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Album dossier / 1979

Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division · Post-Punk

Recorded over roughly 13 days at Strawberry Studios in Stockport in April 1979 with maverick producer Martin Hannett, who treated the studio itself as an instrument -- drummer Stephen Morris recalled being forced to record each drum piece separately for total isolation ('you couldn't really play a drum kit'), and Hannett famously recorded the sound of the building's lift and smashed milk bottles for percussive effects. Hannett drew on dub techniques from Jamaica to strip and re-treat the band's raw live sound into something colder and more spacious, a transformation the band itself found alienating at first -- bassist Peter Hook said the icy, echo-laden LP sounded almost nothing like the ferocious band they were on stage. Paired with Peter Saville's iconic pulsar-wave sleeve, the record became a foundational text of post-punk and, following singer Ian Curtis's death in 1980, one of the era's most influential albums.