The Return of the Durutti Column (Expanded & Remastered) The Durutti Column

• Studio Remaster:
• 1 Sketch For Summer (Remaster) 03:02
• 2 Requiem For A Father (Remaster) 05:06
• 3 Katharine (Remaster) 05:30
• 4 Conduct (Remaster) 05:06
• 5 Untitled (Remaster) 02:28
• 6 Beginning (Remaster) 01:40
• 7 Jazz (Remaster) 01:38
• 8 Sketch For Winter (Remaster) 02:27
• 9 Collette (Remaster) 02:22
• 10 In 'D' (Remaster) 02:29
• 11 Lips That Would Kiss (Remaster) 03:49
• 12 Madeleine (Remaster) 03:03
• 13 Experiment In Fifth (Graveyard Studio Demo - 1981) 04:48
• 14 The First Aspect Of The Same Thing (Remaster) 03:41
• 15 The Second Aspect Of The Same Thing (Remaster) 02:59
• 16 Piece For An Ideal (Remaster) 02:12
• 17 Sleep Will Come (Remaster) 01:49
• 18 No Communication (Remaster) 05:03
• 19 Thin Ice (Remaster) 05:03
• 20 Won't Look Out (Remaster) 05:00
• Home Recording:
• 21 Intervals (Home Recording - 1978) 03:09
• 22 Katharine (Home Recording - 1978) 04:09
• 23 Untitled (Home Recording - 1978) 01:33
• 24 Conduct (Home Recording - 1978) 01:13
• 25 I'm A Face (Home Recording - 1980) 04:35
• Studio Demo:
• 26 Sketch For Summer (Studio Demo - August 1980) 02:59
• 27 Requiem For A Father (Studio Demo - August 1980) 05:25
• 28 Madeleine (Studio Demo - August 1980) 03:08
• 29 Katharine (Studio Demo - August 1980) 03:53
• 30 Lindsay (Studio Demo - August 1980) 03:52
• 31 For Belgian Friends (Studio Demo - August 1980) 04:12
• Live:
• 32 Detail for Annik (Live - Leeds Polytechnic - 7th October 1980) 02:48
• 33 Sketch For Summer (Live - Leeds Polytechnic - 7th October 1980) 03:29
• 34 Requiem For A Father (Live - Leeds Polytechnic - 7th October 1980) 05:45
• 35 Conduct (Live - Brussels - 13th August 1981) 02:43
• 36 Self-Portrait (Live - Brussels - 13th August 1981) 05:31
• 37 For Belgian Friends (Live - Brussels - 13th August 1981) 01:59
• 38 Sketch For Summer (Live - Brussels - 13th August 1981) 02:16
• Total Runtime 02:11:54

Info for The Return of the Durutti Column (Expanded & Remastered)

To mark the album’s 45th anniversary, London Records presents new editions, remastered from the original tapes (the first edition to do so since 1980).

‘The Return of The Durutti Column’ marked the beginning of a five-decade career in which The Durutti Column quietly became one of Manchester’s most influential acts.

The album is a hauntingly intimate debut from Vini Reilly: fragile, otherworldly, and quietly radical. With producer Martin Hannett’s signature studio alchemy, Reilly’s delicate, filigree guitar work is wrapped in ambient haze, post-punk reverb, and glacial electronics. The result is a sparse yet emotionally saturated soundscape, where minimalism meets affecting atmospherics.

The Return... was recorded on eight track equipment at Cargo Studio, Rochdale, in August 1979. Martin Hannett produced, John Brierley engineered. 'At the time of the album I'd decided on a minimal thing,' recalls Vini. 'Where there'd be only one drum machine and one backing track, with one guitar tune over the top. Martin and I didn't sort of click together at first, but we worked as a team and I really liked him in the end. On the album he just played about with knobs, he's not at all technical [sic]. He got synthesized drums and things for me. Martin reproduces echoes, finds a rhythmic pattern on the synthesizer... Also, some of it was spontaneous. I gave him twenty tracks and he selected the ones he could work with best.'

'Someone at Factory decided it would be good idea to send Vini Reilly in to Cargo with Martin as an experiment,' adds John Brierley, who owned Cargo. 'I don't think Vini had any real ideas as to what he wanted to do, it was just sort of a solo jam session over three days to see what would happen. Over the first two days we recorded bits of stuff from Vini, who sat on the studio floor with his guitar. Martin had arrived with much more than his usual amount of effects, I had a job fitting it all in the control room then we spent what seemed an awfully long time connecting it all up and getting it all fed into the desk. In hindsight Martin should have been in studio two days before Vini arrived, one day to get all the gear in and connect it up and a second, because a lot of the gear was new to him, to work out how it all worked. While Martin and I were sorting all this out Vini was turning out ideas in the studio, Martin showed little or no interest in what Vini was doing. Basically I just kept the tape running.'

At the time Vini was being managed by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus, the two co-founders of Factory. Their charge was presented with a Gordon Smith custom guitar. 'Martin arrived with these great big black cardboard-fronted machines,' says Tony. 'Synthesizers. For two days, the Monday and Tuesday, Martin did nothing but create strange rhythm/noise tracks. Occasionally Vini would strap on the guitar and play some notes onto the tracks. But it was hard to get Martin to notice as he pored over the primitive electronics. By the second night Vini had had enough.' ...

The Durutti Column

Digitally remastered

The Durutti Column
Born in Higher Blackley, Manchester, in 1953, composer-guitarist Vini Reilly first found wide acclaim as the principal member of The Durutti Column, a constantly evolving modern music ensemble recruited by Factory Records in 1978. The original band soon splintered, leaving Reilly as the sole member. His first album, The Return of the Durutti Column, recorded with producer Martin Hannett in 1979, established the fragile, mercurial player as a major talent.

This album contains no booklet.