the place, ending the album and the brief image of aural despair with perfect hopelessness. A rich dark impression, thought Andrew. 'Unknown Pleasures' was taken off the turntable and placed carefully back in it's stiff black shell, like a walking, talking image of Death settling back nito it's tomb once again. Still the bloody mess of broken bones, he thought. Andrew walked to the bathroom. He was humming 'She's Lost Control' to himself when the razor slashed ecstatically like a hungry vampire. DAVE McCULLOUGH
Last updated on 2005-03-07 10:16:00 PM - 10:16:00 PM
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