diffrentcolours | Control in the Dark

Last week, P and I went to a Pitchblack Playback event this evening to hear Joy Division's "Closer" album played in full in the dark, at Cultplex in Manchester. The cinema PA was good - not oppressively loud like a nightclub, but bass you can feel and quality good enough to really appreciate the music and the production. They have to keep fire escape signs on for legal reasons, so you get given a little blindfold to keep the last of the darkness out.

I'm not really used to Joy Division as an album band. They only released two in Ian Curtis' lifetime, and their most famous track "Love Will Tear Us Apart" doesn't appear on either of them. There's about a billion releases in their name though, from live gigs, various scraps left around the recording studio, and other ephemera to feed the obsessive fanbase. So listening to this from start to finish was an odd experience. It covers a lot of ground musically, definitely anchored in post-punk driving guitars and basslines but embracing some of the electronic / dance vibes which would later be explored by New Order. If you're sitting in the dark with no distractions your brain certainly makes a lot of connections with other things.

Everyone sitting down was weird, but me and P tapped our toes and jiggled along to the music happily. Which made it a more communal experience than just doing it on my own, which I think would have been a different vibe again. But most people there were in small groups, with only one or two solo adventurers.

Due to P's broken leg we left shortly after the playback concluded - they had a second album listening party that evening, and the accessible exit is through the listening room, so we couldn't stay without essentially being trapped for the duration. It was an interesting experience and I'm glad she suggested it as a date idea.