JOY DIVISION Aussie 1st Pressing "Unknown P"

	£		20
	$		26

JOY DIVISION

Unknown Pleasures

Mega rare Australian First Pressing LP

LABEL + YEAR: Factory, Factory FACOZ1003; 1979 Australian 1st Press; (no Information on labels)

Matrix info:

OUTSIDE: FACOZ1003 OUTSIDE

INSIDE: FACOZ1003 INSIDE

CONDITION VINYL: Excellent despite having a couple of very fine hairlines

CONDITION SLEEVE:  VG+ due to very, very slight wear, TEXTURED SLEEVE

Inner sleeve states "Released in Australia by GAP records under licence. Manufactured and distributed by EMI Australia"

DESCRIPTION: Side 1: OUTSIDE: DISORDER; DAY OF THE LORDS; CANDIDATE; INSIGHT; NEW DAWN FADES. Side 2: INSIDE: SHE'S LOST CONTROL; SHADOWPLAY; WILDERNESS; INTERZONE; I REMEMBER NOTHING

Check out my other JOY DIVISION rarities and save on postage! Record is shipped from Australia via Air Mail at set postage price of 10 UK pounds

Unknown Pleasures is English post-punk band Joy Division's debut album, released in 1979 through Factory Records. Martin Hannett produced the record at Strawberry Studios, Stockport, England. The album sold poorly upon release, but due to the subsequent success of Joy Division with the 1980 single "Love Will Tear Us Apart", Unknown Pleasures is now much more well-known. Factory boss Tony Wilson had so much faith in the band that he contributed his £8,500 life savings toward the cost of producing the initial run of 10,000 copies of the album

The back cover of the album contains no track listings, leaving a blank table where one would expect the listings to be. The original release came in a textured sleeve

The original LP release contained no track information on the labels, nor the traditional "side one" and "side two" designations. The ostensible "side one" was labelled Outside and displayed a reproduction of the image on the album cover, while the other side was labelled Inside and displayed the same image with the colours reversed (black-on-white). Track information and album credits appeared on the inner sleeve only.

All music review by Ned Raggett

‘It even looks like something classic, beyond its time or place of origin even as it was a clear product of both — one of Peter Saville's earliest and best designs, a transcription of a signal showing a star going nova, on a black embossed sleeve. If that were all Unknown Pleasures was, it wouldn't be discussed so much, but the ten songs inside, quite simply, are stone-cold landmarks, the whole album a monument to passion, energy, and cathartic despair. The quantum leap from the earliest thrashy singles to Unknown Pleasures can be heard through every note, with Martin Hannett's deservedly famous production — emphasizing space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub — as much a hallmark as the music itself. Songs fade in behind furtive noises of motion and activity, glass breaks with the force and clarity of doom, minimal keyboard lines add to an air of looming disaster — something, somehow, seems to wait or lurk beyond the edge of hearing. But even though this is Hannett's album as much as anyone's, the songs and performances are the true key. Bernard Sumner redefined heavy metal sludge as chilling feedback fear and explosive energy, Peter Hook's instantly recognizable bass work at once warm and forbidding, Stephen Morris' drumming smacking through the speakers above all else. Ian Curtis synthesizes and purifies every last impulse, his voice shot through with the desire first and foremost to connect, only connect — as "Candidate" plaintively states, "I tried to get to you/You treat me like this." Pick any song: the nervous death dance of "She's Lost Control"; the harrowing call for release "New Dawn Fades," all four members in perfect sync; the romance in hell of "Shadowplay"; "Insight" and its nervous drive toward some sort of apocalypse. All visceral, all emotional, all theatrical, all perfect — one of the best albums ever.’