Quote Originally Posted by Mike
I hear you there's no denying the influence track after track. I kind of missed out on all the Joy Division fascination first time around (not that I ain't old enough!) it just wasn't my sound at the time so I don't mind if they stay too close to home. There was thread a while ago talking about ressurecting an old sound with a modern twist and I still think they pull it off pretty well. But saying all that it's early days for them yet assuming they go beyond a debut, look at British Sea Power I never would have thought they would bring out such a killer follow up to their debut with a totally different sound.
Oh I definitely hear ya. The whole Joy Division connection to Interpol, and by extension to the Editors and the rest, is a bit overdone in my opinion, although there's no denying a sympatico in the sound and an almost reverence it would seem to that great voice of Ian Curtis. In reality, the sound of Interpol can be traced much more closely to Echo and the Chameleons (or was that the Bunnymen ). In any case, none of these bands really have that same unique production that JD had. That stark, skeletal, sometimes almost mechanical feel, even amist all the layers of sound, just isn't a part of the lush, fluid production most of these bands use, which is more in fashion these days as demonstrated by Coldplay conquering the world's music charts. I wonder how well a true Joy Division sounding band, without all that needless dynamic compression, would fare in the market? Probably not well.

Ya know, I was actually a tad disappointed in that Richard Davies CD. Not the music by any means, but the mastering of the CD has more compression than I recall on the excellent sounding vinyl LP, which was all I'd heard until tentoze sent me a copy of the CD earlier this year. And some clipping of the waveform as well. Just goes to show, even the tiny indies were scared to release CDs that didn't sound as loud back in the late 90s. But you're right, not nearly as bad as the average pop CDs today, which are getting nearly unlistenable in any kind of critical setting for some of us due to that totally and relentlessly in your face amount of compression (and very often severe clipping) that has become the de facto standard in the industry.