Always Now [FBN 5-045 CD] | Section 25

fbn3045cdfront.jpg

Section 25 \ Always Now [FBN 5-045 CD]

Factory Benelux presents a re-mastered and expanded 5 disc edition of Always Now, the first album by Section 25, originally issued on Factory Records in 1981 and produced by Martin Hannett.

Recorded as a trio at Pink Floyd's Britannia Row studio in London, Always Now combined austere post-punk rhythms with elements of Can, Krautrock and modern psychedelia. Key tracks include Friendly Fires, Dirty Disco, New Horizon and Hit (sampled by Kanye West on The Life of Pablo), along with non-album singles Charnel Ground, Je Veux Ton Amour and Girls Don't Count - the latter produced by Ian Curtis and Rob Gretton (of Joy Division).

Disc 2 offers a wealth of illuminating bonus tracks, all previously unreleased. These include a three song John Peel session from January 1981, a complete live show professionally recorded at Groningen (Netherlands) in October 1980, and alternate versions of several album tracks newly re-mastered from the original quarter-inch tapes.

Disc 3 is part-improvised second studio album The Key of Dreams, recorded and produced by the band themselves a few months after Always Now, and released by Factory Benelux in June 1982.

Disc 4 consists of further experimental material recorded in 1981 and self-released on a cassette called Illuminus Illumina. This disc closes with an extended live encore jam recorded with all four members of New Order at Reading University on 8 May 1981.

Disc 5 captures the band live in tour in Europe and North America in early 1982, including dates at New York Danceteria and the 9:30 Club in Washington DC. The spacey set was originally intended for release as as a live album on Factory US.

This expanded 5xCD edition is housed in clamshell outer box. Each of the 5 CDs comes in a printed wallet, while the 32 page booklet includes archive images as well as texts by founder members Vin and Larry Cassidy, as well as a rare interview with Paul Wiggin. Original sleeve design by Peter Saville.

CD tracklist: (disc 1)

1. Friendly Fires
2. Dirty Disco
3. C.P.
4. Loose Talk (Costs Lives)
5. Inside Out
6. Melt Close
7. Hit
8. Babies In the Bardo
9. Be Brave
10. New Horizon
11. Haunted
12. Charnel Ground
13. Human Puppets
14. Knew Noise
15. Up To You
16. Girls Don't Count
17. Oyo Achel Ada
18. After Image
19. Red Voice

CD tracklist: (disc 2)

1. One True Path (BBC session)
2. Babies In the Bardo (BBC session)
3. Hit (BBC session)
4. Je Veux Ton Amour
5. Friendly Fires (outtake)
6. Friendly Fires (outtake)
7. Loose Talk (live 26.10.1980)
8. Human Puppets (live 26.10.1980)
9. Knew Noise (live 26.10.1980)
10. Friendly Fires (live 26.10.1980)
11. Girls Don't Count (live 26.10.1980)
12. New Horizon (live 26.10.1980)
13. Haunted (live 26.10.1980)
14. You're On Your Own (live 1.11.1980)
15. One Step (live 18.4.1981)

CD tracklist: (disc 3)

1. Always Now
2. Visitation
3. Regions
4. The Wheel
5. No Abiding Place
6. Once Before
7. There Was a Time
8. Wretch
9. Sutra
10. The Beast
11. Sakura
12. Hold Me
14. Sakura (Matrixmix)
15. You Leave Me No Choice

CD tracklist: (disc 4)

1. Fallen Monument
2. Are You There?
3. Virtually Everything
4. Tape Loop
5. Subferior
6. Cry
7. In the Garden of Eden
8. Rigi Rigi
9. Floating
10. Opening
11. Alone Pt 1
12. Untitled
13. Rose Apple Island
14. Open Those Eyes
15. Reading Uni Jam w. New Order (8.5.1981)
16. Mirror (live 29.2.1980)

CD tracklist: (disc 5)

1. God's Playground Pt 1 (Italy 12.82)
2. Babies in the Bardo (NYC 19.2.82)
3. Trident (NYC 19.2.82)
4. Dirty Disco (Washington 13.2.82)
5. Sakura (Washington 13.2.82)
6. Inside Out (Nottingham 1982)
7. One True Path (Washington 13.2.82)
8. Floating (London 6.5.82)
9. The Beast (NYC 19.2.82)
10. You Leave Me No Choice (NYC 19.2.82)
11. God's Playground Pt 2 (Brussels Art 14.1.82)
12. Warhead (Manchester 3.2.83)
13. Haunted (Bochum 13.1.82)

Available as a 5xCD box set or on digital (MP3 or FLAC) featuring discs 1 and 2 only. To order any format please select correct shipping option (UK, Europe or Rest of World) and then. click on Add To Cart button below the cover image. Digital copies include the tracks on discs 1 and 2 only and are supplied to customers via link sent by email.

Or, you can order with the option of tracked shipping from our friends at Burning Shed (click here to order)

Reviews:

"They might be the cult side of cult, but now they stalk moodily into the limelight with this impressive portfolio of brilliant flashes" (Mojo, 08/2024)

"Martin Hannett's production on Always Now - his crowning achievement - doesn't wrap the music in his trademark sepulchral opulence. Rather a starkly lit, intimate space is conjured, seemingly real but somehow alien, a space that feels like it's being dreamed as you listen, with the players as disembodied, spectral presences" (The Wire, 06/2015)

"The rhythm-focused first album by Section 25 is a vital mid-point between the bass-driven side of Pil's Metal Box and minimalist Joy Division workouts like I Remember Nothing. A Krautrock-y spaciness brings trippy disorientation. Back in 1981 much distracted from the music, but heard now without the baggage overlooked Always Now stands the test of time with aplomb. Its case is enhanced by the copious bonuses on this double set, which include an impressively high fidelity 1980 live show. 4 stars" (Mojo, 05/2015)

"This widescreen version of their impressive debut is essential. Not only has it been taken from the original master tapes and replicates Peter Saville's original matchbook-like sleeve, but it also features a John Peel session plus a live gig from 1980 as well as album outtakes. If Joy Division were Factory's crown jewels, Section 25 were an uncut diamond. Four stars" (Record Collector, 06/2015)

"One of the best albums Britain's second city has unleashed" (Q Magazine, 03/2006)

"A feast of serrated guitars over dub-spacious production, gloom rock that exults in its own monumental miserabilism. Mere period depresso-rock? No. Always Now and other tracks here could be the work of an aspirant contemporary experimental outfit. In fact leading Brit indie band Friendly Fires took their name from track one, side one" (Classic Pop, 06/2015)

"A work that is really one of the key releases of the time along with the Joy Divs and Public Image. Listen to it now and it sounds like a modern record" (Louder Than War, 12/2012)

"Their most complete statement. Several complementary shades of gloomy" (Q Magazine, 11/1991)

"A modern redevelopment of psychedaelia" (Melody Maker, 01/1992)

"Stone tablets from a distant, mist-shrouded age" (Uncut, 08/2000)

"In 1980 their bass-driven mantras were thoughtlessly dismissed as second-rate Joy Division, but hindsight judges them more kindly. The wind-dried skeins of their blasted guitar harmonics and skimped electronics gauntly cling to the songs' skeletal frames. With tell-tale titles like Babies in the Bardo their Buddhist interests hang heavy over these early stirrings.... Combining a bass-led drone with a characteristic groaning vocal, Charnel Ground succinctly pins down Section 25's pre-disco appeal" (The Wire, 06/2002)

"Section 25 were great at grim insistance, and hard to top" (eMusic, 09/2006)

"Superb reissue. Section 25 seem to have been forever trapped between austere Factory cultish-ness and the actual thrust of this amazing, other music. Always Now has a sound closer to a Can hybrid, but no-one wanted to notice. Recommended" (Boomkat, 02/2007)

"The causes and conditions that made the 78-81 post-punk explosion possible were absolutely unique. These exceptional circumstances allowed an enormous diversity to pervade the movement. From the lo-fi YeYe-isms of the Marine Girls or the Mo-dettes to the Pop Group's deeply intense stop-start nursery noise jazz brilliance, from the genre-bending crunching aural crankiness of This Heat to the loosely-sketched ambient punk of Section 25, from Swell Maps' electric-socket licking frantic frizz punk to the Brian Wilson-in-pastels goose bump sigh pop of the Raincoats, never before has a relatively small and contained movement encompassed such variety, quality and power" (The Observer, 10/2016)