Joy Division’s drum kit sound on Unknown Pleasures (1979) remains one of the most distinctive in rock history. From the post-punk drum patterns driving songs like “Disorder” to the cavernous, otherworldly reverb enveloping each hit, the album’s percussion was a radical departure from typical punk rock drums. Producer Martin Hannett and drummer Stephen Morris crafted a drum sound so unique that listeners often wondered if a drum machine was involvedhappymag.tv. (Spoiler: it wasn’t – just groundbreaking studio techniques.) Critics have described Morris’s drumming as “a dancier take on gloom-rock rhythm”en.wikipedia.org, highlighting how Joy Division managed to make bleak music danceable with tight, hypnotic beats. In this article, we’ll explore how Joy Division got that drum sound on Unknown Pleasures and how we’ve recreated it in our own studio – resulting in a Joy Division-inspired punk/new wave drum kit sample pack that puts those Joy Division drum samples at your fingertips.

How Joy Division Got Their Iconic Drum Sound (1979 Studio Techniques)

The Joy Division drum sound on Unknown Pleasures didn’t rely on fancy electronic drums – it was all about creative recording and processing. Martin Hannett was obsessed with achieving an atmospheric, ghostly drum tone. He was impressed by Stephen Morris’s metronome-like precision and even had him record some drum parts one drum at a time to eliminate bleed between micshappymag.tvvintageking.com. This meant, for example, playing just the snare on time by itself, then just the hi-hats, which gave Hannett isolated drum tracks he could heavily manipulate in the mix. The result was a tightly controlled performance with an almost machine-like steadiness – one reason people sometimes assume there was a Joy Division drum machine in use.

In reality, Joy Division didn’t use a drum machine on Unknown Pleasures. Instead, Morris augmented his acoustic kit with a Star Instruments Synare 3 drum synthesizer for certain effects. She’s Lost Control, for instance, opens with an eerie stick-hit sound that isn’t a snare or hat – it’s a Synare synth pad creating a white-noise “pssh” each time he hits ithappymag.tv. Hannett favored these synthetic touches over conventional hi-hats. He even had Morris use an aerosol spray can to mimic a hissing hat on the 12” version of “She’s Lost Control,” effectively sampling a real-world sound as percussionvintageking.com. This inventive approach to hi-hats meant Joy Division’s cymbals rarely dominate; the drum patterns often ride on toms and snare, with hats tucked low or replaced by these unusual sounds. The band’s new wave contemporaries often used actual drum machines, but Joy Division achieved that mechanistic drive with human performance and clever production.

The Star Instruments Synare 3 analog drum synth was one secret behind Joy Division’s drum sound. Stephen Morris triggered this pad-synth for the iconic white-noise hits in “She’s Lost Control,” giving the illusion of a drum machine when it was actually an acoustic strike shaped by electronics happymag.tv. The band’s drum tracks were all real drumming – just recorded in unorthodox ways.

Hannett’s recording techniques were far from conventional. He close-miked each drum for a dry, controlled signal, then added ambiance artificially. For reverb, he didn’t just rely on the studio’s live room – he created his own. In one famous example, Hannett re-amped the drum tracks by sending them to a small Auratone speaker placed in a basement bathroom, then re-recorded the echo coming out of that tiled room happymag.tv. This convoluted signal chain produced a “spectral” reverb with a distant, ghostly character. He also had access to Strawberry Studios’ high-end gear like EMT plate reverbs (for classic lush ambience) and was “incredibly heavy-handed with EQ” – cranking the Helios console EQs to sculpt the drum tone dramatically vintageking.com. By filtering and gating certain drums, he could make the kick very tight and the snare unnaturally short, letting the added reverb ring out without muddying up the original hits.

Perhaps the biggest studio secret was Hannett’s use of early digital delay technology. His favorite piece of outboard gear was the AMS DMX 15-80 digital delay – a brand new unit at the time which he actually helped prototype with its inventors vintageking.com. Hannett called the AMS delay “heaven sent” vintageking.com, and he pushed it to its limits. One trick was sending the snare drum through the AMS with an extremely short delay, then panning that delayed sound to the opposite side of the mixvintageking.com. This created a wide stereo snare effect – you hear the crack on one side and a ghostly doubled hit on the other. On tracks like “Wilderness,” the snare bounces stereo; on “Disorder,” the delay was set so subtly that you just feel a strange spaciousness around the drumshappymag.tv. That subtle 15-80 ms slapback made the listener subconsciously think, “are those… drums?!”happymag.tv because they sounded simultaneously real and not real. By keeping these delays low in the mix, Hannett added depth without obvious echo, making the drums feel like they were recorded in a huge, empty factory.

Another component of Joy Division’s drum sound was extreme compression and gating on the ambient mics. Hannett recorded the kit fairly dry (even having Morris play in unusual locations like upstairs hallways or roofs for experiments vintageking.com), then during mixdown he would squash the room sound aggressively. Compression (often via analog tape saturation and likely 1176-style limiters) made the room mics explode with sustain, turning a short drum hit into a big whoosh. By blending this back in, the drums got that fat, booming decay you hear on the record – especially on tom fills. And if any decay was too long, he’d gate it off. The iconic drum intro of “Atmosphere” and the massive toms on “Insight” showcase how bright, resonant toms with reverb can carry a song’s atmosphere.

In short, the Joy Division drum recipe was:** acoustic drums recorded clean, then warped with electronics, reverb, delay, and heavy processing**. Hannett treated the kit almost like an orchestral element or a science experiment – disassembling it (literally, at times) to capture perfect samples of each piece, and rebuilding it in the mix with an arsenal of effects. The result influenced countless post-punk and new wave drum kit productions that followed, proving you didn’t need synth drums to achieve an otherworldly vibe – just creative studio work. Peter Hook, the band’s bassist, later admitted, “there’s no two ways about it, Martin Hannett created the Joy Division sound”en.wikipedia.orgen.wikipedia.org, and the drums were a huge part of that.

Recreating the Joy Division Drum Kit Sound Today (Our “Disorderly Drums” Pack)

Understanding how Unknown Pleasures was made, we set out to recreate Joy Division’s drum kit with modern tools. The goal was to capture that punchy yet spacious sound so producers and drummers today can use authentic Joy Division drum samples in their own music. We built our custom kit (nicknamed “Disorderly Drums” in homage to the song “Disorder”) by following the principles of Hannett’s production, right from the drum selection and mic setup through to post-processing. Here’s how we did it:

• Kick Drum: We chose a vintage-style kick and dampened it with a pillow inside for that short, tight thump. Using a classic kick mic (like an AKG D112 or Shure Beta 52A) just inside the front head, we captured a focused attack. The idea was to get more “click” than “thump” – the Joy Division kick is punchy without a subby boom. We high-passed the kick a bit to avoid muddy lows and emphasized the beater attack around 3–4 kHz. The result is a tight, percussive kick drum akin to what you hear on “Insight” or “Disorder.” Pro tip: we found that a little tape saturation on the kick added the perfect analog bite (Hannett often relied on tape compression for “that certain drum sound” in front tapeop.com).

• Snare Drum: To emulate that “thin, bright, cracky” snare tone, we used a high-tuned snare (a 1970s metal snare akin to a vintage Ludwig) and dampened it with gaffer tape to shorten the ring. We close-miked the top with a Shure SM57 to get a classic aggressive snap. For extra detail, we positioned a small condenser mic under the snare (with phase inverted) to capture the rattle – though we blended this quietly, since Joy Division’s snare sound is more about crack + reverb than buzz. We gated the snare mic subtly in mixing, just enough to keep it tight. Most importantly, we sent the snare to a plate reverb – in our case, an Arturia Plate plugin mimicking an EMT 140 – dialing in a large hall setting to get that spacious decay you hear on tracks like “New Dawn Fades.” We even EQ-matched our snare’s tone to the snare hits in the original recordings using FabFilter Pro-Q3, ensuring the brightness and midrange “honk” were spot on. The snare in our samples sizzles in the high-mids but doesn’t linger too long, letting the reverb do the talking.

• Hi-Hats: Interestingly, Joy Division didn’t lean heavily on hi-hat grooves – and when present, the hats were very controlled. We recorded a set of medium bright hats with a small diaphragm condenser (placed about 8 inches above the edge) to get a crisp sound. However, in mixing we kept the hats low and dark. For many beats (see “She’s Lost Control”), the hi-hat was replaced or augmented by that aerosol-like sound. In our pack, we include both real closed/open hat samples and some white-noise hat samples created with pink noise and filtering – to mimic that hiss. The real hats are tight and ticking (great for driving post-punk patterns), but if you want true Hannett flavor, you might barely use them or swap in the synthetic hats. The key is that the hats should add rhythmic ticking without drawing much attention.

• Toms: Stephen Morris often used his toms melodically, tuned high and left ringing (listen to the tom groove in “Atmosphere” or the fills in “Disorder”). We recreated this by tuning our toms up higher than a typical rock kit. No muffling – we let them ring out. Each tom (high, mid, floor) was close-miked with a Sennheiser MD421 to capture fullness and attack. Our goal was bright, resonant tom hits that would bloom when drenched in reverb. In mixing, we indeed soaked the toms in reverb – both a plate reverb and even a touch of real spring reverb from our Vermona Retroverb unit for an analog shimmer. The tom samples in the pack have that “tribal” quality heard in many punk drums of the era, perfect for rolling floor-tom patterns or dramatic fills. We made sure they’re not overly dampened – they sing out in the decay.

• Overheads: We used a pair of condenser mics (Blue Spark SLs in a spaced pair) about 3–4 feet above the kit to capture a balanced stereo image of the cymbals and the overall kit. In processing, we actually de-emphasized the highs a bit – Joy Division’s overheads weren’t super bright or “modern” sounding. We wanted a slightly dark, washy overhead sound that just adds space. By not over-compressing the overheads, we preserved the natural dynamics of the cymbals (which, again, aren’t the star here). The overhead tracks in our mix were blended low, just enough to give a sense of a real room and some stereo width to the cymbals, without any one cymbal jumping out. This approach keeps the drum image cohesive and a bit mysterious, matching the vibe of Hannett’s mixes.

• Room Mics (Ambient): Here’s where the magic happens. We set up two room microphones – large diaphragm condensers – at a distance (about 12 feet away in a medium-sized live room). To emulate Hannett’s love of roomy, “ghostly” drums, we didn’t overly dampen our room; a few strategically placed gobos controlled flutter echoes, but otherwise we let the space sound natural. We then absolutely slammed these room mics with compression (an 1176-style compressor, all-buttons-in, fast attack, medium release). This created a huge, whooshing compressed drum ambiance track. A loud kick hit makes the room mics pump and breathe; a snare hit blossoms with a long tail. In our mix of the samples, this crushed room sound is blended as the main flavor. The close mics provide clarity and attack, but the character comes from the roaring, distant thunder captured in the room mics – just like how Martin Hannett made the room sound the star on Unknown Pleasureshappymag.tv. If you solo our room mic samples, it’s that instantly recognizable Joy Division vibe – dark, cavernous, and a bit ominous.

• Mono “Trash” Mic: In addition to stereo rooms, we placed an extra mic a few feet in front of the kit (at chest height) and heavily distorted and filtered this channel. This wasn’t strictly a Joy Division technique back then, but we found that blending in a mono crunchy mic added even more vintage grit and distance to the drum sound. We ran this mic through an EchoFix EF-X2 tape echo unit set with zero echo – just to get the tape coloration – and then through the Vermona Retroverb’s drive. This gave a compressed, saturated mono room tone that we tucked under the stereo image. It’s similar to how one might use a compressor’s sidechain today or a parallel crush channel. Used sparingly, it makes the drums feel like they’re breaking apart the harder you hit them, which really suits the emotive, punk energy of Joy Division’s music.

• Reverb and FX Prints: To truly capture Martin Hannett’s vibe, we recreated the idea of printing reverb as its own track. We sent our snare and tom signals to a spring reverb (emulating those vintage plate and spring units Hannett loved), then re-recorded that reverb return separately. We even added an echo send on the snare – a single short slapback – printed it, and then compressed that echo. These wet-only tracks were then mixed in with the dry samples to mimic having an actual “reverb mic” channel. The end result is that each drum hit in the final samples already has that cavernous aura around it. You can dial more or less of it by using the multi-track samples, but the one-shot samples we provide are mix-ready with the perfect hint of vintage reverb tail, just like you hear on Unknown Pleasures.

After capturing all the drums this way, we performed some detailed post-processing on the samples. Using FabFilter Pro-Q3, we EQ-matched our hits to the reference tracks – for example, ensuring the kick had the same midrange profile as the “Disorder” kick, and the snare’s brightness matched “She’s Lost Control.” We ran every sample through analog gear: the EchoFix tape echo (for warm saturation, no echo) and the Vermona Retroverb (for a touch of analog filter and drive). This imparted that 1970s analog warmth and slight tape compression, so our samples feel authentically vintage. It’s like giving them a quick trip through time to sit them in the proper era.

Finally, we curated the best hits into a comprehensive Joy Division drum sample pack. We’ve got multiple velocity hits for each drum, so you can program realistic post-punk drum patterns without the “machine gun” effect of identical samples. Whether you’re working on a gloomy post-punk track, a new wave revival song, or just want some edgy acoustic drums for your production, these samples deliver. The kicks are punchy and mix-ready, the snares crack with that unmistakable Joy Division snappiness, the toms thunder and resonate, and the ambient textures give you instant atmosphere. You can practically hear the spirit of Martin Hannett twiddling the knobs.

In summary, our “Disorderly Drums” sample pack is a nearly perfect recreation of the drum sounds on “Disorder” and the rest of Unknown Pleasures. We took a real acoustic kit and transformed it into that post-punk/new wave drum kit heard on the record – and now those sounds are available as one-shots and loops for you to use. If you’ve been searching for a punk drums sample pack that nails that late ‘70s Joy Division vibe, this is it. Unlike many modern libraries, these are acoustic drum samples recorded organically and then processed to vintage perfection – essentially giving you a Joy Division drum machine without actually using a machine. Both producers and drummers will appreciate the authenticity: you can program drum beats with these samples and they’ll sound like a human playing in a brooding, cavernous hall circa 1979.

The legacy of Joy Division’s music lives on in its rhythm – and with these samples, you can inject that same atmospheric punch into your own tracks. From the tight kick and crackling snare of “Disorder,” to the tom-heavy patterns and spacious reverb that define post-punk drumming, this pack delivers the goods. Fire up the samples, create your own beats, and transport yourself to Martin Hannett’s sonic laboratory – no “bloody musicians” required. With the Disorderly Drums pack, the iconic Joy Division drum kit sound is finally at your command tuesdaysamples.com.