Thurston Moore and Bonner Kramer (Shimmy-Disc) will release their collaborative album They Came Like Swallows – Seven Requiems for the Children of Gaza on May 1, and in addition to the album’s original compositions is a cover of Joy Division‘s Unknown Pleasures deep cut, “Insight.” Their version puts the bassline even more in the forefront than the original, with ticking percussion and atmospheric sound design lifting their arrangement alongside Moore and Kramer’s whispered vocals.
“Kramer had the idea to cover a Joy Division tune,” says Moore. “It was a left turn from the improvisations we had been tracking, though wholly in keeping with both our sensibilities of light and dark unifying in transcendent songwriting, both of us devotees of ‘the song’ as well as ‘the freedom.'”
Adds Kramer, “I clearly remember what I felt when I first heard track four of Unknown Pleasures. It was a masterpiece. A stroke of pure artistic genius. ‘Insight’ is a criminally under-appreciated tone poem; a benediction of loss, longing, and regret that still touches every cell in my body. It also features Hook’s finest bass guitar invention, singing to me like the sirens of Titan. I’d waited decades to ‘cover’ this trembling ode to the curse of being human, waiting until I finally had the perfect partner to help me re-imagine it and make it new again. Thurston gave the music the gentle magic and unhurried cries Ian Curtis’ words had always been screaming for, and singing it with him put me right back into that place, that feeling, that time when I first heard the sad pageantry of this tragic man’s exquisite warning: ‘Time won’t stop for you, or for anyone or anything. It owns us. Accept it, or be consumed by it.'”
It’s a terrific version of the song and you can listen below.