The move from .punk style has been a gradual process, still not quite completed. A timely reminder that it was Joy Division who started it all and would still, should they be together, hold on to their particular distant crown, comes with the retrospective release of Still.

They were the first electronics band, using synthesizers and pre-programmed computerized tapes to construct a mode nJ9re relevant to the age of the silicone chip. Within this they also molded a built-in sense of desolation, a frustration that had a more intellectual angle than simply kicking out at contemporary social collapse. The personal angst and cold outrage of Ian Curtiss view of the world was the vision of an existential dilemma turning round on itself against the bleak scenario of a post-nuclear skyline. As such, Joy Division for all its heartbeat-deadened drum and its melodious guitar chords, produced music that resembled classic architecture . Despite Curtis s involvement the result was impersonal simply because the icy grandeur of their sound overpowered any individual course of action. Like Mussollinis harsh neo-Roman construction for the Rome underground building Divisions music retains its power nearly two years after Curtiss death because its impact is so vast yet its effect so oddly inhuman. What has come out of Division, like a family tree of electronic music, is todays dance music, and the stylists, having first tried to emulate the original school, have finally turned to creating little more than contemporary computerized pop.