Track Listing

1. Exercise One
2. Ice Age
3. Sound Of Music
4. Glass
5. Only Mistake
6. Walked In Line
7. Kill
8. Something Must Break
9. Dead Souls
10. Sister Ray
11. Shadow Play
12. Means To An End
13. Passover
14. New Dawn Fades
15. Transmissions
16. Disorder
17. Isolation
18. Decades
19. Digital

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23064 in Music
• Released on: 2000-01-24
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Explicit Lyrics

Album Description
180gm vinyl, in the original Peter Saville designed sleeve (including hard board/hessian outer gatefold with grey card gatefold inner sleeves and ribbon binding)

Customer Reviews

Somewhere is the sound of a barrell being scraped.
Joy Division were a great band, but they weren't around for long. Both of their two studio albums are stunning, and the companion compilation, Substance, mopped up most of the overflow - standalone singles, 12" only versions, b-sides - and acted as a nice companion piece. Still, however, is not really a worthy addition to the band's catalogue.

Weighing in at 20 tracks, the first nine are offcuts, followed by a cover, and the last ten a live gig. For the most part, the first nine songs imply that the band's better judgement was correct. Outside of the songs which overlap with Substance - 'Dead Souls,' 'Glass' - there is nothing here as heartbreaking as 'Love Will Tear Us Apart,' as visceral as 'Day Of The Lords.' There are some songs which would otherwise make it as B-sides - 'Exercise One' - except the band had better B-sides than most. The cover is the Velvet Underground's 'Sister Ray,' a curio at best and it doesn't even stand up to that.

And then there's the live show. The dangling carrot as far as this compilation is the inclusion of one of the only two versions in existence of Ian Curtis singing on 'Ceremony.' Or at least you could say that, except that an idiotic sound engineer manages to mix his vocal into nonexistence for most of the song, meaning it only reappears about three minutes into the four minute song. It also starts abruptly, with the song already in mid-swing. This version works as a curio, as there is still the euphoria of the music to enjoy, slightly.

Joy Division weren't always the best live act, but here they're predominantly abysmal. 'Transmission' and 'Isolation' are wonderful, but 'Decades' is ruined by an out-of-tune synthesiser and the rest of the time Curtis' vocals are dubious. Of course, this was very near the end of the band's touring and Curtis' actual lives, so we can forgive him for this. But surely there is no need to have released it, when there are bootlegs of shows like Preston and Eindhoven instead?

This disc doesn't really have a place in the collection of anything except for a completist. The only things worth listening to you should by rights already have, and there are bootlegs from the bloomin' 1970s that are better quality than this disc's second half.

Excellent, I love it.
OK, OK, this is now redundant due to the Heart and Soul boxset, we know that already. I want to comment on this product though, and what use it has as an official Joy Division release.

The first half of the album includes some previosly unreleased tracks such as "The Only Mistake" and "Something Must Break". There are also some previosly released tracks thrown in for good measure, but not so many as to deem the album a repeat of any other release. I must say, after listening to "The Only Mistake" many times, I'd deem it as one of the best Joy Division songs ever - not bad for a previously unreleased track eh? The party piece of the album, though, is the inclusion of the last ever Joy Division gig in May 1980 at Birmingham University. And within this lies two special tracks - Joy Division's only live performance of "Ceremony" and Ian Curtis's last ever vocal performance; the track "Digital" (the encore of the gig). I'll say the live performance isn't 'top notch' as a whole but what it is, is the product of a band only weeks away from suffering a tradgedy with the death of Ian Curtis. This sad fact makes the performance of the ironically titled "Ceremony" sentimentally superior to any other live performance you'd ever hear from Joy Division.

I have enjoyed this album tremendously. If we forget the Heart and Soul box set, this album is probably the most valid Joy Division release ever - highly recommended.

In my humble opinion...
This album has been rendered redundant by the Heart & Soul box set and the subsequent live releases. The studio material - the important part - is contained in the box set. The live material is not top-drawer despite its obvious historical interest (most of it comes from Ian's, and the band's, last gig).
Newcomers are warned that:-
`Sister Ray' is - for a band not averse to white noise (q.v live versions of `Atrocity' and `I Remember Nothing') - disappointingly tame.
`Ceremony' is missing its opening verse - a complete version can be found on the box set.
Sumner seems to be missing an awful lot of notes on guitar (which almost ruins `New Dawn Fades' - consult the Bains Douches CD for the best-ever version of this song). And he has to contend with an out-of-tune synthesizer (which almost ruins `Decades').

Note - my vinyl copy has an unlisted bonus track - `Twenty-Four Hours' - inbetween `New Dawn Fades' and `Transmission'. Is this also true of the CD?