Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division recorded Unknown Pleasures over three weekends between 1 and 17 April 1979 at Strawberry Studios in Stockport, with Martin Hannett producing. Hannett used several AMS 15-80 digital delays, the Marshall Time Modulator and tape echo. He also worked in the sound of a bottle smashing, someone eating crisps, backwards guitar and the studio lift with a Leslie speaker whirring inside. Curtis's vocals on Insight were recorded down a telephone line for distance. Sumner played a kit-built Powertran Transcendent 2000 synthesiser, most notably on I Remember Nothing.

The members disagreed about the result. Sumner said the music had been loud and heavy and that Hannett toned down the guitars. Morris said he was happy with the album, and Hook came round to it, saying in 2006 that Hannett "created the Joy Division sound". Klein wrote in Pitchfork in 2007 that it was "one of the most perfect pairings of artist and producer in rock history" and singled out Disorder and She's Lost Control. Jon Savage, reviewing it for Melody Maker in 1979, called it "an opaque manifesto".

Sleeve and release

Peter Saville designed the cover, which uses a plot of radio pulses from the pulsar CP 1919, taken from The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. He reversed it to white on black and printed it on textured card. The inner sleeve carries Ralph Gibson's photograph Hand Through a Doorway.

The first pressing was 10,000 copies and Factory issued no singles from the album. It did not chart on the UK Albums Chart on release, but reached number 2 on the first UK indie chart published in January 1980. After Closer it was reissued and reached number 71 at the end of August 1980. The 40th-anniversary reissue reached number 5 in 2019, the highest chart position of any Joy Division album.