'Vini Reilly' 35th Anniversary Expanded 5-Disc Set

 

A special 35th Anniversary Edition of the classic 1989 Factory Records album 'Vini Reilly' spread over 4 CDs and 1 DVD is released on 19 April 2024 and features: 

• 'Vini Reilly' (1989) & Bonus Tracks 
• The Sporadic Recordings 
• 'Womad Live' & Demos 
• 'Live In Porto' 1988 DVD
• Bonus 3-Inch Mini CD

This special edition is available to pre-order via The Durutti Column Store now.

Vini Reilly [Factory Benelux, FBN 244 CD]

Factory Benelux presents an expanded 2CD edition of Vini Reilly, the acclaimed seventh studio album. Originally released by Factory Records in 1989, the album has now been newly remastered with 23 bonus tracks including companion single WOMAD Live.

Produced by Vini Reilly and Stephen Street (The Smiths, Morrissey, Blur), the original working title of the Vini Reilly album was The Durutti Column Sampler. "People describe them as found samples and found voices," explained Vini at the time. "I always build up a catalogue of interesting loops and voice samples and stuff. Then I forget where I got them from a lot of the time, which is quite convenient... A lot of the time I manipulate the sample anyway, so it's singing my tune, rather than the original tune."

Stand-out tracks include Otis, Love No More and My Country. "The tune always comes from playing the guitar," added Vini. "As soon as I pick a guitar up I'll come up with a tune. I don't know whether it's good or bad - but there's always a tune there."

The sleeve itself samples Bob Dylan circa Highway 61 Revisited, showcasing an iconic portrait by Mark Warner. Indeed much about the album flirts with mainstream culture, being a deliberate attempt to position Reilly as a 'pop' artist following his chart-topping collaboration with Morrissey on Viva Hate. This collaboration was further celebrated on bonus track 'For Steven Patrick'.

Other bonus tracks on this 2020 double-disc remaster include a multitude of demos and outtakes from the same period (some previously issued on The Sporadic Recordings in 1989), plus all four tracks from pristine performance CD WOMAD Live. Recorded at the WOMAD Festival in Cornwall in August 1988, the core Durutti duo of Vini Reilly and Bruce Mitchell are here augmented by Andy Connell on keys and Chinese opera singer Liu Sola.

A third, optional bonus cd, contains 'I Know Very Well How I Got My Note Wrong', an outtake from the Viva Hate sessions with Morrissey.

Available via Factory Benelux Mailorder.

Obey The Time (Factory Benelux, FBN 274 CD)

Factory Benelux presents a deluxe 3CD box set edition of Obey the Time (FBN 274 CD), the eighth studio album by The Durutti Column. Originally released by Factory Records in December 1990, the original 10 tracks have now been expanded to 43. Release date is 13 April.

Largely self-produced, and entirely instrumental, Obey the Time saw Vini Reilly further develop his interest in electronic music, and even embracing house and techno stylings. "The title came screaming off the TV screen in somebody's version of Othello and captured exactly the feel of the work in progress," explained Tony Wilson, Durutti manager and Factory founder. "We were in the middle of the Acieeed explosion. If you lived in Manchester, you were absolutely in the middle of it. Vini even explained why House made keyboards sound so fresh. Something to do with a chord being played with 3 or 4 notes into the sampler, but then different chords being triggered by a single key stroke. Creating mathematical harmonic relationships 'which Schoenberg had searched for but never found.'"

Indeed veteran Durutti percussionist Bruce Mitchell features on just one track, Art and Freight. Marking a further break with tradition, dance exploration Contra-Indications was taped with New Order programmer (and later co-manager) Andy Robinson. Released in December 1990, Obey the Time (Fact 274) would be the last Durutti Column album on Factory before the labelled collapsed beneath a mountain of debt.

Other extras include single and remix tracks The Together Mix and Kiss of Def, rare compilation cuts such as The New Fidelity, The Awards Show and Times Like These, and several extracts from two unreleased Factory albums recorded during the same 1989/90 period: Guitar One: House (Fact 254) and Guitar Two: Acoustic (Fact 264).

CD3 features 11 live tracks from a previously unreleased performance at Manchester University Whitworth Hall on 23 June 1990 (opportunistically billed as 'The Acid Guitar'), on which Reilly and Mitchell are joined by guests Andy Connell, Liu Sola and Rob Gray.

Original cover art by 8vo. The remastered set is housed in a clamshell card box, with individual inner sleeves and liner notes.

More information and how to buy at Factory Benelux Mailorder.

Without Mercy (Factory Benelux FBN 84 / CD)

Factory Benelux presents expanded 4CD and 2LP disc editions of Without Mercy, the fourth album by Manchester ensemble The Durutti Column, originally released in 1984 and widely regarded as Vini Reilly's most ambitious album.

In 1983 The Durutti Column's mentor/manager Tony Wilson asked Vini Reilly to abandon fleeting guitar miniatures in favour of a longform modern classical piece. The result was an ambitious 20 minute instrumental suite, Without Mercy, performed by core Durutti duo Vini Reilly and Bruce Mitchell along with Blaine L. Reininger and John Metcalfe (violas), Caroline Lavelle (cello), Tim Kellett (trumpet) and Maunagh Fleming (cor anglais).

Explains Vini: "Tony had just come in for a conversation one day and said, 'Look, you keep making these albums that you want to make, and I'm quite happy with you doing that, but just give me this one album and do it my way.' He wanted it to have a narrative determined by a Keats poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which he said was the poet's version of a pop song: boy meets girl, falls in love with girl, loses girl, blah blah blah. It was a very, very Tony way of looking at it. He had aspirations that I should be taken seriously."

Produced by Reilly and Wilson at Strawberry Studio and Britannia Row, Without Mercy was originally split into 19 separate stanzas, some of which have now been restored using digital cue points on the CD. Bonus tracks include the original recordings of Duet, Estoril a Noite and Favourite Descending Intervals (all re-worked for inclusion on Without Mercy), as well as companion EP Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say, collaborations with John Metcalfe, Steven Brown and Benjamin Lew, and two previously unreleased live sets across Discs 3 and 4, recorded at London School of Economics in December 1984 and Oslo in December 1986.

The remastered 4xCD set is housed in a clamshell box, with inner wallets and liner notes by Reilly, Wilson, Mitchell, Reininger and Metcalfe. The cover painting is L'Etang de Trivaux by Henri Matisse (1916/17).

A double gatefold vinyl edition is also available with free digital copy (MP3) of the vinyl tracks. The outer sleeve is printed on 500 mic grey cairn board, with letterpress typography and tipped sheets front and back. The insert (with liner notes) is printed on a 350gsm white frost card, and the whole package housed in a re-sealable polybag.

A limited edition of 100 copies of the vinyl will also be available with a postcard signed by Vini and Bruce. These copies are only available from FBN mailorder.

Available as a 4CD box, gatefold double vinyl and MP3 (vinyl tracklisting) via Factory Benelux mailorder.

For release in September 2018.

M24J (Anthology) (Factory Benelux FBN 164 / CD)

M24J (Anthology) is a collection of valuable passages recorded by The Durutti Column between 1979 and 20?? for various iterations of Factory Records, including poignant tributes to Anthony H. Wilson and Ian Curtis.

Available as a gatefold double vinyl (with bonus 7") and 2CD set, M24J includes selections from The Return of the Durutti Column, LC, Another Setting, Short Stories for Pauline, Without Mercy, Circuses and Bread, The Guitar and Other Machines, Vini Reilly, Obey the Time, Treatise on the Steppenwolf and A Paean to Wilson.

Bonus tracks on the CD version include three tracks recorded live in Leeds in October 1980, these being the earliest preserved professional in-concert recordings by Vini Reilly. The bonus 7" included in the vinyl package features two previously unreleased live recordings: a cover of Peter Green's Albatross recorded in 2004, and Spooky Tune, recorded with Poppy Morgan at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester in 2011, Vini's last major concert to date.

The remastered 2xCD set is housed in a jewel case; copies ordered direct from FBN are delivered in a Factory Benelux slipcase. The vinyl version is housed in a double gatefold sleeve printed on white matt board and includes as a digital copy (MP3).

Available in September 2018 on CD, gatefold double vinyl (+7") and MP3 (vinyl tracklisting) via Factory Benelux Mailorder.