Joy Division: Preston 28 February 1980 (translucent blue vinyl) [OUTSIDER]

Why you'll love it

This limited edition comes on translucent blue vinyl. It catches Joy Division in a small club playing new songs like "Heart And Soul" and "Twenty Four Hours" weeks before they recorded Closer.

This edition

• Translucent blue vinyl
• Limited edition

About the album

Studio Joy Division is all space and cold precision. Live Joy Division was something else entirely, and this recording from The Warehouse in Preston, a few weeks before the band went in to make Closer, is the rougher, louder version that fans in the room actually heard.

The set leans on what was then brand new material. "Twenty Four Hours," "The Eternal" and "Heart And Soul" were still months away from the record shops, and here they arrive raw and urgent, a chance to hear them before the studio polish. Around them are the songs that made the band's name: "Shadowplay" and "She's Lost Control" from Unknown Pleasures, "Disorder," "Transmission" and "Interzone," plus the early "Warsaw," "Colony" and the instrumental "Incubation." Peter Hook's bass leads from the front, Stephen Morris drives the songs hard, and Bernard Sumner's guitar comes in jagged.

First issued in 1999, it has become a key document for understanding the band onstage; CMJ called it an exceptionally intense gig. The cover's scrambled photo of the venue is, fittingly, about as clear a picture of a Joy Division gig as anyone ever got.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Outsider (cat# OUTS016), a reissue of the 1999 live album.