J0y Divisi0n- CLos3r (1980) Collector's Edition (Bonus Disc) / Love Will Tear Us Apart EP (1995) MP3 & FLAC

"This is the crisis I knew had to come, destroying the balance I'd kept."

Given their status as the artistic summit of the Post-Punk era, it's hard to believe Joy Division only released two official studio albums during their existence. Whereas their first album, Unknown Pleasures, was nothing less than a paradigm shift in the sense that it left behind Punk's aggressive agit ethos for a darker, moodier, and more complex sound and, in the process, played a central role in the rise of Post-Punk, the band's follow up, Closer, has had a more complicated history, for while it has been rightly hailed as Joy Division's artistic masterpiece, the album also holds the distinction of having been released soon after Ian Curtis' suicide on the eve of the band's first U.S. tour. As a result, many view the album's lyrical content as something of a suicide note, a position that makes it nearly impossible to judge Closer solely on its own terms. Without a doubt, Closer is an emotionally dark and ravaged album, and Curtis' lyrics are often suggestive of the struggles he was going through, including a crumbling marriage and worsening epileptic seizures; however, Closer is also an artistic triumph for the band as a whole, managing to build on all the innovations of the first album while pushing the gloom and claustrophobia in even more starkly beautiful directions. The non-album single preceding the release of Closer, "Love Will Tear Us Apart," a song that has since been absorbed (though thankfully not yet co-opted) by the cultural mainstream, is a precursor to the pop-oriented direction the band would eventually take after reforming as New Order. Despite its pop-song trappings, lyrically, it is undoubtedly one of the bleakest love songs ever penned, and with Peter Hook's weeping bass-lines and Curtis' vocals, which sound as though they are emanating from the depths of a well, it is more than worthy of its iconic status. The album itself throws off all pop pretense on songs such as "Twenty-Four Hours," a devastatingly brilliant meditation on a soul descending into inconsolable darkness and " Heart and Soul," a slow-burner with a deceptively simple arrangement that finds Curtis stepping back from personal agony to take a wider (though no less dark) look at the human condition. Closer was destined to be Joy Division's swan-song, but listening to it some 30 years later, it is hard to imagine how they could have ever recorded a more perfect distillation of their unparalleled sound.

Closer (2007 Collector's Edition)

Disc I: Closer (2007 Remaster)
1. Atrocity Exhibition  (6:07)
2. Isolation  (2:53)
3. Passover  (4:47)
4. Colony  (3:56)
5. A Means to an End  (4:10)
6. Heart and Soul  (5:52)
7. Twenty Four Hours  (4:26)
8. The Eternal  (6:08)
9. Decades  (6:11)

MU: Lossy (MP3@320) 

MU: Lossless (FLAC) 

Disc II: Live, University of London Union, Feb. 8, 1980

 1. Dead Souls  (4:59)

 2. Glass (3:42)

 3. A Means to an End  (4:02)

 4. Twenty Four Hours  (4:06)

 5. Passover  (4:54)

 6. Insight  (4:01)

 7. Colony  (4:04)

 8. These Days  (4:17)

 9. Love Will Tear Us Apart  (3:14)

10. Isolation  (4:42)

11. The Eternal  (6:30)

12. Digital  (3:14)

MU: Lossy (MP3@320)

MU: Lossless (FLAC)

Love Will Tear Us Apart EP (1995 Canadian Re-Issue)

1. Love Will Tear Us Apart (Radio Version)  (3:40)

2. Love Will Tear Us Apart (Original Version)  (3:28)

3. Love Will Tear Us Apart (Arthur Baker Remix)  (4:22)

4. Atmosphere (Original Hannett 12")  (4:12)

5. These Days  (3:27)

6. Transmission  (3:44)

MU: Lossy (MP3@320) 

MU: Lossless (FLAC)