Synthesizers Under Review

October 22, 2007

Tonight I watched Joy Division: Under Review, a recent documentary on the British band Joy Division. The new film Control about Ian Curtis, the lead singer for Joy Division who committed suicide in 1980 as the band was on the cusp of reaching a larger audience, will presumably run through much of this same material. I am of course pleased that the band is getting some renewed attention.

At one point in the documentary discussion turns to the song "Isolation" by Joy Division. It is a song that makes noticeable use of synthesizers.. which to our '00 ears can sound dated. Three commentators take a crack at explaining why Joy Division used them in a way that is still interesting:

#1

They have dated well because people aren't really making these kinds of records anymore. I think "Isolation" is a great example of that. But also i think it's because when people made electronic music at that time, it suggested a kind of anxiety about the future. Nowadays when people use synthesizers.. you know we're in the future now.. it's much more routine. It doesn't signify as much. For that reason I think tracks like "Isolation" really do hold up.

This was to me an unexpected argument. It seems like he is saying that synthesizer music at one point had a meaning that got lost. Groups who used this futuristic sound were not trying to be positive about the future, but were expressing anxiety. It is a futurism that shuns the future. The futuristic sound of the synthesizer later became normalized and lost its connotation of anxiety, but Joy Division's "Isolation" is still worth listening to since it conveys something of that old-time synth anxiety.

#2

You can still hear that 80s stuff anywhere, and it still sounds great, but in a nostalgic way. Joy Division don't sound nostalgic; it still sounds fresh. "Isolation" sounds as fresh as it did then.

This is a different, and more expected, argument. The under-lying assumption seems to be that Joy Division does have a sound that could be grouped in with 80s bands, but somehow it escapes the charge of nostalgia. Perhaps that means there is a level of authenticity in the music that ends up redeeming the synthesizer? We have moved into much vaguer territory.

#3

I think any record that has a genuinely emotional kick to it can never go out of date because these feelings that Ian Curtis was singing about are feelings that people have now and will have in 100 years.

This final argument I am most unsympathetic to. This argument has an element of tautology: why is this music popular today? Because it is universally popular. This kind of analysis does not really get us anywhere.. and shunts aside the need to find specific elements in a song that carry cultural signification.