Rhino Records UK released TOTAL: from Joy Division to New Order on June 6, a collection of both bands’ best-known songs. Linking the two makes sense, as the dark post-punk of Joy Division ended abruptly when leader singer Ian Curtis committed suicide. After the posthumous release of their second album, Closer, the remaining members reformed as the decidedly brighter New Order, enjoying decades-spanning commercial and critical success. TOTAL follows the two bands chronologically, highlighting the musical evolution of both.

It’s always been very hard to separate the music of either band from their sleeve art. Peter Saville, a dominating influence in the world of design, crafted a minimal, highbrow ethic for both bands. Saville returned with longtime collaborator, Howard Wakefield for TOTAL. We recently had the opportunity to speak with Wakefield about TOTAL, typography and working with Peter Saville.
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Before having heard a note of the Arcade Fire’s latest album, I knew that I wanted to write about it. The cover art was immediately arresting and I knew it would be a great excuse to discuss hand-drawn fonts. Not that I hadn’t thought about discussing them already: Dinosaur Jr’s Bug, Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted and The Pixies’ Come On Pilgrim are some old favorites of mine, both in terms of cover and content. Any one of them would have been a proper jumping off place. But, somehow it makes sense to start with this summer’s particular gem.

After having lived with The Suburbs for a couple months, I can firmly place it in my short list of favorite long players of the year, with its themes of isolation and suburban despair and the sleeve-worn musical influences that bubble to the surface. Not, possibly, as immediately accessible as either of Arcade Fire’s previous offerings, my appreciation of this current collection of songs was a slow burn, with a couple of false starts in there. In the end, it was the noise-soaked melodies that won me over, not necessarily the darker ideas of suburban ennui and apocalyptic sprawl.
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So it’s the middle of summer here in these United States. I live in the South, which means a lot of humid nights. Since it’s pretty much too hot to move much, the best evenings are spent lounging on porches, candles flickering, friends sitting around a table with a box fan and a bottle of wine, listening to something or other on the record player. This particular summer has seen Phosphorescent’s album, Here’s To Taking It Easy, on heavy rotation. It’s pretty much perfect southern summer fare — languid and loose, like Carolina in July. Matthew Houck’s meandering vocals provide the perfect foil for nights out in the heat. Maybe it’s because he’s originally from Northern Alabama, I don’t know.
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I discovered John Coltrane about the same time I discovered Jack Kerouac. I’m pretty sure it was the summer between my sophomore and junior year. They seemed to go together seamlessly, Blue Train was my soundtrack to On The Road and it made sense to me, the restless teen I was — looking to, you know, burn like a “fabulous yellow roman candle.” Coltrane’s music always made me think that the saxophonist may have well been one of those kinds of people Kerouac talked about “ambling after”, one of those, “mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved…” The intensity of recordings definitely felt that way.
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There are better R.E.M. albums, but Lifes Rich Pageant is one of my favorites. For me, it sat at the precipice of R.E.M’s catalogue — not as shiny and happy as Out of Time, but not quite as “seminal” as say, Murmur. When the record was released, it was a quite a success for the band. It was their first album to go gold and another step up the ladder that would eventually take them to international acclaim. Still, Lifes Rich Pageant (no apostrophe) was “college rock” at its finest, arty and left-of center, tackling subjects like the environment at a time when most people could care less.
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