Pick the Cat's Eyes Out

Sometimes 225 words just aren't enough. Further panning what needs to be panned further: In The Studio With Martin Hannett is a Joy Division legacy cash-grab that would make even Tony Wilson blush. Martin Hannett madness imagery is so threadbare it's nearly see-through; putting him in that pantheon of gone-crackers producers like Phil Spector and Brian Wilson is a sin against laziness. Even worse: Because Hannett was eccentric and daft and constantly making drummers take their kits apart for noise that only he heard!, we're led to believe his studio offcuts and engineering experiments are, I don't know, important to clutch and study. Sure, there's an alternate version of "Digital" that's so obviously Mancunian in the way it sounds recorded from the other end of a crumbling, red-brick railroad tunnel. And there's another track where Hannett noodles around with the broken glass we recall from "I Remember Nothing." But these aren't so much highlights, as much as they're mildly interesting, one-off material amid track after track of relative dross. In The Studio With Martin Hannett was touted as one of the most important Joy Division discoveries ever, which only leads me to believe that there's a special ring in Hell for label publicists.