Music / Substance (Joy Division Album)

"Do you cry out in your sleep?"

Substance is the second compilation album by Joy Division, released in 1988 through Factory Records in the UK and Qwest Records in the US. Riding off of the success of New Order's identically-named compilation from the previous year, the album similarly compiles every studio-recorded single, B-Side, and EP track released by New Order's previous incarnation during their own lifetime (do note the "studio-recorded" part; tracks only available as live performances like "A Later Date" aren't featured). Two tracks, "Dead Souls" and "Glass", had been previously released on the 1981 Still compilation.

Like the New Order album, Substance features much more songs on CD than LP, though unlike the New Order album, the album occupies just one disc on CD (with some countries having double-play cassette releases including the B-side portion) on all formats and doesn't edit down any of the tracks included; cassette releases use either the LP or CD tracklist depending on when and by whom they were issued. The release shows how much of an afterthought that record companies were treating LP releases in the late 1980s. The full album wouldn't be officially released on LP until 2015, when Rhino prepared a double-LP version of Substance alongside a CD and digital release (with two extra tracks on all three formats to boot). For obvious reasons, there were no re-recordings of any songs, either. Well, no new ones; the version of "She's Lost Control" featured on Substance was indeed a re-recording, but was made long before Ian Curtis's suicide in 1980.

To promote the compilation, "Atmosphere" was reissued a second time as a single (it had previously seen a reissue in mid-to-late 1980 depending on the region), with a music video directed by longtime Joy Division photographer and Depeche Mode collaborator Anton Corbijn.

Similarly to how New Order's Substance acts as a retrospective of their artistic evolution, Joy Division's Substance offers a look into their own evolution from just another Punk Rock band to the defining band of the British Post-Punk movement, examining both their rockist side and the electronic side that would act as a precursor to New Order. The result was the band's only Billboard album chart entry, peaking at 146 on the Top 200 on the heels of New Order's American breakthrough the previous year. This minor success prompted New Order's U.S. label, the Warner (Bros.) Records-backed Qwest Records, to reissue the rest of Joy Division's back catalog.

Tracklist (taken from the 2015 re-release):

Original 1988 LP

a

1. "Warsaw" (2:27)
2. "Leaders of Men" (2:35)
3. "Digital" (2:51)
4. "Autosuggestion" (6:09)
5. "Transmission" (3:37)

b

1. "She's Lost Control" (4:55)^note 4:45 on early CD, LP, and cassette releases
2. "Incubation" (2:52)
3. "Dead Souls" (4:56)
4. "Atmosphere" (4:10)
5. "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (3:27)

Appendix

c

1. "No Love Lost" (3:43)
2. "Failures" (3:45)
3. "Glass" (3:55)
4. "From Safety to Where" (2:30)

d

1. "Novelty" (3:59)
2. "Komakino" (3:53)
3. "As You Said" (2:00)*
4. "These Days" (3:26)
5. "Love Will Tear Us Apart (Pennine Version)" (3:15)*

Note: CD releases are on a single disc and contain all tracks listed above

*Added on the 2015 re-release

Principal members:

• Ian Curtis - lead vocals, additional guitar on "Love Will Tear Us Apart"
• Bernard Sumner - guitar, synthesizer
• Peter Hook - bass
• Stephen Morris - drums

"Someone take these tropes away/that point me to another day":

• Accentuate the Negative: This is Joy Division we're talking about; there's no singing about sunshine and rainbows here. To drive the point home, the "Joy Division 1977-1980" text and gray background call to mind imagery of a tombstone and its epitaph.
• Alternate Album Cover: The cover art was reworked for European editions in 1991 to use a large version of the New Alphabet "s", with the epitaph placed inside the lower curve of the letter on CD releases and above it on cassette ones. The 2015 remaster restores the original cover.
• Breather Episode: "Transmission", an uptempo song that simply talks about dancing to songs on the radio; it's distinctly Joy Division, but there's no Lyrical Dissonance to be found.
• Broken Pedestal: Invoked in "Autosuggestion":
  Heroes, idols cracked like ice
• Call-Back: As with the covers of Closer and the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" single, the cover design for the album resembles a tombstone. The minimalist design of plain text on a gray background also resembles Still.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The music video for "Atmosphere", directed by former Joy Division photographer Anton Corbijn (who had already used this trope for the videos he directed for Depeche Mode). Corbijn would adopt the trope again for the band's 2007 biopic Control, which features "Atmosphere" during the film's ending.
• Distinct Single Album: Similar to New Order's Substance, the main album focuses on the A-sides and the "Appendix" on CD and some cassette releases collects the band's B-sides. The 2015 LP release makes Substance into a Distinct Double Album, with the first record comprising the main album and the second record comprising the appendix (previous official LP releases only contained the main album on a single record).
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Highlighted with "Warsaw", "Leaders of Men", "No Love Lost", and "Failures", all of which were taken from the band's 1977 debut EP An Ideal for Living and showcase their start as a regular Punk Rock band, far removed from the Post-Punk sound that would define their work in the following three years.
• Epic Rocking: "Autosuggestion" runs just over 6 minutes.
• Greatest Hits Album: Averted, as with the New Order compilation of the same name. While the album contains some of the band's best known songs, including "Love Will Tear Us Apart", it's simply a retrospective of Joy Division via their single releases.
• Historical Biography Song: "Warsaw" is a first-person account of the rise and fall of Rudolf Hess, Deputy Führer of the Nazi Party. The song chronicles Hess' life from his involvement with the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 to his imprisonment by the British authorities after fleeing to Scotland in 1941.
• Idiosyncratic Cover Art: The album cover's layout, consisting of the band name, a timeframe, and the album title in plain text atop a solid-color background, acts as a follow-up to the cover for New Order's earlier Substance compilation. Likewise, the reissue of "Atmosphere" that promoted the Joy Division compilation features a white version of the album cover with the title and timestamp appropriately changed to "Atmosphere" and "1979," respectively.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Love Will Tear Us Apart", a fast-paced Synth-Pop song about Ian Curtis' failing marriage.
• Madness Mantra: "Digital" and "Dead Souls" both revolve around a set of phrases repeated multiple times.
• Meaningful Funeral: The central concept behind the music video for "Atmosphere", which centers around figures in burial shrouds wandering a desert and parading blown-up photographs of the band like caskets, essentially acting as a belated art film funeral for Ian Curtis.
• Minimalistic Cover Art: Simply the band name, album title, and years covered by the album against a gray background. Interestingly, the title as displayed on the front cover doesn't spell "Substance", but rather "Subst1mce", done due to "1m" looking more aesthetically pleasing in the New Alphabet typeface used than "an". Later CD and cassette releases of the album simply use a zoom-in on the New Alphabet "s", with the epitaph placed inside the lower curve of the letter on CD releases and above it on cassette ones.
• Out-of-Genre Experience: "As You Said", an avant-garde synth song far removed from Joy Division's other synth-driven songs and even New Order's Alternative Dance music. It's perhaps because of this that the song had been previously re-released as a B-side to the 12" release of New Order's "Video 5 8 6", itself much more experimental than the rest of the latter incarnation's oeuvre.
• Packaged as Other Medium: Downplayed; the album cover invokes the imagery of a tombstone, but takes a very minimalist approach rather than attempting to accurately replicate it a-la the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" single.
• Performance Video: The video for "Love Will Tear Us Apart", notable for being the only music video Joy Division ever got around to making during Ian Curtis' lifetime (the "Atmosphere" video was made to promote Substance).
• Putting on the Reich: "Warsaw" and "No Love Lost", which retell the respective stories of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess and Jewish women forced into sex slavery in Nazi concentration camps (as recounted in The House of Dolls, from which Joy Division derived their name). Note that none of the members of Joy Division have ever been sympathetic towards fascism; they just wanted to provoke a reaction with the Nazi allusions.
• Rearrange the Song: The album features the 12" version of "She's Lost Control" from Unknown Pleasures; this version is an archival re-recording that incorporates greater use of synthesizers and an electronic drum kit, is performed at a lower tempo and key, and features an additional bridge not present on the Unknown Pleasures version. This arrangement would serve as the basis for later New Order live performances of the song, when they finally revived their old incarnation's songs in concert.
• Shout-Out:
  • In addition to taking after New Order's Substance from the previous year, the configuration of the A-sides on the main album and the B-sides on the "appendix" is a lot like fellow Manchester band and onetime opening act Buzzcocks' Singles Going Steady compilation, which also employed a similar scheme on a single record, with the A-Sides on side "A" and the B-sides on side "B". The only difference though is that the initial LP release of Joy Division's Substance only featured the main album (again a-la New Order), with the 2015 reissue adding in the CD version's appendix section on a second record.
  • In addition to alluding to the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland during World War II, the title of "Warsaw", taken from the band's original name, is a nod to David Bowie's 1977 song "Warszawa".
  • Musically, "Autosuggestion" seems heavily musically influenced by The Stooges' "Dirt".
  • "Dead Souls" takes its name from the novel by Nikolai Gogol.
  • "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was named as a sardonic nod to the Captain & Tennille song "Love Will Keep Us Together".
  • The spoken interlude in "No Love Lost" is a direct quote from the book that inspired Joy Division's name, The House of Dolls.
    "Through the wire screen, the eyes of those standing outside looked in at her as into the cage of some rare creature in a zoo. In the hand of one of the assistants she saw the same instrument which they had that morning inserted deep into her body. She shuddered instinctively."
• Synth-Pop: Both versions of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" experiment with this genre, serving as a direct precursor to the band members' later exploration of electronic music as New Order.
• Updated Re-release: Twice.
  • In 1990, the commercially-released 12" mix of "She's Lost Control" was replaced with an alternate take incorporating different versions of the synthesizer and guitar parts and a longer outro.
  • In 2015, Substance was reissued with two extra B-sides added: "As You Said" and an alternate version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart". The two tracks were secondary B-sides to "Komakino" and "Love Will Tell Us Apart". The other B-sides for these singles, "Incubation" and "These Days", were already present on Substance from the outset. Thus, the 2015 version collects all of the band's non-album tracks released during their lifetime.
• Vanilla Edition: The original 1988 LP release only included the first ten tracks in the compilation, spanning a single record; compare this to the concurrent CD release, which adds in all the B-sides to the songs included on the LP (save for "As You Said" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart (Pennine Version)", which weren't included until the 2015 reissue). The decision to do this appeared to be less to cut costs and more to maintain consistency with New Order's Substance from the previous year, which similarly only featured the A-sides portion on vinyl. When the album was re-released on vinyl in 2015, it was presented as a double LP, with the second record containing the remaining tracks that were left off the 1988 LP.
• Vocal Evolution: Ian's voice lowers dramatically on "Digital", the first track that was done with Martin Hannett, compared to the first two tracks of the album taken from An Ideal for Living, in which his singing voice is closer to his speaking voice. Likewise, the B-side portion of the compilation features Ian's voice lowering again on "Glass", the first B-side recorded with Hannett, compared to the previous two tracks, which make up the other half of An Ideal for Living.

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