Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures [180g, Textured Sleeve] (LP) Vinyl

Unknown Pleasures is the debut studio album by the English band Joy Division, released on 15 June 1979 through Factory Records. It was recorded and mixed at Strawberry Studios in Stockport over three weekends between 1 and 17 April 1979, with Martin Hannett producing and Chris Nagle engineering. It is the only Joy Division album released during the lifetime of the band's singer, Ian Curtis.

Hannett's production is as much a hallmark of the record as the songs themselves. He believed punk rock was sonically conservative because it refused to use studio technology to create space, and he built that space into the album with AMS digital delays, a Marshall Time Modulator, tape echo and a collection of found sounds that included a smashing bottle and the Strawberry Studios lift. Curtis's vocal on Insight was recorded down a telephone line so that Hannett could achieve the distance he wanted. AllMusic later described the production as emphasising space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub.

Factory Records issued no singles from the album. It placed at No. 2 on the first publication of the Indie Albums Chart in January 1980, reached No. 71 on the Albums Chart when reissued in July 1980 alongside the follow-up Closer, and eventually reached No. 5 in 2019. It has since been named among the best albums of all time by publications including NME, AllMusic, Select, Rolling Stone and Spin.

Artwork

The sleeve was designed by Peter Saville, who had previously produced posters for Manchester's Factory club. The cover is based on an image of radio waves from the pulsar CP 1919, taken from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy; each line is an individual radio pulse rather than a Fourier analysis, as is sometimes claimed. The plot was originally created by the radio astronomer Harold Craft at the Arecibo Observatory for his 1970 doctoral dissertation. Saville reversed it from black on white to white on black, against the band's stated preference, and had it printed on textured card.

This Pressing

This is the Factory reissue under catalogue number FACT 10R, a single 180g black vinyl LP cut in stereo and manufactured in Europe. It replicates the original album artwork on a textured sleeve and includes the printed inner sleeve. The audio is cut from the 2007 remasters, and the labels and spine carry a 2015 Warner Records 90 Ltd copyright.

Track Listing

Side A (Outside)
1. Disorder
2. Day Of The Lords
3. Candidate
4. Insight
5. New Dawn Fades

Side B (Inside)
1. She's Lost Control
2. Shadowplay
3. Wilderness
4. Interzone
5. I Remember Nothing