Did Y'all Hear That?: Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures (Post Punk, 1979)

"I'm quite please with this though. It's sounding ok!"

Formed in the wake of the punk explosion in England, Joy Division became the first band in the post-punk movement by later emphasizing not anger and energy but mood and expression, pointing ahead to the rise of melancholy alternative music in the '80s. Though the group's raw initial sides fit the bill for any punk band, Joy Division later incorporated synthesizers and more haunting melodies, emphasized by the isolated, tortured lyrics of its lead vocalist, Ian Curtis. While the British punk movement shocked the world during the late '70s, Joy Division's quiet storm of musical restraint and emotive power proved to be just as important to independent music in the 1980s.
The band’s debut "Unknown Pleasures" is simply one of the best records ever made, and is still powerful enough to floor you 30 years on. With an almost dub-like, spacey atmosphere sculpted by studio genius Martin Hannett, the band’s sound - Peter Hook’s rumbling basslines, Barney Sumner’s eerie guitar shrieks and Steven Morris’ machine-like drumming - was almost the polar opposite of the punk music which had brought them together after a Sex Pistols show in 1976. All visceral, all emotional, all theatrical, all perfect - one of the best albums ever.

Let's Go Get It!

Thesis

To me, music is the most enjoyable aspect of art and I believe that although everyone perceives it differently, it cannot be evaluated with subjective criteria.

There are albums that I consider masterpieces yet in the hands of someone who hasn’t yet acquired the requisite understanding to appreciate them, its intolerable noises. Plus, the music industry seems to endorse a mass culture that transformed music from a way of entertainment (for lack of a better term) to sterilized amusement, making the number of inexperienced ears grow bigger day by day.

Nevertheless, music albums act as objective aesthetic standards whose purpose is to express the emotions and/or thoughts of the artist, to embody beauty and to induce a catharsis in the listener. By doing so, their music enters our lives, our souls; We dance, drive, argue, laugh, cry and make love to albums; On first listening they unfold as books and movies do, each track carrying us further into unknown territory, past terrifying peaks and pools of calm. As times passes by, we hear them hundreds of times and we absorb their licks and chords by osmosis until we find ourselves singing and air-guitaring along with the music, even when we are only hearing it in our heads.

Personally, It's no exaggeration to say that music has a huge impact on every aspect of my life. As a child, anything I liked was mine and I could appreciate the world through it. Music taught me a lot about every other art form, not as a surrogate, but just as a pathway. I studied the work of Dylan Thomas after listening to Bob Dylan, I became familiar with Henry David Thoreau via Pink Floyd, I came to admire Mati Klarwein's visionary paintings from Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, I began reading Huxley's stuff after listening to The Doors and I became accustomed to many African American Community issues from Public Enemy. It seemed to me that there was always something new to learn, some reference hidden behind album covers, lyrics or song titles. Something helped create those sounds that intrigued me and I happily looked that up. To make a long story short, I discovered a profound love into digging up the stories, the trivia, the cultural references, the recording techniques and the resemblances between music trends and other arts such as literature, poetry, cinema and anything else that catches my fancy.

DJ Shadow once said that “When I sample something, it's because there's something ingenious about it And if it isn't the group as a whole, it's that song. Or, even if it isn't the song as a whole, it's a genius moment, or an accident or something that makes it just utterly unique to the other trillions of hours of records that I've plowed through”. Similarly, whenever I come across something I perceive as ingenious- regardless of genre, I post it here: Classic Rock, Hard Rock, Psychedelic, Trip-Hop, Jazz, Drum & Bass, Hip-Hop, Punk, Reggae, Dub, selected Videos, Documentaries and many more. After all, all music genres connect with one another.

Countless Blues and R&B tracks are sampled at a regural basis from Hip-Hop artists to achieve higher levels of expression, the source of which comes from Dub music and Jamaican toasters who were chanting using improvised lyrics over a rhythm or beat. Pioneers like DJ Kool Herc carried that sound into the streets of Bronx creating Hip-Hop while Jamaican rudeboys inspired the lower-class youth in Britain to create the Punk movement. The Clash wrote music whose initial aggression masked a sophistication that that would soon make the term "Punk" seem laughably misplaced as they assimilated Hip-Hop and were grappling with Dub and Reggae, making their sound incredibly fresh. Furthermore, Dub features like sub-bass, skittering and jittery drums (which would later be termed "2-step"), distortive echo and reverberation effects, along with other soundsystem techniques went on to form Electronica, Jungle, Garage, and eventually Dubstep.

And of course Rock has its roots on the Blues. The Blues were born in the North Mississippi Delta following the Civil War. Influenced by African Roots, field hollers, ballads, church music and rhythmic dance tunes called jump-ups evolved into a music for a singer who would engage in call-and-response with his guitar. Artists such as Robert Johnson - whose sound is critically recognized as the culmination of the Delta Blues tradition, have strongly influenced almost all popular music including Jazz, Country, and Rock and Roll and continue to help shape music worldwide. When the Blues migrated to Chicago and Detroit- during the later forties and early fifties, it became electrified. Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, and Elmore James among others, played what was basically Mississippi Delta Blues, backed by bass, drums, piano and occasionally harmonica, and began scoring national hits with Blues songs. Many of Johnson's compositions by now had become electric Blues standards.

In the UK artists such as Eric Clapton were intrigued by the Chicago style Blues and by copying its intensity created a whole new way of playing that dominated the 60's and 70's. Acts like Cream, Free, Black Sabbath, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and countless more basically played an updated, energized version of the Blues. The "British ambassadors" Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were major Delta Blues fans, so does Angus Young who sees himself as "a Blues guitarist playing Rock & Roll". Gang Starr's Guru has collaborated with numerous Jazz artists whereas Miles Davis experimented with Hip-Hop oriented sounds before his death at age 65. John Densmore loves Jazz, so does Charlie Watts. The Housemartins were an english pop band yet FatBoy Slim evolved to a Big Beat DJ. In 2003, DJ Muggs recorded an Electronica record, proving that he is not limited to his usual Cypress Hill sounds. Ritchie Blackmore currently plays Folk music - whose trademark representative, Bob Dylan admires Rap artists such Kurtis Blow and Run-DMC.

Now, although it is obvious that music classification is wrong, there are obviously separate categories of genres tagged appropriately in this site. However, you should try to broaden your search to find more stuff you like. All in all, links found here are provided solely for cultural purposes. In order to have an ultimate musical experience you need excellent music quality that mp3s can't deliver, and quality artwork as well. So please buy the original record and support true artists that deserve to be heard! If you are an artist that wants to be indexed in this site, contact me. Also, bookmark this site or follow via Google and try to comment back, it would be nice for this site to evolve into a quality music community! Enjoy and let the music play!

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures (Post Punk, 1979)

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