Joy Division

padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
luka said:
Neu is the band they're closest to
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there's a woebot quote - pretty sure from his old top 100 records list and in reference to either Can or Neu! - about a rule that "rock" bands are generally better the further they get from the blues

which I still think of sometimes, + immediately thought of now

as an avowed lover and proselytizer of heavy guitars I can't quite agree with it (Sabbath etc + all which follows)

but if in the sense that he meant it, Joy Division is exemplar, after the high end kraut guitar bands
 
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padraig (u.s.) said:
like Mani from Stone Roses?

also, fucking brutal

and highly unfair (unless there's a bunch of sleazy inside baseball I don't know about, which could be the case)
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Yeah, it was after their 'bass supergroup' disbanded. It was Mani, Hook and Andy Rourke from The Smiths and they were called Freebass.
 
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padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
sadmanbarty said:
that guitar solo speaks to one of joy divisions strengths. their love for very economic and direct melodies. you tend to notice in the bass in most track
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it continues on in their - primarily Hook + Sumner - post-JD work, most obv as New Order, but also the Be Music tracks they produced in the early-mid 80s (usually with Donald Johnson of ACR)

i.e.

(posted here before I'm sure, will again - the greatest Factory release of them all + supposedly Shaun Ryder's favorite record, among others)

and



etc

economy (of composition, structure, motion), simple direct melodies, prominent bass

definitely influenced - in a feedback loop - by Italo disco, the cutting edge post-disco NY club scene, etc

one wonders if Curtis had lived if JD (assuming they stayed together) would've embraced dance music to the same degree

I guess you can kinda sneak JD into disco not disco vibes if you really squint - that 16th notes on the hi-hat thing
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
version said:
Yeah, it was after their 'bass supergroup' disbanded. It was Mani, Hook and Andy Rourke from The Smiths and they were called Freebass
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oh yeah I'm not surprised it was in re to Peter Hook + the Light

I mean it's not something I'm interested in but he wrote the songs too

it's not like the Misfits guys playing Danzig's songs for decades cos they can't write their own

also that whole Freebass concept, yikes
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
blissblogger said:
feels reductive
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definitely

in fact in answer to barty's initial question I'm pretty sure the first time I really listened to Joy Division was 24 Hour Party People

the kind of ultimate print the legend in what one now recognizes as typical Winterbottom meta-meta commenting on breaking the 4th wall while you do it style
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Ian Curtis's life + death is the origin story of post-punk (meaning both literal postpunk and all that follows) cool guitar music is it not

as Socrates drank the hemlock, so he watched Stroszek, put on the idiot, and etc

not in a callous sense - in reality he was a man suffering with mental health issues who left a young family and bewildered friends behind

(I'm a strong believer that choosing suicide is any person's right, but that doesn't make it any less a tragedy)

but it's obviously completely inseparable from the music, all the films + docs + memoirs just more hermeneutics
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
version said:
Maybe they'd have ended up a bit like PiL's Death Disco/Swan Lake if they went that route.
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ya maybe

it's impossible to say

you can point to the crossover period - Ceremony, Everything Goes Green, etc

but really who knows

PiL had a real love of dub via Lydon + Wobble, a kind of black hole density in the bass which is the opposite of Hook popping off way up the neck
 
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PiL are my favourite of the two, hit me in the gut a bit more. There's a coldness and distance to Joy Division that makes it a bit thinner and harder to engage with whereas PiL has those huge basslines and Levene's guitar and Lydon's vocals really cut through.
 
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Levene does the same thing thing I love about Rowland S. Howard with The Birthday Party where he throws these clanging shards of a riff at a track, jutting into it at strange angles. It's almost like the inverse of Hendrix doing his simultaneous lead and rhythm thing with the fills between the chords. You just get these angular fills and tons of negative space.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the drums aren't too dissimilar

Levine is far more textural guitarist, scratching, toward noise, Sumner was all about those simple, discernible melodies

Lydon's warbling - and personality - does cut thru

Curtis is always at a distance

in mythological terms Lydon is obviously a trickster god

whereas Curtis is a solemn chthonic deity, calling up from the abyss

that's before the suicide and all the mythology too - it's all right there in the actual sonics
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
version said:
he throws these clanging shards of a riff at a track, jutting into it at strange angles
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it's chicken scratch from from funk (and disco, and reggae, which also it got it from funk) but inverted

or imploded, as the man said upthread
 
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Joy Division have the edge when it comes to drumming, I don't even know who the original drummer was for PiL whereas you can't ignore Stephen Morris.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I know it better by feel than in words

but it's like, more/different palm muting, more dissonance via modifying chords or notes you play

and obviously the sound is much different - messier, distorted, feedback, looser

but still percussive, "angular", etc

it's a fundamentally different school from Sumner etc, a different kind of deconstruction, chord rather than riff

you'd never hear Levene or Howard play a proper guitar solo
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
version said:
simultaneous lead and rhythm thing with the fills between the chords
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an interesting thing about JD is that iirc the guitar almost never plays chords, it's all lines of notes

I might be misremembering this but I don't think so

it's a big reason why things sound so austere

the lack of ringing open strings
 
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padraig (u.s.) said:
an interesting thing about JD is that iirc the guitar almost never plays chords, it's all lines of notes

I might be misremembering this but I don't think so

it's a big reason why things sound so austere

the lack of ringing open strings
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There are chords in the chorus of She's Lost Control.

 
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