London Records have dug into the Factory Records archive to re-issue a remastered and expanded edition of The Durutti Column’s album ‘Time Was GIGANTIC… When we were kids’,  released on CD and double vinyl for the first time on 30th June. 

Some 25 years since its original release, the re-issue is accompanied by five rare bonus tracks, plus revised and expanded artwork by Hamish Muir and Mark Holt of graphic design studio 8VO.

One of the first bands to be signed to Tony Wilson’s Factory Records in 1978, The Durutti Column were named after Spanish Civil War anarchist Buenaventura Durruti and a 1960s comic strip by the Situationists Internationale. Appearing on Factory’s inaugural release ‘A Factory Sample’ (a double 7” compilation also featuring Joy Division, John Dowie and Cabaret Voltaire), the band’s relationship with the label would last some twenty years and ten studio albums.

‘Tony (Wilson) was the (band’s) direction’, says Vini. ‘He focused us all in a certain way… We all wanted to do something that was real. Whether it was commercially successful or not was irrelevant. It had to be real.’

While Factory’s artists were often intense post-punk and dance rock outfits, Durutti’s members, guitarist, pianist and occasional vocalist Vini Reilly, along with drummer, percussionist and co-manager Bruce Mitchell, carved a musical space away from the strident DIY leanings of many of their Manchester contemporaries.

While The Durutti Column’s output would largely remain overlooked by the public, their releases, and in particular Vini’s guitar work would go on to gather praise from the likes of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, Brian Eno, Johnny Marr and The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Fruiscante, who deemed Vini “the best guitarist in the world”.

Produced by Keir Stewart, with Bruce as executive producer, ‘Time Was GIGANTIC…’ floats through sparsely decorated sonic spaces, touching on jazz, folk, as well as found sounds, vocal grabs and samples, light percussion, electronic rhythms and more.

While Vini’s own tremulous voice is heard only on the tracks “Twenty Trees” and “Abuse“, the most direct, indie-leaning tracks on the album showcase the vocals of local singer and writer Eley Rudge (who also co-wrote the stand-out track “Drinking Song“).

‘Time Was GIGANTIC…’ saw the band in a progressive mode, eschewing form in favour of substance, and confounding the ongoing expectations around Vini’s filigree guitar sketches and virtuoso jazz-classical stylings.

NME went so far as to describe the album as a masterpiece. ‘It sounds so sweet: Reilly’s shimmering guitar spinning merry cartwheels behind Eley Rudge’s angelic Harriet Wheeler warble, or basking lazily in pools of ambient calm. It’s a smooth as porcelain, as mannered as a lily pond and as forgettable as your last breath.”

Q Magazine praised “The familiar busy but intricate guitar work, by turn insistent and delicate, with echoey rhythms, minimal loops and decoration (tablas, piano, mouth organ) is still the order of the day.”

Although no one knew it at the time, ‘Time Was GIGANTIC…’ would be the last ever album to be released by Factory, with funding for the label being withdrawn before the end of the decade. The album brought about the end of a twenty year partnership and a painful split between Reilly and his mentor Wilson.  ‘I think Tony got bored,’ rued Vini at the time. ‘It (Factory) seemed to have gone stale and jaded and reliving past glories all the time. I just wanted to move on. I think it’s fair to tell you that he’d lost interest in my music. He probably felt he’d done as much as he could possibly do.”

Some five years later Wilson commented “Bruce… describes my work with Vini as like someone standing over Van Gogh’s shoulder when he’s busying away at a canvas and shouting, “No, not that yellow, the other one”.’

‘Well Vini, I’m sorry if it was like that, but watching over your shoulder has been a profound pleasure and to have had any involvement in some of the beauty herewith… is a source of pride. And amazement.”

THE DURUTTI COLUMN – REMASTERED + EXPANDED VERSION OF:
‘TIME WAS GIGANTIC… WHEN WE WERE KIDS’
OUT 30 JUNE VIA LONDON RECORDS
PRE-ORDER HERE

 NEW VISUALISER FOR: “PIGEON”
OUT NOW
WATCH HERE  || STREAM ON ALL SERVICES HERE

Vinyl Tracklist

Side One:
Organ Donor.
Pigeon. I B Yours.
Twenty Trees.

Side Two:
Abuse. Drinking Song.
Sing To Me.

Side Three:
My Last Kiss.
For Rachel.
Highfield Choir.
Epilogue.

Side Four (Bonus tracks):
It’s Your Life, Babe.
Kiss of Def.
In the City.
New Order Tribute.
Drinking Song (version).

CD Tracklist

Organ Donor.
Pigeon.
I B Yours.
Twenty Trees.
Abuse.
Drinking Song.
Sing To Me.
My Last Kiss.
For Rachel.
Highfield Choir.
Epilogue.

Bonus tracks:
It’s Your Life, Babe.
Kiss of Def.
In the City.
New Order Tribute.
Drinking Song (version).

FOR MORE INFORMATION
w/ https://news.thedurutticolumn.info 

Or please contact:
thom@sonicpr.co.uk