Joy Division / Closer
Artist Joy Division
Album Title: Closer
Album Cover:
Primary Genre Alternative & Punk: Post-Punk
Format Vinyl 180 gm
Released 07/18/1980
Reissue Date 10/30/2007
Label Rhino Records
Catalog No RHI1 73394
Bar Code No 0 8122 73394 1 8
Packaging LP Sleeve
Tracks
A1. Atrocity Exhibition (6:07)
A2. Isolation (2:53)
A3. Passover (4:47)
A4. Colony (3:56)
A5. A Means To An End (4:10)
B1. Heart And Soul (5:52)
B2. Twenty Four Hours (4:26)
B3. The Eternal (6:08)
B4. Decades (6:11)
Date Acquired 03/16/2013
Personal Rating
Acquired from Music Direct (Musicdirect.Com)
Purchase Price 17.99

Web Links

All Music Guide Entry:
Discogs Entry:

Notes

Comes with a sticker on the bottom-right corner of the back of the album jacket.
"Available for the first time in over 10 years, remastered from the original master tapes, original artwork, heavyweight 180-gram vinyl."
Side A's run-out reads: "Old Blue?"
A Factory Records Product
Produced at Britannia Row.
Published by Fractured Music
Date on label: 9/5/80
This Reissue ℗ & © 2007 London Records 90 Ltd. Manufactured & Marketed by Rhino Entertainment Company, a Warner Music Group Company. Made in USA.
The second and final album by Joy Division, released July 18, 1980 on Factory, two months following the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis.
The album was recorded from 18 to 30 March 1980 at Britannia Row Studios, Islington, London.
The cover photo is a detail of the Appiani family tomb in the Staglieno Cemetery in Genova, Italy.
The sculpture was made by Demetrio Paernio.
This album has been remastered and was re-released in 2007. The remaster is packaged with a bonus disc, recorded live at the University of London Union (ULU), 8 February 1980.
Design – Martyn Atkins, Peter Saville
Engineer – John Caffery*, Martin Hannett
Engineer [Assistant] – Michael Johnson
Photography By – Bernard Pierre Wolff
Producer – Martin Hannett
Phonographic Copyright (p) – London Records 90 Ltd.
Copyright (c) – London Records 90 Ltd.
Manufactured By – Rhino Entertainment Company
Marketed By – Rhino Entertainment Company
Published By – Fractured Music
Produced At – Britannia Row Studios
Pressed By – Rainbo Records – S-61346
Pressed By – Rainbo Records – S-61347
Printed By – Something Else

Reviews
All Music Guide Review by Ned Raggett:

If Unknown Pleasures was Joy Division at their most obsessively, carefully focused, ten songs yet of a piece, Closer was the sprawl, the chaotic explosion that went every direction at once. Who knows what the next path would have been had Ian Curtis not chosen his end? But steer away from the rereading of his every lyric after that date; treat Closer as what everyone else thought it was at first -- simply the next album -- and Joy Division's power just seems to have grown. Martin Hannett was still producing, but seems to have taken as many chances as the band itself throughout -- differing mixes, differing atmospheres, new twists and turns define the entirety of Closer, songs suddenly returned in chopped-up, crumpled form, ending on hiss and random notes. Opener "Atrocity Exhibition" was arguably the most fractured thing the band had yet recorded, Bernard Sumner's teeth-grinding guitar and Stephen Morris' Can-on-speed drumming making for one heck of a strange start. Keyboards also took the fore more so than ever -- the drowned pianos underpinning Curtis' shadowy moan on "The Eternal," the squirrelly lead synth on the energetic but scared-out-of-its-wits "Isolation," and above all else "Decades," the album ender of album enders. A long slow crawl down and out, Curtis' portrait of lost youth inevitably applied to himself soon after, its sepulchral string-synths are practically a requiem. Songs like "Heart and Soul" and especially the jaw-dropping, wrenching "Twenty Four Hours," as perfect a demonstration of the tension/release or soft/loud approach as will ever be heard, simply intensify the experience. Joy Division were at the height of their powers on Closer, equaling and arguably bettering the astonishing Unknown Pleasures, that's how accomplished the four members were. Rock, however defined, rarely seems and sounds so important, so vital, and so impossible to resist or ignore as here.
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