“What all good music should aspire to be”: the band Damon Albarn said no one else could imitate
Whether he was defining Britpop with Blur or soundtracking his virtual Gorillaz, Damon Albarn‘s versatility as a musician spans across genres and sounds.
As someone central to the progression of alternative music – situated alongside the likes of Oasis as Britpop ascended and then, bringing electronic and hip-hop influences into his vision for Gorillaz – Albarn’s music tastes surely go beyond the conventional. Particularly, his love for Joy Division showed a more introspective side of his personal listening.
Speaking on the Joy Division/New Order podcast, Transmissions: The Definitive Story in 2020, Albarn professed his longstanding love for Joy Division. “It’s the sum of the parts as well as the atmosphere that they create, you know?,” he described, noting, “It shouldn’t work, but it does.”
The “atmosphere” that Albarn mentioned is central to the heart of Joy Division. Their signature darkness, both foreboding and compelling, placed frontman Ian Curtis’ melancholy at the forefront of the music and, soundtracked by the gloom in which the band rooted their sound, Joy Division became an emotive entity of its own.
“There’s nothing like it, no one else sounds like Joy Division,” Albarn asserted. “They created their own sound, and I think that that’s true of any decent band. That’s what is special about bands.”
Albarn also notes Joy Division’s live sound as a defining factor in their appeal, as they intentionally captured the intensity of their performances in the studio with emphasis from their producer, Martin Hannett. “The fact is that they played those records live together,” he continued. “That’s why they sound like sometimes the beat is not quite there and everyone’s really struggling to play that well, cause that’s not easy to play like that.”
In conversation with Jon Savage for Mojo in 1994, Bernard Sumner dove into the band’s dynamic when recording, explaining that their sound “came out naturally: I’m more rhythm and chords, and Hooky [Peter Hook] was melody… Steve [Stephen Morris] has his own style, which is different to other drummers. To me, a drummer in the band is the clock, but Steve wouldn’t be the clock, because he’s passive: he would follow the rhythm of the band, which gave us our own edge.”
With their debut album, 1979’s Unknown Pleasures, Hannett used a number of unconventional production techniques, from preserving digital delays to recording sounds of a bottle smashing and someone eating crisps. Curtis’ vocals for ‘Insight’ were recorded down a telephone line to achieve, as Hannett described, “requisite distance”. Their second album, 1980’s Closer, was largely composed of songs that were born from jam sessions, thus rooted in an improvisational tone that grounded itself in Joy Division’s live energy.
“But then you get the madness of Ian on top of that,” Albarn continued. “So his words and his delivery are as fractured as the way they’re trying to keep up with the beat and play, and his mind’s moving like that. It’s what all good music should aspire to be.”
From the literal title of ‘She’s Lost Control,’ to the hypnotic mystery of ‘Shadowplay’ and the heartbreak of ‘Isolation,’ Curtis’ lyrics reflect the preoccupation with loneliness, pain and being haunted by something that, while difficult to place, resonated poignantly. Sung his unmistakable echo, Joy Division’s songs expanded in their atmosphere through his visions, however heartwrenching they would become.
“Remember what they’re called: they’re recordings,” Albarn noted. “They should be a recording of a moment in time.” In just a short time, Joy Division communicated in a way that concentrated Curtis’ sentiments – as they ranged across sadness, pain, guilt and more – into their post-punk vein of distortive rock ‘n’ roll, indeed capturing a particular moment when, at their encouragement, alternative music began to shift into a more contemplative state.
