Factory Benelux

The Durutti Column \ The Return of the Durutti Column [FBN 114]

Factory Benelux presents a vinyl edition of landmark album The Return of the Durutti Column, housed in a new variant of the iconic sandpaper sleeve first issued by Factory Records in January 1980.

A collaboration between virtuoso guitarist Vini Reilly and legendary Manchester producer Martin Hannett, The Return Of The Durutti Column paired Reilly's non-rock sketches with Hannett's electronic textures to produce "perfectly realised, correctly ambient and inventive music." The infamous sandpaper sleeve was somewhat less user friendly. Inspired by a 1959 Situationist publication by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, the relentless iconoclasts at Factory hoped that the abrasive packaging would destroy existing record collections.

The new vinyl edition on Factory Benelux develops rather than replicates the original packaging. On the front cover, a sheet of coarse glasspaper is seated beneath a die-cut based on the 1978 Factory 'bar graph' logo designed by Peter Saville. The back cover and inner sleeve feature period Durutti images by noted photographer Daniel Meadows. The bonus Hannett 'test card' flexidisc is now a hard vinyl 7-inch disc, with improved sound quality. The album itself includes two extra tracks, Madeleine and Lips That Would Kiss, previously issued as a separate 7-inch single on Factory Benelux in October 1980.

The inner bag also features extensive liner notes with quotes from Vini Reilly, Martin Hannett, Tony Wilson, Peter Saville, Daniel Meadows, John Brierley, Bruce Mitchell and members of Joy Division, who assembled most of the sandpaper originals in 1980. The package is housed in a re-sealable polythene wallet, thus ensuring that adjacent records in your collection remain intact.

We currently have 3 different variations in stock: red glasspaper and red vinyl single; black glasspaper and red vinyl single; black glasspaper and clear vinyl single.

Vinyl tracklist:

Disc 1 (LP)

1. Sketch for Summer
2. Requiem for a Father
3. Katharine
4. Conduct
5. Untitled
6. Jazz
7. Sketch for Winter
8. Colette
9. In 'D'
10. Lips That Would Kiss
11. Madeleine

Disc 2 (7-inch)

1. The First Aspect of the Same Thing
2. The Second Aspect of the Same Thing

Mailorder copies from FBN are dispatched with a bonus alternative inner bag. To order vinyl please first select correct shipping option (UK, Europe or Rest of World) and then click on Add To Cart button below cover image, or else contact FBN by email for other payment options including tracked/signed for.

CD shipping options

UK £11.00 GBP Europe £14.00 GBP Rest of World £16.00 GBP

Reviews:

"Vini Reilly's mercurial guitar epic, back in the sandpaper. In open defiance of post-punk trend Reilly's jazzy electric guitar miniatures are free of ideology but their simple beauty shines through. 9 out of 10" (Uncut, 02/2014)

"Vinyl package of the month. In January 1980 Fact 14 came with one of the most (in)famous record sleeves ever, yet one oddly suited to Vini Reilly's formless ambient guitar pieces that both composer and Tony Wilson saw as a conceptual attack on post-punk rock elitism. As befits the vinyl museum of modern LP repackaging, this lushly remastered reissue places the sandpaper safely behind re-sealable wallet and a die-cut of the original Peter Saville Factory logo, while the bonus flexi-disc (always scratched) is now a hard vinyl 7-inch" (Mojo, 03/2014)

"Nine short guitar instrumentals tracing complex but enduring melodies - meditative, brittle and frequently beautiful. Vini Reilly's classical inclinations were recontextualised by Martin Hannett's production, the sound radical but in the style of a velvet revolution" (Classic Pop, 01/2014)

"Experimental one-man band Vini Reilly is the 7th best guitarist of all time, ahead of Jimmy Page and George Harrison" (The Times, 02/2014)

"The Durutti Column return in streamlined form (in a sandpaper cover). One Vini Reilly is in charge, assisted by Martin 'Zero' Hannett on switchblade doctoring, funny noises, tape loop and 'free' plastic single. His new music is reflective, smooth and quiet. He bends, phases and duets ice blues into the bob and weave of chopped down cross currents; solitary melodies are picked through a sketchbook of recollections. The Return of the Durutti Column is perfectly realised, correctly ambient and inventive music; the beauty of it is that Vini Reilly offers it when he does and how he does. Maybe the punks will sneer and think it's hippy noodling, but the hippies probably won't dare to listen anyway" (NME, 01/1980)

Vini Reilly's partnership with Martin Hannett would be revived in spectacular form on his debut LP, now re-issued by Factory Benelux. The delay and reverb Hannett used to such stunning effect on Unknown Pleasures created space and warmth for Reilly's ambient leanings. "Maybe the punks will sneer and think it's hippy noodling," said NME at the time. But the spontaneity and free experimentation of a track like Conduct deserves its place in the post punk canon alongside PiL's Poptones. Released with a die-cut glasspaper sleeve (in tribute to the Situationist inspired original) and a bonus of Hannett's experimental Testcard 7", this is pretty much essential" (The Quietus, 01/2014)

"Reilly's rationale here reflects his fear that the new wave might have knocked down all the walls of rock dogma only to put up another set, and he makes his statement as a retaliatory indictment of a predominant rock syndrome: preoccupation with form. His quest to create formless rock music won't appeal to elitists, but will get through to the people who really understand where he's at. Hence, for instance, his contempt on Conduct for the rule that 4ths and 5ths don't mix. Various other tricks, which doubtless not many people beyond Reilly could identify, pervade the pieces elsewhere. Ostensibly, the sum total is way out of time. Reilly sees himself as part of the new wave, but his music here combines the mid-stream romanticism of Jerry Garcia, Peter Green (even briefly Hank Marvin) with the freeform sounds usually associated with someone like Keith Jarrett. But so lyrical and ingenious are the juxtapositions of melodies and rhythms that contemporary context hardly comes into it. In contrast to the excesses of new wave, such accessible fringe music actually makes welcome good sense. Don't underestimate the sandpaper cover, though - Factory will be hearing from my lawyers" (Sounds, 01/1980)

"A gloriously-packaged facsimile of Vini Reilly's debut album, originally released in a gritty sandpaper sleeve on the typically anarchic Factory Records (Fact 14), only this time with added protective die-cut sleeve and a bonus hard-vinyl 7", as opposed to a cheap flexi. Seriously, what's not to like? Actually, nothing: The Return of the Durutti Column is a benchmark, a landmark, a timeless template by which all of Reilly's successive works have, rightly or wrongly, been judged. The music hasn't been tampered with - it sounds as fresh, carefree, elegiac, intimate and otherworldly as it did when first issued 34 years ago, a playground for the precocious talents of the creative guitarist and his engineering stooge Martin Hannett, whose pulsating synth footprints compliment the pastoral vignettes, rather than hamper them. Sketch For Summer (and Winter), Conduct, Jazz, Requiem For a Father - they're here in all their understated original beauty, with the added bonus of both sides of the single Lips That Would Kiss and the superior Madeleine, coupled to the end of side two. Both prove to be perfect bed-partners for the preceding tracks, with pin-sharp melodies and itchy, shuffly beat-boxes present and correct" (Flipside, 12/2013)