We Carry A New World Here

I got home from our holiday in southern Spain to find my copy of the new Durutti Column album Renascent waiting for me- I'd streamed it a couple of times while away and had been both impressed and moved by it and that has been repeated with several plays of the vinyl version. The last Durutti Column album before Renascent was A Paean To Wilson back in 2010, a tribute to Tony Wilson, Vini's friend, sometime manager and label boss. More than that, Tony was a believer in Vini, a true advocate for the music of The Durutti Column. A Paean To Wilson was the 26th Durutti Column album and due to a series of strokes Vini suffered in 2010 and the long period since then where it was reported that Vini was unable to play guitar (certainly to a standard he was happy with) it looked like that was it, there would be no more Durutti Column. The news a couple of months ago of a new Durutti Column album and two songs that preceded it- Liars and Scammer- was therefore very well received. The fact that there would be a new Durutti Column at all was close to miraculous- that it should be so good... 

While I was on holiday we dropped into the English language bookshop in Nerja where at the front of the shop by the till I found a Paul Preston book about the Spanish Civil War, a book called Comrades! that tells the story of the war through the stories of nine different people, from the fascist leader Franco to Dolores Ibarruri, the communist orator known as La Pasionaria (Paul Preston is the leading authority on the war and his general reader, The Spanish Civil War, is as good an introduction to and history of the war as you'll find). Comrades! includes a quote by Buenaventura Durruti, the anarchist- syndicalist leader of the anarchist militia the Durruti Column and the man whose name (mispelt) gave Tony Wilson the name for Vini's band. I've seen the quote before but as I flicked through the book, with Renascent playing, it jumped out at me...

'It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain... and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts'

James Nice, the man who project managed Renascent and who wrote A Life Of Reilly, a biography of Vini published in 2024, begins his book with the quote as well- 'we carry a new world in here, in our hearts'. Very Factory. Very Wilson. The Hacienda does not exist. The Hacienda must be built. 

These things coming together as they did- the new album, Vini back in the press, the book (found and bought in Spain), the Durruti quote... it all seemed, well, very well timed. Wilson might have called it praxis* or something similar. 

Renascent has a certain continuity with the Factory days. It has a Fac number, Fac 2.51 (as awarded by Wilson's son Oliver, steward of Factory Too) and the artwork is by 8vo who did much of the Durutti Column artwork back in the 80s.  The music is a team effort, not just Vini but also Bruce Mitchell, Kier Stewart and Caoilfhionn Rose (a singer and pianist who has sung with Vini before). 

The album is a thing of beauty, poignant and romantic, cut through with melancholy but also a success in the face of adversity. It was recorded sporadically, assembled over several years, from various sessions, gathering pace since 2021. At one point during Covid, producer/ Durutti Column member Kier Stewart and Vini's friend, manager and long term drummer Bruce Mitchell recorded it while sitting in a car, recording Vini through the window, due to lockdown restrictions. 

Between them, they've created a ten song album that stands alongside previous Durutti albums. It drifts in slowly and gently with Echoes In The Memory, fragments of guitar chords and strumming shimmering in the light, over a wash of synths. The interplay of instruments sounds like memories flashing back and forth, a life flashing before our eyes, before it snaps into focus and finishes on one strummed chord. 

Your Shadow In The Morning has Spanish sounding guitar notes, a familiar DC sound, some lovely echo and chorus FX, those melancholy notes Vini's been locating since the late 70s. Repeated listens bring them together as a song and a mood. Time Present And Time Past (and don't the song titles suggest so much) is a lilting guitar- led piece, notes and runs down the neck of the instrument countered by a twinkling acoustic topline, some bursts of electric guitar and a musical box melody dancing its way onward. Agonistes brings the first sign of vocals, some wordless backing vox by Caoilfhionn Rose adorning Vini's guitar and Bruce's drums. Side one finishes with Liars, the first time Vini's voice is heard, 'I love you, I'm sorry', he repeats as sighs, drums, bass and guitars pad away. 

Side two opens with Vapour In A Matchbox, a two minute instrumental piece, before one of the standouts, Your Shadow At Evening- Bruce on the front foot with the drums, some tension and groove, a line of feedback, swirling guitars and synths, some frustration and anger expressed alongside the melancholy and tenderness found elsewhere.

Sargasso Sea is sung and played by Caoilfhionn Rose. At point she sings, 'and I don't regret a single cigarette', a line that jumps out, almost a Reilly mission statement. It's followed by Scammer, Vini on vocals again over a typically Durutti Column melody, guitars and synths combining, piano notes and guitar notes trading places. 

On the vinyl edition, the final song is For Friends Everywhere, a new orchestral arrangement of For Belgian Friends, one of Vini's most loved songs, originally released way back on the Factory Quartet EP. Woodwind, piano and strings, an arthouse cinema score version with a side order of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The digital version of renascent includes an extra song (also available on flexi disc with some of the vinyl editions), All They See Is Fire, Vini's guitar with vocals from Lucas Elliot, another song that captures that Durutti Column feel, the longing and mystery that have been at the core of the Durutti Column for a long, long time now. It's a looking back for sure, a capturing of Vini's playing and his songs but it's looking forward too- or at least very happy to be in the present. 

Who knows if they're will be any more new Durutti Column music. Maybe there will, maybe there won't- Renascent in itself is enough and as Buenventura Durruti said back in 1936, 'we carry a new world here, in our hearts'. 

* Wilson was somewhat obsessed with praxis- the idea that you do things and then work out what they mean and why you did it afterwards. Sometimes the act of blogging seems to be very much an exercise in praxis. 

Shadowplayers

I bought this book just before Christmas and read it through January, a new edition of Shadowplayers: The Rise And Fall of Factory Records by James Nice, originally published in 2010. It's a really good read, an in depth and thoroughly research history of the label with a wide cast of players present, both via interviews by Nice and already existing ones. There are contributions from all four members of New Order, Martin Moscrop of ACR, Alan Erasmus, Vini Reilly, Mike Pickering, Peter Saville, Lindsay Reade, Liz Naylor, Dermo, Larry Cassidy, Gary Newby, Bez and Shaun Ryder, Leroy Richardson, Paul Mason, Paul Morley and Jon Savage who in different ways all offer insight and explanation. Those who have gone- Ian Curtis, Martin Hannett, Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton, Vincent Cassidy, Annik Honore- are all well represented by archive interviews. 

James Nice is a fan of Factory. In the mid- 80s he founded his own label, LTM,  inspired by his love of Factory and re- issued some out of print Factory records. More recently he began managing of the Factory adjacent labels Le Disques Du Crepuscule and Factory Benelux and has worked on re- releases records by the Durutti Column, Section 25, The Wake, Quando Quango, ACR and others. He's invested in the label and loves the art it created. Shadowplayers isn't a fan account though and in some ways is a very necessary corrective to some of the less reliable, if more entertaining accounts that have grown since the labels demise, the 24 Hour Party People film and book among others (enjoyable though both were to a certain extent). Nice's history goes some way towards puncturing some of the myths and at times questions the received versions. One of Tony Wilson's most celebrated quotes is the old, 'When forced to pick between the truth and legend, print the legend'. Nice most definitely leans towards truth over legend. 

He traces the label's origins and tells the story chronologically from 1978 to 1992, roughly in three parts: the early days and the Joy Division story; the early- to- mid 80s (a mix of groundbreaking records, sleeves and productions coupled with some questionable A&R decisions and a largely empty nightclub); and the later years, when Happy Mondays gave Factory their much longed after second big selling act and their drug consumption/ lifestyle began to influence the label  and the way it was run (and Wilson particularly), a nightclub suddenly at the epicentre of a youth culture explosion and the financial mismanagement that brought about Factory's collapse in 1992, a process that sped up when a potentially lucrative deal with London Records (oh, the irony) was scuppered by Wilson's own admission and producing of a piece of paper from 1978 that read, 'the musicians own everything, the label owns nothing'. Factory had almost literally nothing to sell and had huge debts run up by the acquisition/ development of three properties (one of which, the offices on Charles Street, would generate no income). 

It's as much about the other bands as it is about the big two Joy Division/ New Order and Happy Mondays- those records and artists that span the Factory catalogue numbering system, from the ever- present Durutti Column and A Certain Ratio to James, The Railway Children, Section 25, Stockholm Monsters, The Wake, Kalima, Cath Carroll, Crispy Ambulance, Kevin Hewick and Northside. 

Dirty Disco *

Wilson is quoted as saying that Gretton was far better at A&R than he was and Wilson's track record supports him. In the late 80s, at a crossroads in the label's history with debts and crises mounting (gang violence inside the Hacienda, drugs, police and council attention) Tony Wilson signs The Adventure Babies and The Wendys. He also spends £250, 000 on a Cath Carroll solo album- a lovely album for sure but never likely to recoup that money. The chaos that the Mondays brought to the label, the lifestyle and shift in sound, turned Factory upside down,. The Mondays were a generational band on the one hand, capable of creating incredible records- Bummed, Pills 'n' Thrills- but also one that Tony Wilson bought into so deeply that the lifestyle and promotion of it, that it threw the label off and unbalanced them. 

Delightful **

It's also a reminder of how cutting and brutal the music press could be in the 80s. Nice presents umpteen critical accounts and reviews of Factory nights, gigs and records from the contemporary press, showing how Factory rarely had across the board approval during its lifetime. Manchester's own press- City Fun et al- were often hyper- critical. The four national music papers too. From their end Factory refused to promote or plug, refused to advertise the records ('if they're good enough, people will find them', was Wilson's belief). New Order refused to talk to the press and gave one interview a year in the mid- 80s, willful sabotage of their own sales due to a mistrust of the press. Some Manchester bands avoided the label, keen not to sign for Factory. Factory was divisive as well as cool- something that has been forgotten in the time since the collapse. 

Hymn From A Village ***

The contemporary view of Tony Wilson, in Manchester and beyond, is that he built the modern city and was a universally loved figure. The book calmly outlines events and people, showing rather than telling. You gather that by 1989, Wilson's ego could run out of control, as seen on the Hacienda trip to the USA titled Wake Up America You're Dead!, where they offended a panel of American house/ techno pioneers (which included Keith Allen posing as a pharmaceutical expert), Wilson reveling in the image he was creating, portraying the Mondays as musicians and drug dealers. I say this as a fan of Tony Wilson by the way- but a more realistic portrait of him and popular views of him at the time is drawn by Nice here than in some accounts of the Factory story. 

All the stuff of the legend is there too, some of it debunked- Saville's groundbreaking and beautiful art and inability to meet deadlines, Blue Monday and the cost of its sleeves and groundbreaking sound, Strawberry Studios, Unknown Pleasures, Martin Hannett's production, drug consumption and fall out with Factory, the Russell Club, The Hacienda, Dry, the Charles Street offices with the floating Ben Kelly table, the Festival of the 10th Summer, the guns and gangs and violence that overwhelmed the club and the label in the late 80s/ early 90s, the tensions that rose in New Order that led to their split, all of this and some very necessary and important minor stories too. It's a thorough and very readable account. 

We see Factory now through the lens of coffee table books of sleeve art, exhibitions, box sets, posters, films and documentaries, merchandise and re- issues. I'm as guilty of this as anyone in my own way. I too buy the merch and re- issues, go to the exhibitions, write about the records and contribute to the Factory nostalgia industry. In contrast, while adding to the pile of Factory books James Nice gives us a richly detailed, clear eyed and largely un- nostalgic account.  

In one part towards the end of the 80s Bernard Sumner recounts how New Order were praised for doing things 'the Factory way' or 'the New Order way', deliberately choosing the more difficult, more obtuse, less commercial route. Sumner says that he and the band realised that doing things 'the Factory/ New Order way' had cost them a massive amount of money and made life difficult for them when it didn't have to be. He wanted them to become a less truculent, less arty band, more commercial and more conventional, playing the bigger gigs, for more money. At that point, I thought while reading it, 'the experiment in art by a bunch of Manchester Marxists' (to quote Wilson) started to come to an end and was eventually replaced, after 1992 when Factory finally collapsed with a bunch of creditors that included friends and family, by something less interesting but more beneficial to the musicians. 

Shadowplay ****

* Dirty Disco is a slice of mutant post- punk grind by Section 25, the Blackpool band who singed with Factory and released their debut album in 1981, produced by Martin Hannett at Pink Floyd's Britannia Row studio in London and clad in an absurdly beautiful and lavish Peter Saville sleeve. 

** In 1985 Factory released this Happy Mondays single, Delightful, produced by Mike Pickering, a song that gives a hint of what lies ahead although clearly the band are still finding out where they are going. 

*** Hymn From A Village was by James, the lead song on their James II single in 1985. James were still a four piece at the time, a unique and visionary band who left for a major label and who I don't think ever sounded better than on this song. 

**** Shadowplay is from Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, as I'm sure you know, the album that made the reputation of band, producer, sleeve designer and record label.