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Joy Division and the uncanny in music
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Lawrence
9547 posts

Re: Joy Division and the uncanny in music
Mar 02, 2015, 16:00
Well I have a theory that it might have something to do with Ian's state of mind. I think he was a bit mentally ill from the time his band changed to his death.

I've read a collection of essays by, believe it or not, Anton LaVey, the infamous creator of the Church of Satan which I used to follow but drifted away from for obvious reasons. Anyways LaVey wrote about the magical power of odd shapes such as trapezoids and has mentioned that if one dwells in a room that somehow deviates from its rectangular shape he can be driven quite mad. Anyways if you've read Touching from a Distance, Ian's wife mentions a room at their house that was, in her words, 'almost triangular'. It was the room where Ian wrote many of his songs.

Well make of that what you will, but whether you can believe such weird stuff or not, I think poor Ian Curtis had something in his psyche that made his band so dark. And I don't think music was the same since then. Even when you compare Joy Division to a band they were inspired by, like Pere Ubu or the Velvet Underground, the darker tracks of the latter groups still seem like a bowl of Count Chocula compared to much of JD's output...
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