San Francisco DJ Jeb Edwards has given the Internet a gift far greater than we deserve. In defiance of Warner Bros.’ callous and feeble remastering and reissuing of some of the best post-punk and electronic music of all time — that of Joy Division and New Order — Edwards and his cohorts have prodigiously “remastered” all the bands’ original Factory Records singles — including “Blue Monday”, “Temptation”, “The Perfect Kiss” and “True Faith”, and all of their associated remixes and B-sides — and made them available for download at Recycle: Joy Division & New Order.
Says Edwards:
All tracks were taken from the best/earliest possible sources to avoid modern mastering techniques which crush the dynamics. Tracks sourced from vinyl have been carefully cleaned and EQ levels have been tweaked for consistency. The artwork was scanned at the highest possible resolution and the type was reset when possible using the original fonts.
All of these singles are out-of-print. Many of the tracks have never appeared on CD. This was a labor of love from a small, devoted circle of fans.
These singles changed my life. I hope they change yours, too. If you like what you hear support the band by purchasing their catalog.
Official efforts to remaster and reissue the music of Joy Division and New Order have been a mixed bag of decent success and dismal failure. A beautiful collection of most of Joy Division’s recordings was released in the four-disc Heart and Soul boxset in 1997, but it lacked more or less a whole disc’s worth of material. The long-rumored New Order boxset Recycle (from which Edwards’ project took its name) finally materialized in the form of Retro in 2002, and featured virtually nothing that was not already available on the band’s studio albums and previous compilations. A “bonus disc” of rarities was included at the last minute to help pacify disappointed fans. Most recently, Warner Music Group’s Rhino label reissued all of New Order’s 1980s albums, each with a bonus disc of remixes and other obscurities. These releases were disappointing to dreadful, depending on who you ask, with many tracks featuring pops, clicks and hisses as if remastered with a phonograph. And of course, as has become tradition for New Order compilations, the Rhino collection was rife with typographical errors and mislabeling.
Edwards’ versions are crisp, clean and most importantly, warm. Recycled’s stated goal is to update this important material while still preserving its essence, and that is precisely what he and his team have done. Additionally, Recycled also provides listeners with remastered artwork, scanned, in most cases, from the original Peter Saville sleeves.
Edwards provides download statistics for each release so as to demonstrate to the powers-that-be the tangible demand for this important material to be re-compiled and reissued properly. A worthwhile endeavor, to be sure, and one we should be grateful for.
