Even if you’re not a Joy Division fan – or even a fan of music – chances are you will have seen the iconic pulsar signal plotting that adorns the cover of their debut album, Unknown Pleasures, dotted around every arty neighbourhood in the world. To celebrate the album’s 40th anniversary, in 2019, every track on Unknown Pleasures was given a new reimagined music video by a host of renowned directors and visual artists.
There’s no need to mince words with a description of Unknown Pleasures: released on Factory Records on 5 June 1979, it is a masterpiece. From the opening drums of Disorder to the closing industrial sounds of I Remember Nothing, it’s an album with no excess fat. It’s immediate, it’s haunting, it’s transporting. Collectively, Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Bernard Sumner, Martin Hannett and Peter Saville created art with Unknown Pleasures – and art is what it inspired.
These reinterpreted videos offer a fresh perspective on each track, while demonstrating this landmark post-punk album’s continual inspiration.
Disorder (directed by Sean Evans)
Unknown Pleasures’ opening track creates its own world of visuals every time it plays, so creating a new video interpretation is no simple task. Here, director Sean Evans lets the music really breathe with a video that incorporates the infamous pulsar diagram interwoven with dancing that builds in energy as the track does.
