RANDOMS 2026 #38

 

 

RANDOMS 2026 #37

 

RANDOMS 2026 #36

 

 

REMEMBERING IAN CURTIS

 Recently I posted a link to a video of Joy Division playing their song "Transmission" on a friends Facebook timeline - I described it as "The tightest performance of all time" 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dBt3mJtgJc

Later that day I was passing through Newtown, past the Ian Curtis memorial. I took a snapshot from the bus.

That monument has been there for most of my life, and it's one of the few monuments that have always really meant something to me. I'm sometimes a bit stunned when people don't know who Ian Curtis was.

 

 

Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division

It even looks like something classic, beyond its time or place of origin even as it was a clear product of both - one of Peter Saville's earliest and best designs, a transcription of a signal showing a star going nova, on a black embossed sleeve. If that were all Unknown Pleasures was, it wouldn't be discussed so much, but the ten songs inside, quite simply, are stone-cold landmarks, the whole album a monument to passion, energy, and cathartic despair.

The quantum leap from the earliest thrashy singles to Unknown Pleasures can be heard through every note, with Martin Hannett's deservedly famous production - emphasizing space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub - as much a hallmark as the music itself. Songs fade in behind furtive noises of motion and activity, glass breaks with the force and clarity of doom, and minimal keyboard lines add to an air of looming disaster - something, somehow, seems to wait or lurk beyond the edge of hearing.

But even though this is Hannett's album as much as anyone's, the songs and performances are the true key. Bernard Sumner redefined heavy metal sludge as chilling feedback fear and explosive energy, Peter Hook's instantly recognizable bass work was at once warm and forbidding, and Stephen Morris' drumming smacked through the speakers above all else. Ian Curtis synthesizes and purifies every last impulse, his voice shot through with the desire first and foremost to connect, only connect - as "Candidate" plaintively states, "I tried to get to you/You treat me like this."

Pick any song: the nervous death dance of "She's Lost Control"; the harrowing call for release "New Dawn Fades," all four members in perfect sync; the romance in hell of "Shadowplay"; "Insight" and its nervous drive toward some sort of apocalypse. All visceral, all emotional, all theatrical, all perfect -- one of the best albums ever.  

 

A MONTH OFF

Holy cow another month has shot by at breakneck speed

Arriving at the half million hits count was monumental in an insignificant little blogger gets his day in the sun sort of way, but every once in a while I feel the need to have a month off blogging and all social media use.

September is going to be my month off. If I have an urge to write anything profound I'll postpone it’s publication by a month.

What this break will do as much as anything is reveal how addicted I am to looking at crap online.

Like a moth to a flame I keep looking at rubbish on Youtube and Facebook, even though I'm well aware that it’s not doing me any good.

My September challenge is to stop looking at YouTube and Facebook, to stop using Wifi, and to stop doing any blog posts. I want to replace those activities with more productive things (I have quite a list!). Hopefully by October 1 will have established a more productive and efficient approach to my computer and internet use

Bakson

PS - I did manage to mostly tear myself away from looking at crap online, and certainly I did no posts on my blog throughout September. This screenshot below is what my September posts looked like on September 30 - at that point there was only this one!

For reasons I don't understand but suspect are due to the complex machinations of algorithms and AI, when I do no posts for a month the hits drop off markedly. 

So to counter that, in October I plan to move some old posts forward to September and make it look like September was business as usual with around 25 posts. But it wasn't, because I will have buggered off for a month and then retrospectively faked regular posting...

 

PPS. The difference in hits between August and September was quite remarkable - no posts did indeed lead to a massive drop in hits.