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Martin Hannett

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Martin Hannett (May 31, 1948 – April 18, 1991), sometimes credited as Martin Zero, was an innovative record producer who helped develop Joy Division and co-founded Factory Records with Tony Wilson. Hannett's trademark sound, most apparent on Joy Division's groundbreaking debut album Unknown Pleasures and its follow-up, Closer, is sparse and eerie, complementing frontman Ian Curtis' dark, depressive musings and tremulous baritone vocals.

Career

Hannett first came to musical attention when, as Martin Zero, he produced the first independent punk record, the Buzzcocks Spiral Scratch EP. Under the same moniker he produced early records by "punk poet" John Cooper Clarke, whose Salford monotone was complemented by drum machines, simple synthesiser motifs and Hannett's own bass playing. As Martin Zero, Hannett appeared on Top of the Pops playing bass on Jilted John's eponymous single, which he also produced.

Hannett became most closely associated with Joy Division. Hannett's meticulous production, heavily influenced by dub, created a space at the heart of Joy Division's sound, pitting the band's spartan, jagged instrumentation against a spacey void, the latter being created by adept studio manipulation. For these purposes, Hannett often utilized looping technology to treat musical notes with an array of then cutting-edge digital filters. His distinctive techniques are especially prominent in regard to the band's drum sounds, which are awash in reverb, the notes echoing and reverberating through a spare and seemingly vast sonic backdrop. Also evident from his dub influences was the mixing of the bass and drums higher in the mix than usual, and placing the other instruments further back. Hannett also ran his own tape machine constantly through Joy Division and New Order recording sessions and often also created mixes of their tracks that he didn't play to the band as he was somewhat of a loose cannon within the Factory Records structure. These tapes have now started to surface as he apparently deposited them with friends and members of his family.

As a producer, Hannett was reputedly difficult to work with. He repeatedly obsessed over drum sounds, never being content until they completely coincided with the sounds in his head. Legend has it that he once forced Joy Division drummer Stephen Morris to take apart his drum kit during a recording session and reassemble it to include additional parts from a toilet. He also reputedly had Morris set up his kit on a first floor flat roof outside the fire escape at Cargo Recording Studios Rochdale (Hannetts favourite studio in his early years of production) Such unorthodox production methods resulted in drum sounds that were both complex and highly distinctive, which one can easily hear on Joy Division songs such as "Atrocity Exhibition," with its shuffling, cyclical rhythms, and the album version of "She's Lost Control," on which Morris' drums have a strongly metallic, rough-hewn sound, and are soaked in particularly vicious reverb. According to Hannett: "There was a lot of space in their sound. They were a gift to a producer, because they didn't have a clue. They didn't argue. The Factory Sampler was the first thing I did with them. I think I'd had the new AMS delay line for about two weeks. It was called 'Digital'. It was heaven sent."[1]

The hallmarks of Hannett's production can also be heard on Basement 5's album 1965 - 1980. Like many British bands of their time (e.g., The Clash), Basement 5 sported a harsh, punk attitude borne out in their dystopian lyrics referencing the perceived injustices (e.g., those concerning the council estate youth of the late 1970s and early 1980s) of the early Thatcher era. However, musically, they draw from a slightly wider palette than many of their punk peers, utilizing a variety of Caribbean influences, particularly reggae. With the help of Hannett, they blended such traditional styles with tuneful, contemporary synth-pop, yielding a sound that balances the rustic and the futuristic, in much the same way that Joy Division managed to meld primal, Kinks-ian riffing with a menagerie of studio effects and manipulation. Hannett remixed some of the tracks from 1965-1980 for In Dub, which, as its title would suggest, features highly nuanced and spacey dub versions of Basement 5's material.

In 1981, Hannett was name checked by the Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra on their track "Nazi Punks Fuck Off!," which appears on the In God We Trust, Inc. EP. Biafra introduces the track by saying, "This is 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off!', overproduced by Martin Hannett, take four." The comment was tongue-in-cheek; Hannett never produced for the Dead Kennedys. A similar quote precedes the song "Fuck Me" by "Mihi" as appears on "Regret", the first volume of the I've Girls Compilations.

Hannett had impressive range as a producer, as evidenced by his ability to adroitly magnify the disillusionment and disparate influences within the music of bands such as Joy Division and Basement 5, while also retaining a keen pop sense. His brief work with U2, New Order, and Factory Records band Stockholm Monsters exhibits this ability to sublimely enhance even conventional and more tuneful work. A rift formed with Factory and he sued them in 1982 over a financial dispute; the matter was eventually settled out of court. At this point, Hannett's career had spiralled into decline due to his heavy drinking and drug use, especially his use of heroin. His weight eventually doubled (to roughly 26 stone, or 364 pounds), and he finally died of heart failure in 1991 at the age of 42.

Hannett was portrayed by actor Andy Serkis in the 2002 film 24 Hour Party People, which was based on Tony Wilson's career as the co-founder of Factory Records and The Haçienda nightclub. In the DVD commentary, Wilson notes a review that described Hannett as Serkis's "strangest role," and points out that Serkis is best known for his portrayal of Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Wilson concludes that the reviewer's implication is correct, that indeed, Hannett was far stranger than Gollum.

Selected discography

Albums produced

Singles produced

Compilations

  • Martin: The Work of Record Producer Martin Hannett (Factory Records, 1991)
  • And Here is the Young Man (Debutante, 1998)
  • Zero: A Martin Hannett Story 1977-1991' (Big Beat, 2006)

References

  1. ^ Savage, Jon, "Faster, but slower", Mojo, May 2006

See also

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