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Joy Division "Let The Movie Begin"

roggom

roggom

Super Member
I received my LP today and was so excited to see I had #280 of 1000 production run, protective sleeve........Unfortunately this is the worst recorded LP I have ever...ever....ever...heard. Oh man I am so PO'd right now. The interviews are not understandable and the music sounds like you are listening to an old drive-in speaker. Well it is a double lp at least the cover is good for something.

:smoke:
 
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roggom said:
I received my LP today and was so excited to see I had #280 of 1000 production run, protective sleeve........Unfortunately this is the worst recorded LP I have ever...ever....ever...heard. Oh man I am so PO'd right now. The interviews are not understandable and the music sounds like you are listening to an old drive-in speaker. Well it is a double lp at least the cover is good for something.

:smoke:
Click to expand...

I am sorry to hear that. If you don't have it I just picked up Unknown Pleasures on 180g vinyl and it sounds amazing.
 
There's a lot of hit or miss Joy Division live stuff. The best stuff I've heard seems to be the shows they've already officially released. There is one I have on cd called "An evening with Joy Division" that isn't official, but it is one of their best shows that I've heard.

The new 180g releases sound great and are really well done. I also picked up the "Martin Hannett's Personal mixes" mixes double LP. Haven't listened to all of it, but the side I played was interesting, and the sound quality was good.
 
You might want to check out the independent film released last year "Control", it depicts Ian Curtis's life in and out of the band. I really enjoyed it, great acting and soundtrack (naturally), it was filmed in black and white, which complements Ian's story a lot better than in color. If you like Joy Division, you must check it out, even if you don't like them it's still a good and dramatic (but not melodramatic) film.

I bought the 2-disk reissue CDs by them recently. I was into them a few years back, but it seems they have been gaining a lot of popularity (reissues, the film I mentioned, etc.), plus I had a post-punk phase a few months ago, so I had to finally buy Unknown Pleasures and Closer. The live discs are pretty good, and the studio albums sounds nicely remastered. I have to say I prefer Closer, I find it a lot more varied, interesting, and emotional.
 
I'm not surprised to hear this. I have a live lp of theirs from about 6 or 7 years ago, I think it was "February 1981," on light purple vinyl. Sound quality it absolutely terrible, but it's a somewhat entertaining show to listen to because there were so many technical problems, it's kind of funny. The liner notes talk about what a disaster the show was.
 
Also, there are a few (I think two?) legitimate releases of live Joy Division. Both are among their best sounding (as in recording quality) performances, but none of them are great from a purely sonic standpoint. BUT..almost every JD live performance I have heard has been great from a purely artistic standpoint. The passion they put into the music, without hardly knowing how to even play their instruments...man is it palpable on the live recordings. The "Control" movie really captured this, surprisingly well, with the actors actually playing the songs live.

The CD box set that was released a while back has some gems on it, and some live material, as well as all of the studio albums but they are sort of messed up by not having the complete studio albums by themselves on their own discs. They're there, just with added tracks before and after. This was a band that made albums that deserve to be listened to by themselves, beginning to end.

An LP box set has also just been released, or at least, I saw one. But it was $300 at my local store. The 180 gram releases by themselves are much cheaper. Get those and read Deborah Curtis' biography and you'll come out ahead of whatever could possibly be in that box for $300.

Cheers (joy division was my favorite band, and the one band of which I still have posters up, but they're framed now...).
 
For any fans of Joy Division who already have the official albums I would strongly recommend the "Warsaw" CD detailed here :-

http://www.joydiv.org/w2cd.htm

I own the West German RZM release and the sound quality is pretty good. This was the studio album recorded for RCA before they moved to Factory for Unknown Pleasures. The band aborted the release so this is an unofficial CD, a few of the tracks are on the Heart & Soul CD boxset.
 
KeninDC said:
+1 on the "Unknown Pleasures" 180 gram vinyl.

Super-good bass.
Click to expand...

The original that I have (also have the 180) is a spanish issue, that seems to be the more readily available of the non-180 releases. I've seen it several times, and I don't know if this is a symptom of the spanish pressing but it has a notable lack of oomph. It just sounds flat. The 180 sounds great though.

You can also find the aforementioned 'Warsaw' on vinyl. Or maybe I just lucked out. I'm not sure if it's an officially sanctioned release but I found it in my local hipster-run record store, which had more than one copy. A lot of that material is available elsewhere.
 
Also, I've listened now to the "Martin Hannett's personal mixes" joy division release a bit more. It's an official release, as I've seen it all over. It's interesting but for diehard fans only (and even then...I'm a diehard fan, but it's not that interesting). There are various mixes that are subtly different than what's available, a lot of it from the "closer" sessions. But nothing that makes you scream 'holy crap why isn't this the official mix'. And then some really dulls stuff like SFX and keyboard sounds. Woo. Not worth what I paid, especially since I paid in pounds sterling with my US credit card.


BUT....for true Joy Division vinyl pleasure, track down the 12" of Atmosphere. It's cut at 45rpm, and blows away any other version on any release. Martin Hannett was a genius, and all the proof you need is on this one release.
 
This is strange. I hadn't thought about them in years. I just cleaned my 3 Joy Division albums yesterday, one of which is a 12" 45 RPM single of Love will tear us apart, in preperation for recording to cassette. I bought them new in 83? I suddenly felt a need to give them a spin, then I read this post. An amazing band and I loved their cover art. The "Love" disc was always quite warped but my new AT cart tracked it with out a problem.
 
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