The mind behind the PoIT curtain - your own Analog Loyalist - is overseeing and handling the mastering work of the raw audio tracks. £50 Note is managing the general presentation and the artwork. Occasionally I will host over here differences, or oddities, I've come across while restoring the audio.
Today we feature the premier release of the nascent Joy Division, the EP recorded in December 1977 that became the highly-sought-after An Ideal For Living 7"/12". While the tracks themselves ultimately saw wide release on 1988's Substance, and then 1997's box set Heart and Soul, the quality of both issues was just so-so. Furthermore, the box set versions sounded *worse* than the 1988 release! Why, I have no idea. It's almost as if the box set used a cassette dub of the tracks as its source, while 1988's Substance went back to the masters.
Anyhow, oddly enough, the original vinyl pressings themselves, and all subsequent digital reissues (which I have confirmed by comparing to raw transfers from the actual original 7" and 12" releases) were mastered a bit fast, perhaps to be more punk? I don't know, and all I do know is that the recordings were not in concert pitch. It could simply have been a mastering error, or perhaps the band themselves didn't own any tuning equipment.
So of course I corrected it, for this post at least. £50 Note is posting the pitch-accurate-to-original-release version, as he should. If you want the pitch-accurate-to-a-tuning-fork, however, you're at the right place.
Lossless FLAC, remastered from the original Japanese CD pressing of Substance - the best digital source I've been able to locate. Grab them here!
JOY DIVISION
RECYCLE 01: An Ideal For Living
7" debut release, Enigma PSS139 (June 1978)
12" reissue, Anonymous ANON1 (October 1978)
01 Warsaw
02 No Love Lost
03 Leaders Of Men
04 Failures
05 At A Later Date (bonus, from the Virgin CD issue of Short Circuit)
See the post over at the Recycle blog for more details, and my original mastering notes.
Enjoy!
hehe! Candy!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the FLAC.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your efforts of restoring and bringing this in FLAC
ReplyDeleteThanks for the love and care that is so very evident in what you do - it's a shame that the music industry wasn't in your hands. It's annoying to buy the same albums again and again in order to have the best versions, and often the most complete versions - especially when you find out that what you've just bought isn't as good as what you just sold on e-bay!!!
ReplyDeleteWith people like you running the music industry I'm sure it wouldn't be in the state it's in now!
And now for something completely different:
Have you tackled the "RCA album"?
Thanks a ton for this. I was really excited to find your blog (I like discovering new music), and then to find all the Joy Division live stuff, and then this -- I'm all giddy. But, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, I do have a question and a request.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the Recycle project is just the singles, right? Unknown Pleasures and Closer won't be covered? If so, can you upload rips of these two albums from the Japanese box set, which you presumably have access to? I'm not asking for the artwork or any remastering or anything, just copies of the files on the CDs in FLAC.
I ask for the obvious reasons, I guess. The currently available releases of the albums (Heart and Soul and the 2007 remasters) sound worse than even the original Factory releases, and it'd be nice to have the best sounding versions, especially for people who've bought the most recent releases.
Anyway, thanks again for your work on the project! I'm really looking forward to the upcoming material.
Are you doing just this one? I was really hoping I'd see the rest also not encoded as M4As.. =D
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for your fantastic work on this project, greatly appreciated! And your comments are pure gold!
ReplyDeleteAs darkling, I too would like to see the rest of the JD chapter in lossless format, rather than M4As... I got the idea that the FLAC files would go here and the lossy format files and artwork would go in Recycle.
Horacio
To all:
ReplyDeleteNo plans (at the moment) to put up the Japanese UP/Closer masterings. Perhaps down the road, but we'll see.
I respect and support £50 Note's decision to only host M4A's of the majority of these. Our agreement was that I would only host my own versions when they differ from the "canon" - in this case, pitching was enough of a difference to warrant the dual postings. If I present any additional Recycle material, it will be because this blog's version is different than the canon that £50 Note is hosting.
And the RCA album is a back-burner thing. The thought has crossed my mind (and I do have a few alternative sources than the common bootleg pressings), but I've no concrete plans to do anything with it. All I can say is "stay tuned"....
All the Joy Division studio sessions chronologically listed (record covers placed in their original release dates in between these sessions)
ReplyDeletehttp://ghostalking.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/joy-division-sessions/
Are you planning on hosting the remastered pitch-corrected "Dead Souls" and "Ice Age" as FLAC files on your blog? I understand 50 Pound Note's reasons for AAC but at least "Dead Souls" is too important a track to remain unreleased as it was intended to be heard in glorious lossless!
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