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Joy Division and the uncanny in music
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Fatalist
Fatalist
1123 posts

Edited Mar 03, 2015, 22:19
Re: Joy Division and the uncanny in music
Mar 03, 2015, 22:18
Monganaut wrote:
That's a great documentary, beautifully shot and put together. Bought it last time I saw it for the extras. Sadly those stories and asides mentioned by Barney and Hookey when JD played in Belgium were not included in the extras, some of those tales sound hilarious.

I'd like to put a vote in for Bowie's 'Man Who Sold The World' LP to your list of the inadvertently 'uncanny'. For me, this is deffo Bowie's darkest album. Maybe it's cos' much of the subject matter touches on mental illness, but tracks like 'After All', with that minor chord mellotron and subtle sound effects definitely leave me a little unsettled.
After All https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJRk1pz3tk4

Also, the Echo and the Bunnymen album 'Heaven Up Here' has a few moments that to me, appear to be greater than the sum of their parts. I'm particularly thinking of the tracks 'Turquoise Days', 'Over The Wall' and 'The Disease'. Such an evocative cover to. I used to stare at it for ages whilst playing the album, it really led my mind to other places.
Turquise Days - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEc-axg8av0
The Disease - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2rNPwbkn-I
Over The Wall - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erKtIsnisp4
All My Colours - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC_VRXenP4Q

The Coil soundtrack -'The Angelic Conversation', deffo has a few uneasy moments. If you're not familiar with it, it was a soundtrack composed by Coil to accompany Derek Jarman's film of the same name. Beautifully constructed, with Judi Dench reading several of Shakespeare's sonnets over very atmospheric sounds. Parts of earlier EP How To Destroy Angels, cut up with choral and string pieces, noises like ticking grandfather clocks, and water/bathing, it's very effective. It could almost be a lost soundtrack to the movie 'A Field In England'. It has a similar vibe and feel.
Angelic Conversation (Full Album Stream) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YarAULw2-1w


Completely agree re TMWSTW and After All, one of my absolute favourite albums.

The more I write about music, the more I'm interested by what it's doing to us when it REALLY works, like it's reaching into and flicking switches in some part of the brain we don't normally use/have access to.

Thanks re EATB, a band I'm unfamiliar with beyond the hits, mainly because I've always regarded McCulloch as a bit of an idiot, but those tracks sound intriguing. Ditto Coil, one of those touchstone bands for a lot of critics, whose back catalogue seems a bit daunting. Will make a note to investigate further.
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