Joy Division’s seminal second record Closer is set to be re-released on vinyl and streaming services on July 17th in celebration of its 40th anniversary.
The release will see remastered 7″ singles ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart,’ ‘Transmission,’ and ‘Atmosphere.’ It marks the first time the record has been repressed or reissued since the collapse of Factory Records in 1992.
Closer is set to be repressed on a “crystal clear vinyl” and will feature the original artwork. The release will arrive with it’s original Factory B-side: ‘Transmission’ is backed by ‘Novelty,’ ‘Atmosphere’ by ‘She’s Lost Control’, and ‘Love With Tear Us Apart’ by ‘These Days’.
You can pre-order the record from Rough Trade here.
Last week, Peter Hook of Joy Division paid tribute to the late Kraftwerk founder Florian Schneider — acknowledging that the electronic trailblazers were one of Joy Division’s most profound influences.
“I was so sad to hear of the death of Florian Schneider. My first memory of Kraftwerk was given an LP by Ian Curtis. He gave me ‘Autobahn’ and later ‘Trans Europe Express’. I was absolutely fascinated by both. Ian suggested that every time Joy Division goes on stage, we should do it for ‘Trans Europe Express”’. We did it from our first show, until almost our last,” he shared.
“Ian’s music education was fantastic. He taught us everything from doors to Can. He put these artists in front of Barney [Sumner, bandmate] and me and they have become so important to us. Joy Division was very connected to Kraftwerk, but it wasn’t until we got to New Order and were able to afford to buy the toys that our main source of inspiration became, ‘Kraftwerk Scammers.’ Their music was seductively simple, but impossible to reproduce.”
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Hook continued: “They were one step ahead of everyone, even electronically. They were making their own sequencers years before everyone else.”
Florian Schneider passed away on April 30th “from a short cancer disease just a few days after his seventy-third birthday.”
Check out Joy Division’s Closer cut ‘Passover’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_NggH3O90o
