Atmosphere

Arguably the most suitable contender for the most epiphanic and transcendent post-punk composition of all time, Joy Division’s 1980 classic ‘Atmosphere’ remains one of the most beloved and enduring numbers in a woefully truncated but highly essential repertoire, which also includes defining standards like ‘Transmission’, ‘She’s Lost Control’ and the evergreen ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. The powerfully low-key ‘Atmosphere’ practically typifies the music critic-favourite expression “Ebony-tiled sonic cathedral”, with its rumbling, ominous, almost tribal-like percussion undertow, its starkly minimal yet effectively sepulchral bass drone, and its darkly shimmering washes of synth chords. But perhaps the most impressive and important component of this indisputable masterpiece was the late, lamented Ian Curtis’s spectrally calm and controlled tenor, which made for an eerie auditory foreshadowing of his suicide a few months later. Thoroughly epic in scale, and unrelentingly powerful in execution, this awesome threnody gets a wholly appropriate video-clip treatment upon its 1988 re-release, in the form of an elegantly shot black-and-white short film by master stylist Anton Corbijn that featured midgets in sinister mourning shrouds wandering around a remote desert shore, interspersed with stills of the long-departed Curtis.