There are records whose birth feels closer to a fevered confession than a planned debut, and The Return of The Durutti Column belongs to that unruly family. Its origins read like a case study in collapse: Reilly would later recall in an interview with MOJO that he had been threatened with being institutionalized a dozen times in 1979 alone, and he was so unwell he could scarcely leave his house. Tony Wilson, sensing the brink, placed a new guitar in Reilly’s hands and urged him toward Martin Hannett’s studio as an experiment. The result was anything but orderly. Hannett drifted toward his machinery; Reilly, dazed and depleted, tried to play. He eventually stormed out in frustration, according to an interview with The Guardian.
That exodus should have ended the matter. Instead, Hannett emerged with a completed album that left Reilly “mortified” and certain it would fade unheard by the wider world. Critics groped for reference points; NME dismissed it as “hippy noodling.” Reilly, for his part, was already distancing himself from the short-lived four-piece incarnation of The Durutti Column that had existed before these sessions, describing that earlier lineup as “complete and total rubbish.” Forty-five years later, however, the album stands again before us, remastered from original tapes, half-speed cut, and surrounded by a constellation of demos, Leeds and Brussels gig recordings, and new notes from James Nice.
This astonishing work, born of dissolution and accident, arrives with a strange internal coherence. The tension between retreat and reach animates the whole collection. These pieces drift like thoughts released before the mind can name them.
Integral to the mythos surrounding the album’s first appearance is its notorious sandpaper sleeve. In a gesture as mischievous as it was destructive, the early 2000 copies were bound in coarse industrial paper—an homage to Asger Jorn and Guy Debord’s 1959 Situationist book Mémoires, whose sandpaper cover was devised to damage whatever stood beside it on the shelf. Designed by Dave Rowbotham and Tony Wilson, the sleeves were assembled by hand, with members of the band joined by label-mates Joy Division, who—according to Ian Curtis—they literally “stuck on the sandpaper sleeve,” as recalled here. Those first editions also included a flexi-disc with two Martin Hannett pieces—First Aspect of the Same Thing and Second Aspect of the Same Thing—further cementing the album’s status as an object born from Factory’s restless, Situationist-inflected imagination.
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) and cut at half-speed for vinyl. This edition comes with new liner notes by The Durutti Column author James Nice, author of The Durutti Column: A Life of Riley and Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records.
Here, with the remaster lifting a veil from each tremor and chimed line, the album reads as the quiet ignition of a five-decade arc. Reilly’s touch, spare yet full of spectral nuance, moves through Conduct, Sketch for Winter, Katharine, Collette, and Requiem for a Father, with a diaristic candor that never strains for grandeur. Hannett’s presence, spectral but decisive, shapes an environment where each figure glows against the hushed rhythm team of Pete Crooks and Toby Toman.
What counted against the album in 1980 – its distance, its refusal to follow the prevailing pulse – has sustained it. The Return of The Durutti Column feels less like a document of its time than a private channel opened under duress, still transmitting. History has carried the music further than Reilly ever imagined. It has surfaced in The Bear, slid into Grand Theft Auto, and inspired everyone from Frank Ocean to Red Hot Chili Peppers. Blood Orange even drew an interpolation from Sing To Me, crafting what critics later called “a very English melancholy” on The Field.
Listen to The Return of The Durutti Column below and order the album here.
For the vinyl release of The Return of the Durutti Column, the outer sleeve is a print in four colours, with metallic gold details and text on a 300gsm single-sided board. The sleeve has been embossed with an all over linen cloth embossing, the closest match to the original sleeve texture. The metallic gold is an overprint as per the original sleeve.
The inner sleeve is printed in one colour on a 140gsm uncoated paper. On black 140 g/m vinyl.
Tracklisting:
Side One
A1 Sketch For Summer
A2 Requiem for a Father
A3 Katharine
A4 Conduct
Side Two
B1 Untitled
B2 Beginning
B3 Jazz
B4 Sketch for Winter
B5 Collette
B6 In ‘D’
B7 Lips That Would Kiss
B8 Madeleine
Expanded CD Tracklisting (Verified 2025 Edition):
Disc One — Album + Bonus Tracks (Remastered)
1. Sketch for Summer (Remaster)
2. Requiem for a Father (Remaster)
3. Katharine (Remaster)
4. Conduct (Remaster)
5. Untitled (Remaster)
6. Beginning (Remaster)
7. Jazz (Remaster)
8. Sketch for Winter (Remaster)
9. Collette (Remaster)
10. In ‘D’ (Remaster)
11. Lips That Would Kiss (Remaster)
12. Madeleine (Remaster)
13. Madeleine II (Remaster)
14. Impressions of Reilly (Destroyed Studio Demo)
15. Martin Hannett – First Aspect of the Same Thing (Theremin)
16. Martin Hannett – Second Aspect of the Same Thing (Theremin)
17. Piece for an Ideal (Remaster)
18. Me, You and Monsieur (Remaster)
19. Kiss O’Clock (Remaster)
20. The Room (Remaster)
21. Danny (Remaster)
Disc Two — Home Recordings, Demos & Live Tracks
22. Katharine (Home Recording – 1979)
23. Untitled (Home Recording – 1979)
24. Conduct (Home Recording – 1980)
25. In ‘D’ (Home Recording – 1980)
26. Sketch for Summer (Studio Demo – August 1980)
27. Requiem for a Father (Studio Demo – August 1980)
28. Katharine (Studio Demo – August 1980)
29. Lindsay (Studio Demo – August 1980)
30. For Belgian Friends (Studio Demo – August 1980)
31. Detail for Annik (Live, Leeds Polytechnic – 27 October 1980)
32. Sketch for Summer (Live, Leeds Polytechnic – 27 October 1980)
33. Requiem for a Father (Live, Brussels – 13 August 1981)
34. Conduct (Live, Brussels – 13 August 1981)
35. For Belgian Friends (Live, Brussels – 13 August 1981)
36. Sketch for Summer (Live, Brussels – 13 August 1981)
37. Lips That Would Kiss (Live, Brussels – 13 August 1981)
38. Jacqueline (Live, Brussels – 13 August 1981)
Or via: