Peter Hook & The Light – Sound That Recreates the Human Experience

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

**PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT PERFORMING AT EDINBURGH’S CORN EXCHANGE**
**PHOTOCREDIT: WILFRED MAGNUSSEN**

If music were an illicit substance, Peter Hook & The Light would be the kind you never quite recover from—warm, irresistible, disorienting in the most wonderful way. Their show is less a performance than a human experience, a reminder of why music can feel like food for the soul and create an internal euphoria. To understand why a night with Peter Hook & The Light hits so hard, you have to understand the journey that carried Hook here.

It began in Manchester, 1976. Peter Hook and his childhood friend Bernard Sumner stood among the stunned and electrified crowd at the Sex Pistols’ now-legendary Lesser Free Trade Hall gig. The music was chaotic, unpolished, and unlike anything the stadium-sized rock world was offering. Hook later admitted, “If they can do it, we can do it.” That spark became Joy Division. Neither Hook nor Sumner knew how to play an instrument, but that didn’t matter. Bernard bought a guitar; Hook borrowed money from his mum to get a bass. When they put out a notice for a singer, Ian Curtis walked in—not just with a voice but with ideas, lyrics, and a presence that welded the group into something greater than the sum of their inexperience. By the time drummer Stephen Morris completed the lineup, Joy Division’s identity—first called Warsaw—was fully forming.

Hook’s playing was untrained, but that limitation accidentally became genius. Unable (or unwilling) to play bass the “proper” way, he carved out his own melodic, high-register style—turning the bass into a lead voice and letting guitars and synths float beneath it. It’s a sound that defined post-punk, reinvented the emotional landscape of 80s alternative music, and later helped propel New Order into dance-driven, synth-kissed euphoria without ever abandoning the ache at the center of Joy Division.

Creative and personal fractures eventually split New Order from Hook in 2007, but with The Light, Hook reclaimed something deeper than ownership of old songs—he reclaimed the emotional history behind them. Seeing him live makes that evident.

From the moment Peter Hook & The Light walk onstage, there’s a sense that the music isn’t meant to be reproduced perfectly—it’s meant to be lived again. That lived-in quality is the show’s heartbeat. His bass doesn’t just anchor the songs; it glows from the inside out, blurring edges, filling the room with a warmth that’s instantly recognizable and strangely destabilizing. It softens you, loosens that tightly held leash, and pulls you into the emotional gravity of music that has shaped decades of listeners.

Hook performs with the passion of someone who knows exactly how special his catalogue is—not in a polished, pristine way but in a way that honors where these songs came from: youth, grief, discovery, conflict, reinvention. The imperfections feel like fingerprints.

This particular night delivered an almost overwhelming treasure trove of Joy Division and New Order eras, including deep cuts many fans never expected to hear live. From “Crystal” and “Someone Like You” to the dark pulse of “Exercise One,” each track landed like a chapter from a musical autobiography. Joy Division songs—“New Dawn Fades,” “Isolation,” “She’s Lost Control”—carried the weight of memory, but also a strange, cathartic lightness. By the time “Transmission,” “Decades,” and finally “Love Will Tear Us Apart” arrived, the room wasn’t just singing; it was remembering.

For me, a night like this is second to none. It captures exactly why I fell in love with music and why I remain infatuated with it all these years later. These shows don’t merely entertain—they embed themselves in you. They become part of the soundtrack of your daily life, echoing in your limbs long after the final note fades. You don’t leave changed, exactly, but rearranged—revised, released.

Peter Hook & The Light don’t just revisit the past. They resurrect it. And for anyone lucky enough to stand in that room, the experience is unforgettable.