I remain fascinated with the Hannett-Joy Div production aesthetic intersection tho- sure he'd try out a similar sounds on other bands, but that precise feel was never the same... in attempting to describe it I am actually lost for the precise words... some people talk dub spaciousness, well there is space, certainly, but it feels so distinct from dub, the bass has almost zero bass resonance, (esp on Closer the bassiest thing is certain treated drum sounds...) and while it is a much copied sound (allegedly) no one even approximates it (as discussed on some other thread round abouts here...) the bass and drums (the "hot" R'n'R instrumentation) is rendered cold like scalpels, whilst the drums, vocals, and industrial sewage pipe clatter sfx attempt (and fail) to fill the rest of the sound stage... coming to this music as a 15 yr old it felt like the most purely evil shit I'd ever heard, (and trust me that's a great thing) foreboding way beyond any mere simple antihero-suicide mythos... (at the same kind of time Nirvana or The Doors meant literally nothing to me) and it was the sound of it, far more than the scales, chords, lyrics, and rhythms which created that implacably sinister atmosphere... and none of the goth follow up bands, (Cure) 00s copyists (hello Interpol!) or other Hannett productions (greetings Slaughter and the Dogs...) got anywhere near... I still cannot find the correct words, and indeed no longer feel any need to listen to these records, but still that sense of evil shining in a pool of alien negative (sonic, emotional) space remains... and that is almost the very best thing about it- its copyists can't quite describe it, to draw up a blueprint of it is to create merely the banal, the actuality simply evades...