Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Digital
2. Glass
3. Disorder
4. Day of the Lords
5. Candidate
6. Insight
7. New Dawn Fades
8. She's Lost Control
9. Shadowplay
10. Wilderness
11. Interzone
12. I Remember Nothing
13. Ice Age
14. Exercise One
15. Transmission
16. Novelty
17. The Kill
18. The Only Mistake
19. Something Must Break
20. Auto-Suggestion
21. From Safety to Where...?

Disc 2:

1. She's Lost Control 12
2. Sound of Music
3. Atmosphere
4. Dead Souls
5. Komakino
6. Incubation
7. Atrocity Exhibition
8. Isolation
9. Passover
10. Colony
11. Means to an End
12. Heart and Soul
13. Twenty Four Hours
14. The Eternal
15. Decades
16. Love Will Tear Us Apart
17. These Days

Disc 3:

1. Warsaw
2. No Love Lost
3. Leaders of Men
4. Failures
5. The Drawback
6. Interzone
7. Shadowplay
8. Exercise One
9. Insight
10. Glass
11. Transmission
12. Dead Souls
13. Something Must Break
14. Ice Age
15. Walked in Line
16. These Days
17. Candidate
18. The Only Mistake
19. Chance (Atmosphere)
20. Love Will Tear Us Apart
21. Colony
22. As You Said
23. Ceremony
24. In a Lonely Place (Detail)

Disc 4:

1. Dead Souls [Live]
2. The Only Mistake [Live]
3. Insight [Live]
4. Candidate [Live]
5. Wilderness [Live]
6. She's Lost Control [Live]
7. Disorder [Live]
8. Interzone [Live]
9. Atrocity Exhibition [Live]
10. Novelty [Live]
11. Auto-Suggestion
12. Remember Nothing
13. Colony
14. These Days
15. Incubation
16. The Eternal
17. Heart and Soul
18. Isolation
19. She's Lost Control

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1694 in Music
• Released on: 2001-08-28
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Box set, Explicit Lyrics, Original recording remastered

Album Description
1997 release, a four disc set on London packaged in a 6 x 10in gatefold digibook with an 80 page illustrated book. 80 tracks total, including all cuts from the albums 'Unknown Pleasures', 'Closer' & 'Substance', seven of the nine studiorecordings on 'Still', plus Peel session versions of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', 'Exercise One' & 'Colony', the version of 'As You Said' that appeared as the uncredited track on New Order's 'Video 586' 12 single and last --but certainly not least-- 35 previously unreleased gems comprised of live & rare versions of their absolute finest. Utterly brilliant.

Amazon.com
Though Joy Division's anxious, angular songs echoed time-honored art-school obsessions from the Doors through Eno, they never stooped to cheap nostalgia or pretentious condescension. Neither bridge nor battering ram, the band's music--haunting and hypnotic, with an emotionally naked core as bleak as it was compelling--has transcended disposable pop culture past and present; leader-vocalist Ian Curtis's 1980 suicide only underscored the notion that Joy Division was a band out of time, figuratively as well as literally. In just over two years, the Manchester, U.K., group constructed a legacy whose influences have surfaced with the surviving members' New Order through macabre, psychically-damaged Curtis/Cobain parallels to the sonic atmospherics of Radiohead. And if their recorded output was limited, it has long been ill served by the record industry's worst Cuisinart instincts. Thus, this artfully designed four-disc, 81-track box should reign as the band's definitive recorded history. Journalist Jon Savage collaborated with band members Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook to assemble Joy Division's legacy into four subtly different chapters. Discs one and two center around the band's albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer respectively, culling singles, demos, and outtakes. Disc three gathers BBC and Peel sessions and more than a dozen previously unreleased outtakes. The final chapter may be the most artistically revealing: 17 live tracks that represent not only the best of the band's darkly compelling songs, but show their riveting stage presence during a performance peak that spanned but seven months. The accompanying booklet presents an almost Rashomon-like take on the band, from its spare, impressionistic imagery through its multiple essays and, crucially, the lyrics of Ian Curtis, starkly presented as the candid, disquieting poetry that was the essence of Joy Division's murmuring heart and troubled soul. --Jerry McCulley

Customer Reviews

Great, but not perfect
What can you say about Joy Division? They aren't for everyone, that's for sure. A lot of folks cannot get past Ian Curtis' voice, and I understand that; sometimes even I throw up my hands and ask, "Why in the world didn't Martin Hannett tell Ian to do another take? Surely they could have gotten him to sing just a wee bit more in tune."

But on the other hand, sometimes the weird, flat voice is actually good for the track - sometimes, the ghostly, haunted lyrics benefit from Curtis' ghostly, haunted, slightly atonal vocal style. So overall, most of the studio recordings work very well. Live, however, there are a lot of moments that are almost excruciating to the ears. On top of that, the fact that the three musicians in the band were all amatuers themselves made for exciting but inconsistent performances.

WHY THIS BOX SET IS GOOD: Remastered versions of the two proper studio albums "Unknown Pleasures" and "Closer." Both these albums remain stunning landmarks of "post-punk" music. The musical style of this band was quite distinctive - bass often carried the melody and the guitar functioned more as the true rhythm instrument. Drum parts tended toward machine-like grooves, but played by a human being. All in all, a unique approach that could only have been developed by guys who truly didn't know better; unaffected by any sort of technical proficiency, Joy Division had to forge their songs with the most rudimentary tools. Miraculously, they managed to create an influential and sophisticated sound with few obvious antecedents.

In addition to the two albums, this also includes almost all their singles and outtakes. Plus, you get some stuff that was never officially released, including three tracks from their unreleased 1978 "Warsaw" album.

WHY IT'S NOT SO GOOD: For the most part, the alternate versions on Disc 3 are not that impressive. On some of them, the vocals are downright horrible. And as far as Disc 4 goes, this is the worst sounding offically released live material I've heard by this band. Even the Preston Warehouse CD sounds better! Even worse, the first 14 tracks suffer from a very common audio flaw in bootlegs: the original tape recorder must have been running at slow speed, and when they remastered it for this CD, the playback deck must have been playing at normal speed. The result: everything is speeded up and the pitch is more than a half-step sharp. WHY DIDN'T ANYONE OVERSEEING THIS PROJECT NOTICE THAT THE RECORDING WAS CLEARLY NOT AT PROPER SPEED???

Now I am going to have to tape this CD, and then play it back again using my variable speed tape deck. How ridiculous!
The only material on the live CD that was recorded at proper speed is the last 5 songs. Overall, this live CD is a big disappointment.

Also, the packaging of this box set is pretty shoddy. The cover is made of what feels like cheap manila paper. I'd had my copy for one day and I already noticed wear and tear on the binding.

WHAT THIS BOX SET IS MISSING:
1) 7 out of ten songs from the "Complete BBC Sessions" CD.
2) 8 of the 11 songs recorded for RCA in 1978 for the unreleased "Warsaw" album. (now available on a CD which includes the group's earliest recordings from 1977)
3) The original "Warsaw" demo - 5 songs recorded in July 1977; incredibly primitive, amatuerish punk. The songs aren't especially good, but it is startling to hear this stuff and realize this is how J.D. started.
4) The live material from "Still" - the full set from J.D.'s last show ever.
5) An excellent live version of a very early song called "At A Later Date" originally released on a Factory Records compilation called "Short Circuit - Live at the Electric Circus."
6) An alternate version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" that was originally released on the b-side of the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" 12" single.

Given the omissions and the crappy-sounding live stuff, I can't give this 5 stars, as much as I adore this band.

If you like Joy Division, you must own this box set
Without a doubt, this is the best multi-disc set I own, and that just isn't because I love Joy Division. The packaging is great (booklet, artwork, etc), better than many "box sets" out there. The music is of course unmatched.

Almost everything they've recorded is here, and some rarities are so cool that any fan is going to pee their pants. "In a lonely place" and "Ceremony" (on disc 3) are from rehearsal tapes, and they are awesome. Mind-blowing.

The organization of the box-set is great. The first 3 discs go in basically chronological order and then the 4th is a bunch of live tracks.

If you don't know Joy Division, perhaps it would be best to start out with "Substance". But if you like them at all, then this set is for you.

Included on the set are both Peel Sessions, and also rare tracks that have been unavailable for years. Of course there still are the aforementioned live tracks and rehearsal tracks. You still get (duh!) "Unknown Pleasures", "Closer", portions of "Still", "Substance" and other singles tracks.

There are still some things you don't get, which doesn't make this collection "THE" definitive word on Joy Division (but what collection by any artist could contain every single thing?): you don't get all of the material they recorded as "Warsaw" (available on the "Warsaw" U.S. import) You don't get all of "Still"-- the live part is not included in "Heart and Soul". There also is a new live album called "Preston 28 February 1980" that is pretty awesome too, and it is not on "Heart and Soul"

Even though everything isn't on "Heart and Soul", it still is the final word on the band. A great collection. Buy it if you like the band. "Heart and Soul" is a testament to one of the greatest bands ever, whose depth and intensity are well represented on this recording.

As close as we're likely to get
Yes, there was definitely too much of a lag between the European release and the US release of this one -- so much so that I myself had to take advantage of the fact that I was living in Spain to get my hands on this one a couple of years ago. Even still, after all this time I'm still somewhat at a loss for words to describe "Heart and Soul," so that's a good sign.

One thing that I can say is that everything about this box set is just beautiful, from the packaging to the lyrics to the songs themselves. The cost may be a bit off-putting right now, but it's probably the most thorough anthology that's likely to come around, so it's well worth it. You get all the tracks from "Unknown Pleasures," "Closer" and "Substance" (though not "Still") -- plus some assorted live and demo versions that had been previously unreleased.

The albums and the compilation are standards, of course. Some of the demos are pretty much hit-or-miss, and I've heard that the sound mixes and even the playing itself at Joy Division concerts were often pretty bad. But even with the diminished sound quality, the live tracks here (particularly the ones from The Factory in Hulme -- roughly the first half of disc 4) have this rollicking, transcendental power that makes current bands like Nickelback, Staind and Fuel, not to mention the pretense behind most of the genre of "emo," seem like adolescent journal entries put to bland rock arrangements in comparison. And there are a few songs toward the end (the live "Autosuggestion" and particularly "Ceremony" and "In a Lonely Place" -- the latter two from the last recording session before Ian Curtis's suicide) where you can really hear how close he was to the final breakdown. Personally, I haven't been able to listen to these few songs since Madrid.

Then there's a booklet containing all the lyrics, listings of releases and recording sessions and even books, a couple of stream-of-consciousness articles on what Joy Division were all about and a more straightforward, strictly journalistic account from "Mojo" (courtesy of good ol' Jon Savage, one of the compilers). The photos are pretty eye-catching, too -- particularly the vidcaps.

Sure, some stuff got left on the cutting-room floor (the typo-ridden liner notes acknowledge this). Sure, you may never hear their version of "Louie Louie." And, sure, the songs and the lyrics and the packaging all whisper that eternal "What if. . . ?" When you're talking about a band like Joy Division (and especially a man like Ian Curtis), there will always necessarily be more questions than answers. At the very least, "Heart and Soul" tips the ratio a bit more in our favor.