It was dear old John Peel’s top song of the last millennium (“The Peelenium”) and there hasn’t been much in the first 10 years of this one to top it, I don’t think. The song has been used to soundtrack documentaries, dramas and England being knocked out of the World Cup. I don’t know whether it offers hope or desperation, although the lines “Your confusion/My illusion/Worn like a mask of self-hate” make me fear the latter. You might recognise it simply from Stephen Morris’s signature beat or Peter Hook’s restless bassline let alone tragic singer Ian Curtis’s less-is-more, heartbreaking, yet oddly uplifting lyric and haunted vocal. It’s perfectly titled it seems to have an atmosphere all of its own. The more I discovered Atmosphere (the Joy Division version) the less I chortled about beaches and bronzed lifeguards and the more I realised it was a work of genius: a slow-burning, dark piece of mood music that somehow glistens and soars.
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