The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Joy Division · produced by Martin Hannett · Factory · about 39 minutes
Mode
Post-punk at its founding: punk’s speed and noise turned to space, slowness and dread; the bass as lead, the drums machined
Mythos
A descent from Outside to Inside: the prophets’ day, the wilderness, the city of exile and the possessed, summoned around a frame that no figure bears
Phase
Ten tracks on two sides named Outside and Inside; a plea for a guide at the start, the summit at the close of the first side, a seizure at the hinge, amnesia at the end
Presentation
Album; ten songs of near-equal length, five a side, with no instrumental and no segues, about thirty-nine minutes; a sleeve with no name and no title, after the radio pulses of a dying star
Register
Dry, separated sounds in delayed space; a high melodic bass, machine-steady drums, sparse guitar, a close baritone that breaks
Scale
One estranged consciousness, its body and an emptied city, with history and the sacred named at the edges
Governing Proposition
Four musicians from punk, recorded by a producer who sets every sound apart in dry, delayed space, make ten songs of a self watching its control fail, its body and its feeling no longer its own, in a city emptied of the life it was built for. The record moves from a side called Outside to a side called Inside, from a plea for a guide to a mind that remembers nothing, and the silence between the sounds is the isolation the songs describe.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on Peter Hook’s bass, high and alone, then the drums, then a voice asking for “a guide to come”. Disorder is fast and bright, and it is the one moment of forward motion the record allows; everything after it is the failure of that guide to arrive. A group formed in punk begins its first album with a plea, at punk’s speed, but already in another room: the drums dry and separate, the guitar pushed back, the voice close, and around each sound a space that does not fill.
The group was Ian Curtis, voice; Bernard Sumner, guitar and keyboards; Peter Hook, bass; and Stephen Morris, drums. Martin Hannett produced the record at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in April 1979, and Factory Records released it in June 1979, catalogue FACT 10. It holds ten tracks in about thirty-nine minutes, five a side, and the sleeve and labels name the sides not one and two but Outside and Inside: Disorder, Day of the Lords, Candidate, Insight and New Dawn Fades; then She’s Lost Control, Shadowplay, Wilderness, Interzone and I Remember Nothing.
The songs are of near-equal length, none instrumental, none joined to the next, and what makes the record continuous is its sound. Hannett set every instrument apart, dry and close, and let long delays open rooms of silence between the sounds. Played as the group played them live, fast and loud, the same songs would make a punk record about unease; set this way they are the isolation they describe. The record moves from a world looked at, a city, a history, a campaign, to a self looked into, and it ends in a mind that remembers nothing.
Movement II
Outside looks at the world and finds it emptied. Day of the Lords is heavy and immense, and its chorus asks “Where will it end?” into a void, under a title borrowed from the prophets’ day of judgement. Candidate is static by design, a campaign that goes nowhere, and earns its place by that stasis. Insight states the giving up, “I’m not afraid anymore”, over drum treatments and delays whose design reveals itself on return, with synthesiser zaps that belong to their year, and it ends on a rise against its own resignation.
New Dawn Fades closes the side, and it is the slow gathering the side has been withholding. A descending bass figure, a slow guitar line climbing over it, and Curtis’s voice, held flat in its baritone through the song, breaking at the close into a cry: terror and grandeur together, the record’s summit. Hook’s high bass carries the melody here, as on Disorder and later on Shadowplay; Sumner’s guitar is used sparingly and exactly; and the voice, which commands only a narrow range, breaks at the one moment the song needs it to.
That is the record’s way with height. Its elevation is cold and dreadful, and it comes often: five or six of the ten tracks rise, and the highest rises very far, though a step below the summits the medium has reached elsewhere. The playing is limited in places, and some songs are thinly made; what carries the heights is the space. A guitar line that would be ordinary in a full room becomes, set far back in an empty one, a figure climbing out of the dark.
Movement III
Inside opens on the record’s clearest statement, turned outward onto another person. She’s Lost Control watches a seizure in someone else, “lost control again”, over the dry machine of Morris’s drums, a taut pattern and a hissing high hat that sound less played than built. It stands at the hinge of the two sides, and it carries the oldest figure the record summons: the possessed, the body taken from its owner, the sacred disease. By the end of the record that loss has become the speaker’s own.
What the record uncovers can be stated, and it holds: a self watching its own control fail, its body and its feeling no longer its own, in a city emptied of the life it was built for, with no guide coming. Disorder states the want, to lose the feeling against the wish to feel; Insight the giving up; She’s Lost Control the loss seen from outside before it is suffered from within. The production discloses as fully as the words. The empty rooms are the condition, and a listener hears the estrangement before any line has named it.
Shadowplay follows, the guitar entering like headlights crossing a wall and the song driving into the city, the record’s surest surge. Then the limits show. The words are oblique, and much of the condition is rendered as mood rather than found as meaning. Part of what listeners hear as disclosure is not in the record at all: Curtis’s illness and his death in May 1980 have been heard into these songs ever since, and that is the singer’s life, not the work.
Movement IV
The second side softens in its middle. Wilderness, the slightest song on the record, sends a wanderer through ages of martyrdom and stays level throughout. Interzone, an older song, fast and shouted in two voices, takes its title from Burroughs’s city of exile; it strains the record’s law and obeys it only in its sound and its subject. The two run together, and here, and only here, the record could lose a track and lose energy without losing meaning. The frame is thin at this point, and these are songs set in it rather than enacting it.
The inheritance is punk, which the group had played under the name Warsaw, beside Bowie’s Low and Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, the Velvet Underground, the Doors and German electronic music. The turn is thorough. Punk’s speed and noise became space, slowness and dread; the song became a room rather than a shout; the bass took the melody; the drums were made to sound machined. Much of the turn was made in the studio, and the group’s second album, Closer, the next year, worked inside a sound that this record had already found.
The path was opening. Low had made the cold European turn inside rock in 1977, and Wire, Magazine, Public Image and Siouxsie and the Banshees had begun post-punk in 1978. A debut on a new independent label risked little standing. What the record did was to finish what others had begun: it fixed post-punk’s sound as a whole language, space and dread, a melodic bass as lead, machine-steady drums, a baritone set close, and showed that rock after punk could be slow, cold and inward and still hit hard. Most of its devices were others’ first; the language was its own.
Movement V
The record ends in a slow, nearly formless song, glass breaking in the dark of an empty mix, memory gone. I Remember Nothing is the compelled end, the longest track and the record’s law at its purest: a self observed from a cold distance, every sound set apart from every other. The descent from Outside to Inside is complete. Disorder asked for a guide; the last song has forgotten what it was asking for. From the fastest song to this near-silent close, nothing has left the one temperature, though the range inside it is narrow, one palette from first to last.
The record’s life since has been long and wide. Much of the next decade’s dark rock and gothic music drew on its sound, a generation of independent records took its producer’s method, and the post-punk revival after 2000 returned to it as a model. It has stayed in print as issued, reissued and remastered, and its fabric dates little, Hannett’s dry space having been unlike the sound of its year. Books by members of the group and by Deborah Curtis, two feature films and a documentary are reported, and much of that return has gone to the man rather than the record.
The sleeve has had a life of its own. Peter Saville set the plotted radio pulses of a dying star, the pulsar CP 1919, in white lines on black, with no name and no title, and the image has been worn and copied by many who have not heard the record. That is the image’s survival, not the work’s. What the work holds is one consciousness, its body, and an emptied city, with history and the sacred named at its edges and labour, the family and the state absent. Within that scale it is complete, and it closes as it opened, with no guide come.
Act III · The Twelve
Ten tracks in about thirty-nine minutes, and nearly every one is required by what the record has to say. Disorder must open: a plea for “a guide to come” over a fast, bright bass, the one forward motion the record allows, and the rest is that guide failing to arrive. New Dawn Fades must close Outside, the slow gathering the side has withheld; She’s Lost Control must open Inside, the record’s clearest statement turned onto another person. I Remember Nothing is the compelled end. Candidate is static by design and earns its place by that stasis. The test bites once, on the second side, where Wilderness, the slightest song, runs into Interzone, an older song that adds energy and no meaning.
Score: 8.7 / 10
What the record uncovers can be stated, and it holds: a self watching its own control fail, its body and its feeling no longer its own, in a city emptied of the life it was built for, with no guide coming. She’s Lost Control is the articulated core, a seizure seen in another (“lost control again”) that by the end of the record has become the speaker’s own estrangement. Insight states the giving up (“I’m not afraid anymore”), and Day of the Lords asks of history “Where will it end?” Sound discloses as fully as words: the empty rooms of the production are the condition. Held below the bar because the words are oblique, much of the condition is rendered as mood rather than found as meaning, and part of what listeners hear as disclosure is the singer’s life, not the record.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Elevation is cold and dreadful, and it comes often. New Dawn Fades is the summit: a descending bass figure, a slow guitar line climbing over it, and Curtis’s voice breaking from its flat baritone into a cry at the close, terror and grandeur together. Day of the Lords is heavy and immense, its chorus a question shouted into a void. Shadowplay surges, the guitar entering like headlights crossing a wall. Insight ends on a rise against its resignation, and I Remember Nothing is a last, desolate summit, glass breaking in the dark of the mix. She’s Lost Control has dread rather than height; Candidate and Wilderness stay level; Interzone has force only. Five or six of ten rise, and the highest is very high, a step below the summits the medium reaches elsewhere.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Myth is evoked often and strongly, and built in the frame. The sides are named Outside and Inside, and the record does move from a world looked at, a city, a history, a campaign, to a self looked into, ending in a mind that remembers nothing: a descent from the world into the skull, borne by the order of the tracks. Within it the old patterns are summoned by title and image. Day of the Lords borrows the prophets’ day of judgement, Wilderness the wanderer through ages of martyrdom, Interzone Burroughs’s city of exile, and She’s Lost Control, at the hinge of the two sides, the oldest figure of the possessed, the sacred disease. What holds the axis is that no figure bears these patterns: the speaker has no name and no story, and the archetypes stay atmosphere around a thin frame.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The inheritance is punk, which the group had played as Warsaw, beside Bowie’s Low and Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, the Velvet Underground, the Doors and German electronic music. The turn is real and thorough: punk’s speed and noise turned to space, slowness and dread, the song made a room rather than a shout, the bass carrying the melody, the drums machined; the group’s second album, Closer, worked inside the sound this record found. What holds the figure from the top is the path and the stake. Low had made the cold European turn inside rock in 1977, Wire, Magazine, Public Image and Siouxsie and the Banshees had begun post-punk in 1978, and a debut on a new independent label risked little standing. The record is the first full statement of a turn others began, and it stands a tenth under Low, which opened its road.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Change the form and the record loses almost everything it knows, because its knowledge lives in the space. The same songs played as the group played them live, fast and loud, would make a punk record about unease; set as Hannett set them, the drums dry and separate, the guitar pushed back, the voice close, long delays leaving rooms of silence between sounds, they are the isolation they describe. The sequence is counted here, once. Disorder’s plea opens, I Remember Nothing’s amnesia closes, and the sides move from Outside to Inside, hinged by New Dawn Fades and She’s Lost Control. Held from the very top because the frame is thin: the middle of each side could be reordered with little loss, and Interzone, an older song’s rush, serves without enacting.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Evidence over forty-seven years, and the reported evidence is broad: books by members of the group and by Deborah Curtis, two feature films and a documentary about the group, and continued study of Hannett’s methods by producers. The record itself yields on return, formally more than semantically. Sounds placed far back in the mix surface on each hearing; the drum treatments and delays on Insight and I Remember Nothing reveal their design; the interplay of Hook’s high bass and Sumner’s guitar on Shadowplay and New Dawn Fades keeps opening. The oblique words invite return. What holds the figure is where much of the return goes: some of it is projection, much of it is return to the man rather than the record, which the axis does not credit, and the sleeve’s long life is the image’s, not the record’s yield.
Score: 8.9 / 10
The field is the album of the 1970s, which holds Low, Horses and Marquee Moon. The intrinsic force is high, and it is a consolidation of unusual completeness: the record fixed post-punk’s sound as a whole language, space, dread, a melodic bass as lead, machine-steady drums and a baritone set close, and showed that rock after punk could be slow, cold and inward and still hit hard. Most of its devices were others’ first, and much of it descends from Low, which stands a tenth above it. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the record set the sound from which much of the next decade’s dark rock and gothic music drew, gave its producer’s method to a generation of independent records, and returned, a delayed reach credited at a discount, as a model in the post-punk revival after 2000.
Score: 9.0 / 10
Survival is weighed over forty-seven years on form, presence and fabric. The form is whole: the record survives as issued, reissued and remastered, its sequence unchanged. Presence is continuous and wide among musicians and listeners of rock, narrower among the public. Part of it is the sleeve, worn and copied by people who have not heard the record, which is the presence of an image and is not credited in full; part is carried by the group’s story and the films about it, which is discounted. The fabric has aged better than most of its year’s: Hannett’s dry space was unlike the sound of 1979 and dates little, though the synthesiser effects on Insight and the period drum treatments are of their moment. So weighed, it stands level with Low, and with Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull of the same years.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with invention credited elsewhere. The production is load-bearing: Hannett’s separation of the instruments, the delays that make rooms of silence, a drum sound that is part of the content, the voice placed close and dry. Morris plays with machine precision and real invention, She’s Lost Control’s taut pattern and hissing high hat among it; Hook’s high bass carries the melody on Disorder, Shadowplay and New Dawn Fades; Sumner’s guitar is used sparingly and exactly; Curtis’s baritone commands a narrow range and breaks at the right moment. The faults are more than one: the playing is limited in places, Candidate, Wilderness and Interzone are thinly made, the voice’s pitch wavers, and the zaps of Insight are generic for their year. A making load-bearing throughout with faults on a share stands level with CivilWarLand in Bad Decline.
Score: 8.5 / 10
One law governs the record: a self observed from a cold distance, in an empty space where every sound is set apart from every other. The two most distant elements test it. Interzone, two shouted voices over a fast rock figure, strains the law and still obeys it in its sound and in its subject, a city of exile; I Remember Nothing, slow, nearly formless, glass breaking in a void, is the law at its purest. Disorder’s bright drive and Candidate’s stasis obey it from opposite ends, motion that goes nowhere and stillness that waits, and from the fastest song to the near-silent close nothing leaves the one temperature. What holds the figure is range: the record runs from fast to slow and from loud to near silence inside one palette, and narrowness is not coherence.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness is held fully, as estrangement, numbness and the loss of memory. The body is held in She’s Lost Control, the seizure that is the self’s loss of its own flesh. The city is held as place and atmosphere in Shadowplay and Interzone, and its emptiness is the record’s ground. History, atrocity and the sacred are evoked in Day of the Lords and Wilderness; the couple appears in Insight and I Remember Nothing, as strangers and as hope given up. One consciousness joins what is present, and the joins hold. What holds the figure is that the orders beyond that consciousness are named in titles more than carried, and labour, the family, the state and the natural order are absent.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.6 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Living Form and Pressure on Tradition at 9.0, then The Bottomless Well at 8.9. A form whose knowledge lives in the silence between separated sounds; a record that fixed post-punk’s sound as a whole language and set the dark rock of the decade after it; and forty-seven years of return to a production that keeps opening.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.2: consciousness, the body and an emptied city held by one mind, history and the sacred evoked by title, and labour, the family, the state and the natural order absent. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 8.1 and The Unconcealment at 8.4: a frame from Outside to Inside with its archetypes as atmosphere and no figure to bear them, and a condition rendered as much as stated.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.7 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.0, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 8.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: Pressure on Tradition at 9.0, The Swerve at 8.8 and The Imperishable at 8.7 clear the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.4 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.1 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.1, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.2.
Basis · the complete album as released by Factory Records in June 1979, catalogue FACT 10, ten tracks in their original order on two sides named Outside and Inside, about thirty-nine minutes; judged from knowledge of the recording, its documented making and its reception. No recording or lyric sheet was in hand, and running times are approximate. Songs are cited by title, and four fragments of four words or fewer are quoted. The books, films and documentary about the group are stated as reported. The singer’s illness and death are treated as facts of reception and are not credited to the work, and the sleeve’s life as an image apart from the record is not credited to it. Facts that could not be verified, among them the exact date of release, the length of the sessions, the chart history, any singles and the group’s view of the mix, are not given.