The magnificent epitaph for Ian Curtis and Joy Division, ‘Closer’ is a bleak and beautiful masterpiece that very few have subsequently equalled.
One of the most iconic and influential indie albums of all time, Joy Division’s 1979 debut album ‘Unknown Pleasures’ turns 40 years old.
New Order’s 1989 LP ‘Technique’ was the final instalment in a dazzling run of exceptional singles and albums in the Eighties.
After the tentative first steps of ‘Movement’, New Order’s second album ‘Power, Corruption & Lies’ saw them truly begin their post-Joy Division journey.
New Order had little left to prove with ‘Brotherhood’, but their fourth album shows that their songwriting was getting sharper all the time.
by Ed Biggs Okay, cards on the table time – I absolutely adore New Order. Having been introduced to their legendary former incarnation Joy Division as a moody, sniffy teenager, I discovered the music they made during their second life at around the same time as under-age drinking and clubbing. Suffice to say, with the help of their seminal compilation Substance, New Order changed my life and broadened my horizons. But
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by Ed Biggs After beginning life after Joy Division with a slightly shaky start in the form of Movement (1981), an understandably downcast and introverted record, New Order began to spread their wings and capture the public’s imagination with 1983’s Power, Corruption & Lies, which is one of those peculiar records that is not only admired in spite of its flaws, but precisely because of them.
