FAC14p : MARTIN HANNETT : ALBUM POLL

Oh, add anything I missed...

JCC's "Zip style method" was only one half produced by him, and "Magic Murder and the weather" Magazine was "mixed" only, apparently.

Source: Wikipedia.. (I know, i know..) but the only other reference site has loads of wrong uns.

I've never heard of this guy, but why didn't he produce anything between 1990 and 2007?

ok, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

He died.

Ah. So the 2007 thing is posthumous?

Hold on, was this the fat bloke from "24 Hour Party People"? It's been ages since I saw it...

Mark, you missed The Graveyard and The Ballroom (I think the 'Ballroom' side of this at least was Hannett)

Closer: surely the only possible response.

xpost aah and I actually have that! the cassette I mean, folder and all.

Then again, only one side.

This was sort of in response to the book, which had a short list of albums he produced in the appendix, and I couldn't help thinking he did more than that!

xpost to Tuomas, yes him.

what did he do between 81 and 85? that's a long time to go without work

lots of drugs apparently.

Did he also produce "Love Will Tear Us Apart"? Because the vocals on that song sound awful, being so low in the mix.

I get the impression this isn't your area, really.

OK, top ten MH facts:

1. He died
2. He took lots of drugs
3. He produced "Love will tear us apart"

anyohters?

Most likely Unknown Pleasures or Closer deserves to win; I voted for The Return of the Durutti Column, sentimental favorite.

Wait, did he not produce the bulk of the Jilted John album???

tuomas you are a fucking nut

production on unknown pleasures > closer (just)

Hmm, Bummed has really good production, it makes the Mondays sound as wasted as they no doubt were during its recording.

they weren't mad on it. i think it's better produced than 'pills n thrills' but not as good as the early releases, 'freaky dancin' and 'delightful'.

Must admit haven't really heard stuff earlier than Bummed. I like Pills 'n thrills' production too, but it is very different to the job Hannett did. Madchester Rave On seems a good half-way point.

Yes, he indeed did produce *all* of the Jilted John album.

Stick it on the bottom of this poll, someone!

Magazine. Great and underrated album.

Didn't he produce some early OMD stuff too?

1. He died

You know, it's kind of weird, but he has that in common with, among others, Shakespeare, Ceasar, Queen Elizabeth I, Adolf Hitler, Mozart, Plato, Rembrandt, Jimi Hendrix and Leonardo Da Vinci. Apparently Jesus Christ and Elvis too although some people tend to claim the opposite. Isn't it strange how all of these very different persons has that one thing in common? ;)

the Europride custos, ladies and gents

Magazine seconded.

The Jilted John record might not seem like a huge accomplishment, but there's actually a ton of really interesting (and early) new-wave music-making going on there, and I always got the sense Hannett was responsible for actually arranging a lot of it musically as well. I dunno, I'd have to go back over a lot of history to make any claims about his role in defining what that kind of new-wave production/sound would turn out to be, but some of the album cuts on JJ push forward really interestingly.

i'll second funnyman geir on magazine's grea "the correct use of soap".

durutti > bummed > unknown pleasures. i don't like 'closer'

"The Correct Use of Soap" was undoubtedly his best work. "Snap Crackle & Bop" second.

What's interesting about the "Hannett" sound is how it totally lost any currency after 1981. "Movement" probably killed him off as a producer - he could augment the spacious, atomised sound of post-punk bands who were already groping towards that kind of ambience, but give him anything else and he was lost.

"Bummed" is the test of this. It's one of the worst-produced records I've ever heard. He tries to disguise the lumpen incompetence of the Mondays with loads of samples and flashy echo-effects, but it doesn't work at all. The Mondays needed work on the basic (lack of) structure of their songs, not some film-referencing trimming on the sides.

give him anything else and he was lost

See, Jilted John album = total proof to contrary! Along with, I dunno, Kitchens of Distinction and stuff.

(Proof of contrary not time-wise, but sound-wise: it's all piano-dandy new-wave and two-toneish cuts and stuff that anticipates flouncy mid-80s Morrissey-lover indiepop)

KoD were after the "Factory" sound all along though? Even used to finish their sets with "Dead Souls" iirc.

I've not heard the Jilted John LP, but was this not (1978?) before Hannett developed his signature sound? The single could have been produced by anybody tbh.

I think MH had a sound that was too easily located to a certain place at a certain time. Which is why after '81 everybody, even New Order, tried to avoid it.

The stuff on the LP runs as late as 1981-2, I think, and is sonically kind of post-that. (A few of the songs were singles before that, but I'd assume they were re-recorded for the album, just like the original "Jilted John.")

I voted for Movement, not surprisingly, although Correct Use Of Soap pushes it close.

Phil OTM about the awful production on Bummed. Occasionally I think I can hear glimpses of what he was after, but it didn't work. Garage Flower is worse - I realise that I'm the only person on earth who likes the first Stone Roses incarnation, but there's so much great stuff on that recd that is butchered because of the 'recorded in an aircraft hanger 'style production.

I think the Mondays lumpen incompetence works nicely on the 1st album (with Cale) and especially on the Freaky Dancin'/The Egg 12", which as any fule kno is their best work.

I taked about Movement in detail once, but it's probably lost in the ILM quicksand :(

talked, even.

Was going with Closer but have changed my mind, like stephen, for sentimental reasons, so it's Movement for me.

That Stone Roses thing was a single rather than an album, no?

Oh man, I don't even know where to start with this thread. Mark G, you are a wonderful man indeed.

The High's Somewhere Soon shouldn't be on this poll, though, as Martin only produced "Box Set Go" on that. According to www.martinhannett.co.uk, the entirety of Stone Roses' Garage Flower was indeed Hannett's doing.

I'd love to choose one of the John Cooper Clarke albums but with those it gets difficult to separate Hannett the producer from Hannett the musician for me, so it feels like a prejudiced vote. I'm going to go with Closer, and Dr. C. can feel free to slap me around for not choosing Movement. According to the book by Mick Middles, "Torn Apart", Hannett said Closer was his most "mystical" and "cabalistic" recording to date. I would have liked to know how he judged his work on Movement.

I would also like to thank Mark G for getting his information from wikipedia as I had never heard of the Walk The Walk album before and became terribly excited today to realize I could add yet another Hannett disc to my collection! I had made the mistake of taking the discography on www.martinhannett.co.uk as just about gospel.

What's interesting about the "Hannett" sound is how it totally lost any currency after 1981. "Movement" probably killed him off as a producer

I would argue that the only things that killed him off as a producer were 1)drugs and 2)the fact that Factory spent their money on the Hacienda rather than a studio and helping him keep up with the emerging technology. I agree that Bummed is a botched job. I'd also like to point out a little known album he produced in 1983 by French singer Armande Altai called "Nocturne Flamboyant" that he did a really beautiful job on, every bit as atmospheric as Joy Division in some places.

As for the Jilted John album, it's always puzzled me a bit. I don't really see a lot of Hannett in that album, but towards the end of the CD (I'm not really sure how much of these songs were on the original LP) there are a few songs where you just know it's him and no one else. I think the most striking of these is "In The Bus Shelter" which reminds me a lot of the early Durutti Column sound. I would love to know exactly who the musicians are on that...the sleeve doesn't go into much detail.

Lately I've been really enjoying the three singles/b-sides Hannett produced by the Buzzcocks just before they broke up circa '81, especially "Are Everything". The first time I heard that song a few years ago I thought it was something relatively recent by the band! I was shocked to learn that not only was it very old, but it was Hannett's doing. He got a really fantastic sound on those songs.

Yeah, "Are Everything", the last top 40 single by the original group, sounded very odd one monday morning chart rundown radio 1.

Yeah, like you I saw that hannett website, but there was too much wrong on it. There's a single you may know, "I married a cult figure from Salford" by Cathy La Creme, which is a strange takeoff/tribute to that scene, but I doubt it's a Martin Hannett production or anything, and I'd heard rumours that it was either Margi Clarke or Pauline Murray, but either of those people would know the word "entepreneur", and would not pronounce it "ontopreteur" at any time.

Well I have that Cathy La Creme single. It just says "produced by Smudgeboy and Spike Croton". I guess there is no real way to know.

One big error on that site I do know of is the Tim Green single which I finally found after much effort, and not only did it turn out not to be a Hannett production but it is absolute crap, really the kind of music punk was supposed to be rebelling against.

One thing that continues to bother me and almost seems like a hoax: in that Torn Apart book they mention an album he produced very early on by some Brit band called Afro Express that was supposedly big in Nigeria or something like that. I've never been able find a damn thing about that anywhere and I've looked under every variation of that name I could think of.

i don't think 'bummed' is botched exactly -- one of my favourite records here -- but as a band they changed so much with each producer and i guess i would like to have heard them progress in the 'freaky dancin' direction a bit further. i still think it plays better than the last two mondays lps.

i know what some of you mean about "bummed", but i think the entire thing is exonerated by "wrote for luck", where what he's doing works SO FUCKING PERFECTLY. i dunno: i love that whole album, flaws an' all.

Didn't he produce some early OMD stuff too?

he did one of the 6000 versions of "electricity" and "almost", but the band didn't like them. they might have had a point, actually: the echo didn't suit them at all.

i don't like 'closer'

really? i'm surprised and intrigued that you say this. why?

me ... it's going to have to be "closer", but it could almost as easily have been "unknown pleasures", "movement" or "always now" -- an album it took me about 15 years to appreciate, and which i then listened to solidly for two weeks.

This Stone Roses Garage Flower thing sounds three times better than I remember it. Maybe I was just prejudiced by having these songs for so long on a really crappy cassette taped off a bad record player. I can almost believe Hannett produced the whole thing but the CD doesn't say. In any case the bass sound on this thing is freaking amazing.

the sludgy and murky production on bummed works for me. obvious parallel with Performance (esp with song title of same name on there)

Yeah, Wrote For Luck is okay by me, you are right there, Grimly. It works.

Cult Figure from Salford was Margi C.

Grimly OTM about the Hannett version of Electricity being the crappest (cos of echo on the snare which almost ruins it). And yes, the album version of WFL really works and stands out on Bummed. I dunno if it exonerates it, but it might.

I'm not sure if the Buzzcocks productions work, but they're interesting. The tracks he did with the Only Ones are bizarre.

What do you mean by Performance, cedar?

The Hannett book made him sound very bored with OMD indeed. I'm not overly enamoured with those songs either.

Cult Figure from Salford was Margi C.

Mmm, I'll believe it when/if she says it herself.

really? i'm surprised and intrigued that you say this. why?

i've just never connected with it - of all the JD stuff it's the album i'm least drawn back to. "don't like" is probably not fair or accurate, but the album has never moved me in the same way hearing the substance comp or unknown pleasures have..

I bought a new turntable today. And new vinyl reissues. Yep, I really did exactly what I said I was going to do. Even the Unknown Pleasures sleeve has the touchy feely criss cross pattern it should. And doesn't that give you a warm fuzzy feeling inside? But the font of the lettering on the inside label of the record of Closer is just a tad bit off...only a tad, mind. Minor complaint.

Ooh! The vinyl of Unknown Pleasures is so heavy in my hands! It's heavier than my other copy I've played for 20+ years. Okay look some people are just vinyl fetishists and some aren't. You know where I stand.

I've still got the original ones, in mint condition, in a silk-lined box, scented with musk and wild honey.......

Mmm, I'll believe it when/if she says it herself

I've heard her say it herself.

I've voted for the Durutti album. But I listened to Correct Use of Soap last week, for the first time, without knowing it was a hannet production, and thought it sounded amazing.

can I please hear all these 6000 versions of "Electricity" and "Almost"?

5999 of them sound identical. one is hannett-produced.

the "martin" compilation on factory contains -- allegedly -- the hannett version of "almost". i don't think it actually is :)

I think my favourite song on Closer from a production perspective is "Passover". I don't understand how he managed to make it feel as if the sound is sucking itself into a void, especially the bass. Or is it the drums? Etc.

And I've heard the whole UP reissue now...completely flabbergasted of course. Even the strange ghost synthesizer swoops on Disorder...it's like I never heard this stuff before. He was a right crafty jape-ster, Hannett.

so, are these new remasters different/better than the Heart and Soul box versions, then?

they are different, it depends on who you ask whether they're better (i've only heard closer, I think it is better, others think the levels are too loud overall)

also, the vinyl masters are different from the cd masters (as far as the reissues go)

Mmm, I'll believe it when/if she says it herself

I've heard her say it herself.

-- Dr.C, Sunday, November 4, 2007 4:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

OK, on that point, I'll concede. It was the bad 'entepreneur' pronunciation that made me ponder, but then I was totally sure it wasn't Pauline Murray (cf that 'official' MHannet infosite!)

Closer, obvi, but I never knew that Hannett produced Magazine's best album.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

My only complaint is Movement is far too low on the list. LISTEN AGAIN.

Joy Division, Still 1981 0

Correct.

yeah.

Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls, Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls 1979 0

Noh.

quite surprised by durutti column placing.

I'm not.

See, I was never a JD fan (bought the singles, yeah, missed out on the Factory Sample as it had sold out and had to settle for the Battle of the Bands Good Vibrations double single instead)

But I got a hooky (not from Peter) copy a while ago and could see that had I got one at the time, history for me may have been different.

So, I might gravitate to Unknown Pleasures soon.

(Nearly types Unknown Pleasers there. Remember The Pleasers anyone?)