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The duochrome Peter Saville cover of this first Joy Division album speaks volumes. Its white on black lines reflect a pulse of power, a surge of bass, and raw angst. If the cover doesn’t draw you in, the music will. Following the first kick of drums and bass come the vocals: "I’ve been waiting for a guy to come and take me by the hand". This young band was the ‘guy’ to take post punk music by the hand and lead it to 80s electronica. Joy Division were unlike anything that came before them and anything that has ever come after them.

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The album is at times aggressive: "And all God’s angels beware. And all you judges beware, sons of chance take good care. For all the people out there, I’m not afraid anymore," Ian Curtis intones on Insight, lapsing, at times, into despondency. Unknown Pleasures is always brooding and always intense. Joy Division were four boys from 1970s Salford. They took their name from the literary prostitution wing of a Nazi concentration camp and they took their inspiration from the familiar atmosphere of run-down, post-industrial estates. Deep heaving baritones come out of a man so small he’d be blown away by the gust of his own voice. Together Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris created something approaching pure energy. - BBC