Unknown Original Sound Download

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UnknownPleasures is the debut studio album by the English rock band Joy Division, released on 15 June 1979, by Factory Records.[1] The album was recorded and mixed over three successive weekends at Stockport's Strawberry Studios in April 1979, with producer Martin Hannett contributing a number of unconventional recording techniques to the group's sound. The cover artwork was designed by artist Peter Saville, using a data plot of signals from a radio pulsar.[2] It is the only Joy Division album released during lead singer Ian Curtis's lifetime.

After signing a recording contract with RCA Records in early 1978, Joy Division recorded some demos; however, they were unhappy with the way their music was mixed and asked to be released from their contract.[6][7] The band's first release was the self-produced extended play (EP), An Ideal for Living, which was released in June 1978. They made their television debut on Tony Wilson's local news show Granada Reports in September 1978.[8] According to Hook, the band received a 70,000 offer from Genetic Records in London.[9] However, the band's manager, Rob Gretton, approached Wilson about releasing an album on his Factory Records label.[10] Wilson explained that Gretton had calculated that given Factory's 50/50 split of profits, the band could make as much money with the indie label as it could by signing to a major. Wilson added that one of Gretton's main reasons for approaching Factory was so "he wouldn't have to get on a train to London every week and 'talk to nuggets'. No one could use the word 'cockney' with as much contempt as Rob".[10] Gretton estimated that the album would cost 8,000 to produce; however, Wilson said in 2006 that the up-front cost ended at 18,000.[10]

Unknown Pleasures was recorded at Strawberry Studios in Stockport over three weekends between 1 and 17 April 1979, with Martin Hannett producing.[1] Hannett, who believed that punk rock was sonically conservative because of its refusal to use studio technology to create sonic space,[11] used a number of unusual production techniques and sound effects on the album, including several AMS 15-80s digital delays, the Marshall Time Modulator, tape echo and bounce,[12] as well as the sound of a bottle smashing, someone eating crisps, backwards guitar and the sound of the Strawberry Studios lift with a Leslie speaker "whirring inside".[13] He also used the sound of a basement toilet.[14] Hannett recorded Curtis's vocals for "Insight" down a telephone line so he could achieve the "requisite distance". Hannett later said, "[Joy Division] were a gift to a producer, because they didn't have a clue. They didn't argue".[4] Referring to the recording sessions, Hook remembered, "Sumner started using a kit-built Powertran Transcendent 2000 synthesiser, most notably on 'I Remember Nothing', where it vied with the sound of Rob Gretton smashing bottles with Steve and his Walther replica pistol."[13] During the recording, Morris invested in a syndrum because he thought he saw one on the cover of Can's 1971 album Tago Mago.[13]

AllMusic wrote that Hannett's production on Unknown Pleasures was "as much a hallmark as the music itself," describing it as "emphasizing space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub."[15] Describing Hannett's production techniques, Hook said, "[He] didn't think straight, he thought sideways. He confused you and made you do something you didn't expect."[16] Hook went on to say, "Derek Bramwood of Strawberry Studios said that you can take a group that have got on brilliantly for 20 years, put them in a studio with Martin and within five minutes, they'll be trying to slash each other's throats." However, Hook went on to say that Hannett was only as good as the material he had to work with, "We gave him great songs, and like a top chef, he added some salt and pepper and some herbs and served up the dish. But he needed our ingredients."[16] The band members' opinions differed on the "spacious, atmospheric sound" of the album, which did not reflect their more aggressive live sound. Sumner said, "The music was loud and heavy, and we felt that Martin had toned it down, especially with the guitars. The production inflicted this dark, doomy mood over the album: we'd drawn this picture in black and white, and Martin had coloured it in for us. We resented it ..."[4] Hook said, "I couldn't hide my disappointment then, it sounded like Pink Floyd."[13]

Peter Saville, who had previously designed posters for Manchester's Factory club in 1978, designed the cover of the album.[18] Sumner or Morris, depending on the account,[19] chose the image used on the cover, which is based on an image of radio waves from pulsar CP 1919, from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy.[20] Saville reversed the image from black-on-white to white-on-black, against the band's stated preference for the original. "I was afraid it might look a little cheap. I was convinced that it was just sexier in black" since it represented a signal from space.[19] He printed it on textured card for the original version of the album.[13]

It is not a Fourier analysis as sometimes stated, but rather an image of the intensity of successive radio pulses, as stated in the Cambridge Encyclopaedia. In simple terms, the image is a ridgeline plot of the radio emissions given out by a pulsar, a "rotating neutron star". Originally named CP 1919, the pulsar was discovered in November 1967 by student Jocelyn Bell Burnell and her supervisor Antony Hewish at Cambridge University. As the star turns, it emits electromagnetic radiation in a beam like a lighthouse, which can be picked up by radio telescopes. Each line on the image is an individual pulse. They are not exactly the same each time as the long distance the beam travels introduces interference.

The image was originally created by radio astronomer Harold Craft at the Arecibo Observatory for his 1970 doctoral dissertation as a way to visualize smaller pulses within larger ones, which might help explain what had been causing the pulses. He was unaware for years that the image was associated with the album cover until a friend told him; afterwards he bought a copy because he felt he should have one as the creator of the image.[21]

Susie Goldring, reviewing the album for BBC Online said, "The duochrome Peter Saville cover of this first Joy Division album speaks volumes. Its white on black lines reflect a pulse of power, a surge of bass, and raw angst. If the cover doesn't draw you in, the music will."[22]

The cover image became strongly associated with the band's fans at goth gatherings later in the 1980s, after Joy Division's surviving members had become New Order. In the 21st century, it started to become an iconic image outside Joy Division fandom. Raf Simons collaborated with Saville on a 2003 clothing line that used the plot; three years later Supreme followed suit.[23] The cover of Vince Staples' 2015 album Summertime '06 is based on the Unknown Pleasures image.[19]

In 2012 the Disney corporation used the cover image for a t-shirt with Mickey Mouse, which was taken as a joke but not meant as one.[19] Saville explains the image's adaptability as a result of it being "cool, in all of the meanings, from cool to cold".[19]

The inner sleeve features a black-and-white photograph of a door with a hand near the handle. It was some years later before Saville discovered that the photograph was Hand Through a Doorway, a well-known picture by Ralph Gibson.[18]

Unknown Pleasures was initially printed in a run of 10,000 copies,[17] with 5,000 copies being sold within the first two weeks of release,[24] and a further 10,000 copies being sold over the following six months. Initially, sales of Unknown Pleasures were slow until the release of the non-album single, "Transmission", and unsold copies occupied the Factory Records office in the flat of label co-founder Alan Erasmus.

Following the release of "Transmission", Unknown Pleasures sold out of its initial pressing, with this prompting further pressings. Unknown Pleasures created approximately 50,000 in profit, to be shared between Factory Records and the band; however, Tony Wilson spent most of these profits on Factory projects.[25] By the conclusion of a critically acclaimed promotional tour supporting Buzzcocks in November 1979, Unknown Pleasures had neared 15,000 copies sold.[26]

Unknown Pleasures failed to chart on the UK Albums Chart. However, following Curtis's suicide in May 1980 and the release of their second album, Closer, in July, it was reissued and reached No. 71 at the end of that August.[27][28] It fared better on the UK Indie Chart, placing at No. 2 on the first chart to be published in January 1980 and going on to top the chart following its reissue, spending 136 weeks on the chart in total.[29] The 40th-anniversary reissue of the album charted at number 5 in the UK Albums Chart when it was released in 2019, making Unknown Pleasures Joy Division's highest-charting album.[30]

Retrospective critical writing on the album has been virtually unanimous in its praise. In 1994, Jon Savage described the music as "a definitive Northern Gothic statement: guilt-ridden, romantic, claustrophobic".[4] Analysing Curtis's work, music journalist Richard Cook remarked in 1983: "sex has disappeared from these unknown pleasures; it is an aftermath of passion where everything's (perhaps) lost".[50] Stuart Maconie of Select deemed Unknown Pleasures "music without a past or a future but with the muscularity of all great rock" and "one of the greatest first albums ever."[47]

Peter Hook and The Light have played the Unknown Pleasures album in its entirety on several of their concert tours, and have recorded and released live albums of some of their gigs.[53] Hook also named one of his books Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division in 2012.[54]

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