Joy Division: Atmosphere (12", 2020 remaster) [WARNER]

Why you'll love it

This 2020 remaster is cut at 45 RPM on 180g vinyl. "Atmosphere" topped the UK Indie Chart in October 1980 and went to No. 1 in New Zealand in 1981.

This edition

• 12" single
• Cut at 45 RPM
• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Stereo mix

About the album

Some songs sound as if they were recorded in a cathedral. This one was recorded in Rochdale. Joy Division cut "Atmosphere" with Martin Hannett at Cargo Studios in October 1979, having first tried it out on a Manchester radio session that June under the name Chance, and Bernard Sumner coloured it in with a Solina String Ensemble and a little brown Bakelite reed organ from Woolworth's.

It first appeared in March 1980 on a French single called Licht und Blindheit, limited to 1,578 copies, with Dead Souls on the flip; John Peel had played it on the radio a week earlier. After Ian Curtis's death that May, Factory put it out as a 12" with "She's Lost Control," an alternate take of the Unknown Pleasures song, and this remaster copies the design of the November 1980 UK pressing. The song returned in 1988 alongside the Substance compilation, with a new music video, and climbed to No. 34 on the UK singles chart.

That shimmer, according to Stephen Morris, came from hitting a tambourine balanced on a pair of scissors. We tried it in the back room; it sounded like a tambourine on a pair of scissors.

Also at Kops: more Joy Division on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Factory / Warner Records (cat# FACUS2), a reissue of the 1980 single.