Cuttings

50 GREAT MANCHESTER ALBUMS From the Buzzcocks to Doves, Britain's second city has unleashed a succession of albums that changed the face of music. Here's your guide to the best of them.... THE DURUTTI COLUMN The Return Of The Durutti Column FACTORY 1979 Cult miserabillst plays super-sad instrumental guitar. For a movement that was meant to be about free minds and expression, punk dogmas were quick to harden. The Durutti Column, aka guitarist Vini Reilly, kicked against them profoundly with nine meditative instrumental pieces, augmented by minimal programmed rhythms and the judicious use of an Echoplex unit, courtesy of producer Martin Hannett. The seemingly improvised results were delicate and melancholic. But there’s still comfort and even joy here. IH JOY DIVISION Unknown Pleasures FACTORY, 1979 Stark and atmospheric - this is their solemn, definitive st...

Lost Inside Vini Reilly, Factory's delicate guitar genius with the dark past, has endured illness, penury and Morrissey's whims to create 20 extraordinary albums. By Ian Harrison VINI REILLY WAS in a bad way in 1979. “I was seriously depressed,” says the famously fragile guitarist today, “I was desperate to eat and be well, but I’d been wrongly diagnosed with anorexia and put on medication that completely did me in. I lost all sense of the real world... over the next couple of years, psychiatrists would try to have me sectioned 12 times.” At such a juncture in a musician’s life, few record companies would see fit to send them into the studio. The newly birthed Factory Records was such a label. For two days in spring, producer Martin Hannett would roll up to a house on Pytha Fold Road in Withington in his Volvo, to convey the guitarist and his Les Paul to Cargo Studios in Rochdale. En route, Ha...

THE 20 BEST MANCHESTER ALBUMS 1 JOY DIVISION CLOSER Factory (1980) IAN Curtis was beset by health, psychological and personal problems when Joy Division entered Britannia Row studios to record Closer in March, 1980. Their second tour de force was far removed from its predecessor: side two particularly revealed a new, breathtaking, almost supernatural, symphonic music. Painfully honest and unflinchingly emotional, Closer was Joy Division's triumph and Ian Curtis’ personal testament. By the time of its release, he’d committed suicide.  (Un?)intentional parting message to bandmates:  " You take my place in the showdown. I'll observe with a pitiful eye ” (“ Heart And Soul ”)  Highest UK chart position: 6 3 JOY DIVISION UNKNOWN PLEASURES Factory (1979) FOR...

DURUTTI COLUMN: Say What You Mean Mean What You Say (EP) ( Factory ) A CERTAIN RATIO: Brazilia ( Factory Benelux ) Just the FACs, ma’am ... Vini Reilly's found himself a fine spar in percussionist Bruce Mitchell but his elegant, limpid mood music almost invariably either soothes me into a nice snooze or else makes me wonder if it’s time to do the washing up or take the rubbish out. Unfortunately this latest six-track marathon is no exception. A Certain Ratio weigh in with a light, fast, smooth groove dedicated to the joys of ‘sunshine music’ and blessed with some sparkling piano, even though the percussion break in the middle is somewhat heavy-handed. This probably tell you at least as much about my prejudices and assumptions as it does about ACR, but in its way this is one of the most pleasant surprises of the week.

THE DURUTTI COLUMN 'domo origato' (IKON/Factory 144) A transglobal affair from Mancunian bedroom guitarist Vim Reilly and his eccentric sidekick, percussionist Bruce Mitchell - this concert (filmed at Tokyo's Kani-hoken Hall), at least manages to avoid the usual IKON hallmarks of bad sound/lighting/camerawork et al. Quite why we had to go to Japan to witness Vini's excellent guitar doodling isn't made dear, though one suspects the glamorous location (which we don't get to see), and the superior Japanese technical facilities, along with a misguided 'what we did on our hols' mentality, won the day. The music itself is presented in all its naked glory, Reilly struggling to play keyboards and guitar at the same time, Mitchell doing his damnest to do an 'Elton In Moscow' on percussion, and some simple but effective trumpet and viola contributions from a suitably baggy-trousered Tim Kellet and John Metcalfe respectively. Polite Japanese applause seems ...

 I BOUGHT a copy of the Durutti Column album ‘Without Mercy’ a few months ago only to find there was a crackling noise through quite a lot of it. This was particularly annoying as the album has several quiet passages, and I consider the LP to be one of the band’s best. I’ve now changed the album four times and still haven’t got a perfect copy, so I assume there is some fault in the pressing. Can you help? - Steve Langdon, Ipswich, Suffolk AS FAR as Factory Records, Durutti Column’s record company were aware, there was no problem with this album. But, if you are willing to be albumless for a while, send your copy off to Factory Records, 86 Palatine Road, Didsbury, Manchester 20, together with a covering note, and they will send you a new copy.

DURUTTI COLUMN Cafe Berlin, Liverpool TWO men arrive and make tentative notes and you wonder whether it's started. One of them plays a violin in a way that reminds you of Spanish holiday restaurant tables. The music reminds you of it too but that's because of the one playing electric guitar. Three songs later, even when a drum machine and keyboards are joined in, you're still wondering whether it's started. The music does little to hold the attention and you find yourself wondering some more. You wonder whether instrumentals are always boring and then remember some you could dance to. There doesn't seem much chance of that happening here. Durutti Column have got themselves known as making slightly ambient music and these new sounds don't alter that. But what's the ambience? There's an atmosphere that something clever and sensitive is happening (we'll forget about whether it's arty) but I'm not sure. There's technique of course, but there...

RECOVERED GOODS Veteran Factory workers DURUTTI COLUMN have a new album - 'Circuses And Bread',- and new single to brandish. DAVID QUANTICK uses his loaf. Life of Reilly by A. J. BARRATT. VINNI REILLY has spent seven years making records with the Durutti Column. Ruminative things these records are; pensive personal objects with Vinni's guitar sending out tiny shards of sound and various shadings of French horn, piano and drums weaving in and out. The latest Durutti Column album continues this tradition, and has a fine attendant single, 'Tomorrow'. "I love singing." (Vinni's girlfriend collapses in uncontrollable mirth.) "That's one thing I disagree with Tony about. Everyone says my voice is awful." Tony is, of course, Tony Wilson — Factory supremo and everyone's favourite Granada TV presenter. Vinni formed Durutti Column because Tony asked him to; Tony thought of the name as well. "Tone and me have a very good relations...

SAY WHAT? DURUTTI COLUMN London Electric Screen Few words are spoken: "say what you mean, mean what you say". Words sung are almost whispered—apologies and pleas. There's a trumpeter on loan from Simply Red, viola for that classic chamber-muzak feeling, and Bruce Mitchell, who keeps time in comic, slicked-back-hair 'cool' manner, Vini Reilly's music has always take stock of 'the passing of time' — tonight, the past plugs up '85's potholes; a few ancient guitar phrases recur, whilst the sparse drum and guitar opening pieces exorcise the first four DC LPs. Reilly's electro-piano licks are a treat: circular riffs and chords dripping with that Lee Perry-patented 'underwater' effect. Mr DC's six-stringing also defies hyperbole—the very definition of 'pure'. Words like: pastoral, 'Englishness', melancholy, pretty, trance-inducing, can still be chucked around whilst assessing DC85. Sadly, 'space', 'soli...

ITS BATH-TIME WITH VINI DURUTTI COLUMN Without Mercy (factory) FINALLY, a bit of music for a cleaner Britain, a record to bathe by. When the water in the tub is still, as the mirror gently sweats, Durutti Column will guide you through a patient lather towards relaxation. Refreshingly, there are no vocals; no squeaks except those you make as you slide across the porcelain to reach the shampoo. And as the day’s grime releases its anxious grip, the affectionate piano, the sweet oboe, and the melancholic guitar invade seized temples and relieve its conquerors with a hint of something classical. The music accompanies and compliments the self-indulgence without stopping. This is one great big song. The melody is stated first by the piano, played by Vini Reilly, who also happens to be the composer, guitarist, DMXist and arranger. The oboe joins in, followed by guitar and then strings untii the tune eventually evolves into variations on itself. But it does so without a cl...

WHINE AND CHEESE DURUTTI COLUMN Circuses And Bread (Factory Benelux) MORE MODERN chamber music for people who wear their raincoats while eating breakfast at midday, ‘Circuses And Bread' drifts from the speakers with a curiously refined sadness. The Albert Camus Appreciation Society will wrongly consider it to be an apt soundtrack for their group readings of The Outsider , but the Durutti Column's melancholia most reflects the hopeless romanticism of the tarot card-reading existentialist. Often wet-lipped and moist-eyed, the Durutti Column are always polite enough to avoid seeking refuge in primal scream therapy or “tears for fears/ sobbing for angst" treatment But there is also an edge to their sound, and to Vini Reilly's songs, which means that 'Circuses And Bread' exudes mournful dignity rather than cloying sentiment. The closest the Durutti Column get to something as flippant as "fun" is their naming of two tracks as ‘Dance I' and ...

The Life Of Reilly THE DURUTTI COLUMN  Riverside Studios THE SPARSE formality of Hammersmith Riverside Studios was perfectly in tune with the return of Vinnie Reilly. the last in the season of Factory Goes To Hammersmith. And if the audience was more balding and bearded than bleak and industrial, well, that was par for the course as well. Vinnie Reilly may look like the eternal child prodigy, but this is very adult entertainment. Flanked by banners making a cryptic statement about the relationship between art and technology, and dwarfed by a grand piano, the boy wonder borrowed a phrase from Peel as introduction. "It starts quietly," he explained, "but it gets louder later on." And so it did — but always the attention was lured back to Reilly's fluid guitar — the sound that is Durutti Column, as exemplified by their second piece, 'Sketch For Summer'. Surely one of the most evocative pieces of music ever released, wherever you heard it first,...

THE DURUTTI COLUMN  London Riverside Studios SIXTY FOOT up in the Riverside gantry, amongst the clutter of microphones, lights, and soundmen, we witness the return of The Durutti Column. A grand piano booming converts into a delicate trickle of keys, and introduces Vini Reilly and his right hand man, percussionist Bruce Mitchell: if you’re coming back, you might as well come back in style. The truth is that The Durutti Column have never really been away  they’ve just been ignored slightly - and the fact that on each of these two nightly stints hundreds have been turned away inspires tremendous confidence in that tenuous motion that people actually don’t always believe what-they read (or don’t read) in the music press. They performed short, crisp numbers using combinations of grand piano, guitar, keyboards, and snareless drum. With the arrival of violinist, cellist, oboeist, and brass section, familiar tracks (like the excellent ‘Jacqueline' from ‘L.C.' album) ende...