The album Closer, Gothic sound cathedral of Joy Division, celebrates its 40th anniversary

Still cult after 40 years. The re-edition of Closer , from Joy Division, published in 1980 just after the suicide of its singer Ian Curtis, allows us to measure the persistent influence of this gothic sound cathedral.

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This is the second and last album from the Manchester quartet. The icy beauty of the pieces is still there. The cover stands prominently on the shelves of vinyl fans. This is a photo of funeral statues from a cemetery in Genoa (Italy), chosen before the disappearance of the group's leader and magnified by the design of Peter Saville, visual guru of the legendary Factory label. Under the cardboard envelope, the transparent vinyl offered this Friday for 40 years (Rhino Records / Warner) should delight collectors. The group's off-album singles, Transmission , Atmosphere and Love Will Tear Us Apart are also reissued. And Transmission is available with an embossed pocket.

• Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart

Rewind. Spring 1980 was the year of all possibilities for Joy Division. Closer was recorded in March and an American tour is scheduled for May. The excitement is at its height at Factory, a Mancunian label screwed up by the whimsical Tony Wilson. Closer was born at Britannia Row, a London studio frequented by Pink Floyd. Behind the consoles, we find Martin Hannett, iconoclastic producer - after aborted studies of chemistry - already at work on Unknown Pleasures (first disc of the group dating from 1979).

Working Men's Club, heirs of Joy Division

"There is a great intellectual and artistic proximity, one can even say fusional, between Hannett and Curtis" , portrayed for AFP Pierre-Frédéric Charpentier, author of Joy Division, Sessions 1977-1981 (ed. Le Mot Et Le Reste ). "Closer, 40 years later, remains an album of incredible modernity ," continues the specialist . There is such a deep sound, like on Heart And Soul or these timeless pieces like The Eternal or Decades . The group gives leads that others will explore later on . ”

"Closer, 40 years later, remains an album of incredible modernity"

The heirs, claimed or not, are legion, from Interpol to the young Englishmen of Working Men's Club, who will not release their first album until October (at Pias) and are already dragging this cumbersome comparison. At the time, Curtis liked the result, but his life broke up. The epileptic seizures - pain, taboo at the time, which gnaws at him - occur in concerts and he has trouble managing his private life, between new relationship and burning of his marriage. On May 18, he hangs himself in his kitchen, the day before his departure for the USA. He was 23 years old.

Closer , "diary of a depression"

“We did not cry at his funeral, it first came out in anger. We were absolutely devastated, ” says Peter Hook, bass player, in La Factory, grandeur and decadence of Factory Records , a book by James Nice (éd. Naïve). Then comes the guilt when the group realizes that the supposed literary references to Curtis' texts were none other than the expression of their unhappiness. "This is the poignant side of Closer , it is the diary of a depression," decrypts Pierre-Frédéric Charpentier. “ Isolation , the most dancing, electro-pop song, is one of the darkest texts there is. And Love Will Tears Us Apart (Love will tear us to pieces, editor's note) is a heartbreaking text on the impossibility of the choice of love . ”

Read also: The grave of Ian Curtis, singer of the Joy Division, desecrated for the second time

On leaving Closer , two months after Curtis' death, the music magazine NME hailed "the most magnificent memorial that a popular artist, post-Presley, can have" . When the inevitable question arises, the three remaining members - Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris - decide to continue the music. "I didn't think we had the slightest chance of getting anywhere without Ian," said Hook. Make way for New Order. The formation will know highs - the Blue Monday tube - and lows between cycles separation-meeting and departure of Hook.