NME 3/6/78
Live review by Paul Morley



  MANCHESTER
  Joy Division were once Warsaw, a punk group with
literary pretentions. Warsaw Pakt forced them to 
change names. 
  They disappeared for a while at the end of last 
year, and have re-emerged with their new name, an
EP and their pretentions even more to the fore.
  Their record attempts to communicate in an almost 
tangible way all the abstraction of Buzzcocks' 
"Spiral Scratch". It is called "An Ideal For 
Living", and is on the Enigma label. It proclaims 
on the sleeve that "this is not a concept EP, it is 
an enigma."
  Despite all this, the record is structurally 
good, though soundwise poor, a reason it may not be
widely released.
  They're a dry, doomy group who depend promisingly 
on the possibilities of repetition, sudden 
stripping away, with deceptive dynamics, whilst 
they use sound in a more orthodox hard rock manner
than, say, either The Fall or Magazine.
  They have an ambiguous appeal, and with patience
they could develop strongly and make some testing, 
worthwhile metallic music. 




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