'As history becomes mere change – discontinuous, directionless and meaningless – it is replaced by a sense of fragmentation and rupture, of oppressive materiality, of powerlessness and relativism.'
Lawrence Grossberg, Another Boring Day in Paradise: Rock and Roll and the Empowerment of Everyday Life
There is a strong case to be made for the acknowledgement of Joy Division as Britain's foremost dystopian rock group. This very concept, that of the 'dystopian rock group', the 'cyber-punk', is replete with implicit meanings, and the attendant readings thereof. One could argue that dystopian imagery in British popular music was nothing new; John Lydon's howl of 'no future' was less clarion call and more horrified shriek of realisation, not merely a call to nihilism, but a strident insistence that there was, in any case, nothing to believe in. The future of the United Kingdom looked bleak in the 1970s; as a new generation came of age, it was hard for them to accept this austere vision both of things to come, and things as they already were – it suspiciously resembled no future at all. The 'grind-and-hum' of songs such as 'Welcome to the Machine' from Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, and Dark Side of the Moon's psychotic episode in the face of of modern life, reflected the fears and concerns of young men and women expected to join the workforce and, if they were lucky, sign their lives away to the industrial treadmill. 1984 felt close in more ways than one.
The cruel irony was, of course, that factories and mills up and down the country were shutting down and dole queues were steadily lengthening. In the north of England there were fewer and fewer 'jobs for life' available to young working-class males as the UK began it's painful transition from export and manufacturing-focused economy to one based around financial services. Britain seemed to be a nation on the verge of flat-lining – 'the Sick Man of Europe'. Industrial strikes were in danger of crippling Britain's already precarious economy, there were black-outs, three day weeks, civil unrest, terrorism and racial tension. The extreme right-wing was on the march, and it was around this time that 'white power' fascist groups such as the National Front and Combat 18 began to pierce the national consciousness with their brutal tactics of violent direct action. Worryingly, young disaffected white males were beginning to flock to their banner. In Bedsit Britannia, the feeling of terminal decline was unavoidable. The stench of decay was everywhere.
Into the pop music landscape of the late '70s, by turns convulsed with rage, or else paralysed by ennui, stepped Joy Division: a band which seemed to combine both in one singular dystopian vision. Producer Martin Hannett, a man whose 'fascination with the whirring 'clink-clank' of heavy machinery and the... subsequent echoing, hollow silence when all that was left was vacant warehouses' (Sharp 11), would be absolutely vital to the sonic articulation of not only Ian Curtis' desolate and hallucinatory lyrical nightmares, but also the psychic landscape of the English north-west in in the late 1970s.
In this essay I will examine some of the methods and techniques employed by Hannett, and the studio technology used to create the compelling sonic landscape of Joy Division.
'Zero'
Within the post-punk idiom, Martin 'Zero' Hannett has attained mythical status. He was, by all accounts, a somewhat eccentric person and there is a tendency, by music journalists in particular, to depict Hannett as a crude cartoon character of a 'mad scientist', or wastrel junkie stereotype. There is precious little, if any, academic writing on the man and his work, most accounts of Hannett instead focusing on apocryphal tales of drug-fuelled debauchery or his occasionally erratic and violent behaviour. That said, there is a reasonably sound argument that Martin Hannett actively pursued legendary status, and was partial to myth-making behaviour. One oft-cited incident has Hannett in the producer's chair instructing a hapless Bernard Sumner to go for another guitar take, only this time to make it 'faster but slower'. Then there's the time he instructed Joy Division Drummer Stephen Morris, sessioning for John Cooper Clarke, to 'do it again, but this time make it a bit more... cocktail party.' Incidents such as this can become veritable 'meaning sponges', soaking up every reading and every meaning projected upon them, until they are vastly inflated in terms of size and importance.
Music fans and journalists cite such pronouncements by Hannett as evidence of his genius (an image he most certainly did not discourage), his madness or his 'magic'. It's probable that he purposefully cultivated the wizardly image, that of the alchemist. There is strong evidence that his behaviour in the studio; getting musicians to repeat takes endlessly, making them disassemble drum-kits and reassemble them on the roof, using the air-conditioner to reduce the studio control-room to icy temperatures – even his 'quirky', idiosyncratic production directions, were calculated attempts to throw the musicians off-balance. A form of 'psychological judo' used to foster confusion, frustration and disorder with the intention of capturing these emotions on tape. In fact, in Colin Sharp's biography of Hannett, Who Killed Martin Hannett?, Sharp recalls Hannett's thoughts on the matter: '“I just say that 'faster but slower' shit to confuse them”, he confides. “And it's quite funny.”' (Sharp 111) Hannett was not mad, not initially, in any case. He was methodical. He was, after all, a man who would program millisecond delay effects, and who could assemble an entire drum track from individually-recorded drums. Hannett was patient and thorough, but what he also was, was an individual fatally prone to experimentation; 'he would learn mathematical equations and theorems and then test himself. He was drawn to quantum physics at a very tender age. He loved neat rows of digits and sines and cosines (sic).' (Sharp 10). Perhaps, then, he had an emotional disconnect which allowed him to remain detached as he, in effect, experimented on human beings. He may even have been a sociopath – there is certainly evidence for that in his dealings with other people.
It was whilst completing a degree in chemistry at Manchester's UMIST in the late '60s that he began to experiment with music in earnest, at first playing bass-guitar in an 'acid-rock' combo before later gravitating toward sound production once his formal education was complete He would go on to become an influential figure on Manchester's nascent punk-rock scene in the mid-to-late '70s, recording and producing the Buzzcocks seminal debut EP Spiral Scratch to widespread local acclaim. It was this, and later work with the likes of John Cooper Clark, Slaughter and the Dogs and Jilted John, that would eventually bring him to the attention of Tony Wilson, leading to the foundation of Factory Records and his subsequent era-defining work with Joy Division.
Studio Methods
The process of articulating the music of Joy Division, creating the correct atmosphere and 'feel' fell to Martin Hannett in his role as producer. The music of Curtis et al. inhabits the darker corners of the human psyche, exploring themes of encroaching desperation, looming shadows, fear, pain, control and debasement. Their songs reflect not only these themes, but also their relationship to the physical and socio-cultural landscape of the north-west of England. Manchester was a dark place in the late '70s. The streets were dirty, the faces desperate. Over it all loomed the moors, desolate, beautiful – the scene of unspeakable horrors in recent years. They seemed to frown down at Manchester's rain-lashed metropolis. It is this oppressive atmosphere that Hannett was tasked with conveying, an atmosphere that 'seems to exist in its own world, with only distant echoes of the real world' (Sharp 82-83). It was an emotional landscape, a Manchester 'felt'; a bedsit of the mind. Hannett would puncture this 'nightmare-scape', this dystopia, with 'real-world' sounds – breaking glass, the sound of a service elevator – each sound fragment loaded with potential semiotic significance.
As alluded to earlier, Hannett was keen to experiment with drum sounds, studio effects and recording techniques. He was heavily influenced by the 'motorik' rhythms employed by certain German avant-garde rock-groups of the time: 'around the insistent cyclical rhythms created in real time, on real kits, buzz and vibrate all kinds of interesting sounds, flanged and phased guitars, pulsing bass and muted synthesizers' (Sharp 106).
Recording Drums
This 'Motorik' rhythm, so beloved of his favourite 'Krautrock' bands, was a key influence to Martin Hannett's approach to the recording of Joy Division's drum tracks. The percussion was made to sound clinical, harsh – tinny almost. Although Stephen Morris did not employ the Motorik rhythm wholesale per se, some of the guiding principals were present in 'Morris' goose-stepping drum patterns' (Cooper), the spare, hypnotic pulse; almost robotic but at times exploding into bursts of of frantic activity to create a kind of 'rhythmic doomy Motorik' (Sharp 2). This effect was sometimes achieved by dismantling the kit and recording individual drums one at a time. Morris says: 'Martin wanted everything recorded separately, so we started with just the bass drum – literally just the bass drum and me. Then the snare again, then the hi-hat again.' (Sharp 84) This technique can be heard in use on 'She's Lost Control' from Unknown Pleasures, where it is employed to menacing effect. The almost stilted, mechanistic sound creates an inhuman feel, which lends the track an unsettling air. Martin Hannett also augments the rhythm track of 'She's Lost Control' with drum-machine sounds triggered by Morris. These are mixed tightly with the acoustic drum-kit, and the result is that the drums 'sound even more rhythmic and mechanical than even (Morris) could have hoped.' (Kennedy 118) 'Synth' drums would feature ever more prominently in the repertoire of Joy Division as the dank industrial feel of Unknown Pleasures gave way to the 'colder and more clinical' (Sharp 132) feel of second album Closer. Morris and Hannett used a variety of of electronic drum set-ups 'including the Simmonds twin-channel synthesizer, the Synare three-drum synthesizer, the Musicaid Claptrap and the Boss DR55 drum machine at different points.' (Kennedy 53)
Synthesizers
'Martin Hannett' and 'synthesizers' became synonymous as a result of his work with Joy Division. Prior to this he had eschewed their use, as they were seen as inappropriate to the stripped-down punk-rock idiom. Synthesizers carried the whiff of 'prog' for many punks, and were not concurrent with the 'three chords and the truth' ideology of the DIY punk scene. This must have been difficult for Hannett, as his ear 'was always finely-tuned and he found it difficult to accept music that was lazy, muddy or ill-defined.'(Sharp 17) In addition to this, 'he experienced punk as being limited in it's insistence on the three chord bash, paucity of musicality and suspicion of invention. In contrast, he applauded the wild experiments of Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Amon Düül and the more imaginative of the krautrock German bands.' (Sharp 17) 'Post-punk' would provide Hannett with the opportunity to give free reign to his experimental proclivities, an opportunity he seemed to grasp with aplomb, as electronic synthesizers are seen as an intrinsic part of the Joy Division sound-world. Indeed, 'Hannett... brought his fascination with electronics to the mixing-desk. Boxes of the latest studio toys would arrive from the States. While the group rehearsed, Hannett would rig them up. He streamlined them... giving electronically enhanced definition to their ragged edges.' (Rambali) Even early synths were able to produce a dizzying array of otherworldly sounds, from harsh metallic buzz-saw, to the futuristic sound of soothing ambient washes. With them, Hannett and Bernard Sumner were able to create the feeling of desolate indifference on songs such as 'Atmosphere', with its 'huge oceanic washes of synthesized sound' (Sharp 131), and its lyrical entreaties to not 'walk away in silence'. Here, the ARP Omni-2 synthesizer creates a sense of wide open space, of monolithic size, and the glacial pedal chords played on it help to reinforce this feeling of emotional wasteland, the aforementioned 'psychic geography'. Other synthesizers used include the ARP Solina String Ensemble, the Powertran Transcendent 2000, the Maplin ETI International 4600 and the Computer Music Melodian, which was a sample-based synthesiser.
Studio Effects
One word: 'delay'. Martin Hannett is renowned for his pioneering work in the use of digital delays, particularly on Joy Division's recorded output. In a 1992 interview with Jon Savage, Hannett recalls that 'when digital effects came in at the end of the seventies, there was a quantum leap in ambience control. You had as many flavours as you could invent.' (qtd. in Savage) Hannett's use of studio effects served an array of purposes, a principle one being the feeling of 'place in space', as Tony Wilson, Head of Factory records remembers: 'Martin explained to me what he was trying to do with his production. As I understand it, every time you hear a sound, you don't know it but your brain is telling you where you are and where the sound is coming from according to the amount of reverb, delay and so on. It creates an imaginary room... What great producers like Martin do is create a different room for every mood.' (qtd. in Kennedy 59-60) Indeed, one of the most notable aspects of Hannett's use of effects is the way in which he uses them to actually distort the feeling of space, alternatively creating the sonic image of impossible distance, and panic attack-inducing claustrophobia. This creation of 'impossible rooms' is a potential source of the psychic disquiet in the recorded music of Joy Division, something which is a common dystopian theme, that feeling of something being 'not quite right'; 'at moments you are in some cavernous underworld, the next in a dungeon, then trapped in a metal box, then stranded in your own cranium.' (Sharp 69) Drums and vocals, in particular, were equalised and treated in order to produce results that would unsettle; Ian Curtis' voice variously close-mic'd and intimate, other times Hannett using a slight 'slap-back' delay, it's short report time giving the echo-y impression of barked orders through a megaphone, with all the fascistic imagery that implies. Hannett's treatment of the drums too would be unconventional: '(Hannett) chose a minute report time so the delay is imperceptible. You can feel, rather than hear, the effect.' (Sharp 85) The Durutti Column's Vini Reilly also recalls that Hannett 'used that digital delay not as a repeat echo delay but to make a tiny millisecond that came so close to the drum it was impossible to hear.' (qtd. in Sharp 85)
Martin Hannett used a number of delay units, the most important being the Advanced Music Systems (AMS) DMX 15-80, which at the time was a state-of-the-art piece of studio equipment, being as it was the world's first microprocessor-controlled 15-bit digital delay. Hannett apparently owned several, and used them extensively on both Joy Division albums. In addition to this, he also made use of analogue tape-echo units such as the Melos EM-110 Echo Chamber, which he used for cruder echo sounds somewhat akin to those used in dub reggae, of which he was something of an aficionado.
In Conclusion
The recorded music of Joy Division is characteristically bleak, futuristic, harsh, unsettling – all these adjectives and many more apply. They also associate with concepts of dystopia, of fractured societies; of uncaring, unforgiving worlds, 'a palpable air of menace, ugliness and paranoia' (Sharp 124). These themes are explored within the lyrics of Ian Curtis, and 'Hannett saw all this internal post-apocalyptic landscape and helped to translate it into an external soundscape' (Sharp 135). Not only that, but he was also able to articulate the landscape of 1970s Manchester, the grimly futuristic and uniform tower-blocks of 'rotting housing estates; encroaching mass drug addiction; the death of dignity' (Sharp 124) – 'mothers hurrying to fish and chip emporia; petty thieves putting on woollen gloves and balaclavas; alcoholic dads breaking into piggy-banks; streetwalkers starting to strut the streets; middle-aged middle-market men cruising in their Vauxhall cavaliers and Ford Escorts looking for nubile flesh to procure' (Sharp 108).
Darkness within, darkness without; the psychic geography of Joy Division, captured on record by Martin 'Zero' Hannett.
Bibliography
Books
Kennedy, J. 2006. Joy Division and the Making of Unknown Pleasures. London. Unanimous Ltd.
Sharp, C. 2007. Who Killed Martin Hannett? London. Aurum.
Journals
Grossberg, L. 1984. 'Another Boring Day in Paradise: Rock and Roll and the Empowerment of Everyday Life'. Popular Music, Vol. 4 'Performers and Audiences' (1984), pp. 225-258
Online Resources
Cooper, M. Joy Division: Permanent. Available at: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/article.html?ArticleID=5552 (Accessed: 2nd January 2011)
Rambali, P. New Order Available at: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/article.html?ArticleID=968
(Accessed: 2nd January 2011)
Savage, J. An Interview With Martin Hannett, 29th May 1989. Available at: http://www.rocksbackpages.com/article.html?ArticleID=14833 (Accessed: 2nd January 2011)
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