Factory Benelux presents a vinyl edition of landmark album The Return of the Durutti Column, housed in a new variant of the iconic sandpaper sleeve first issued by Factory Records in January 1980.

A collaboration between virtuoso guitarist Vini Reilly and legendary Manchester producer Martin Hannett, The Return Of The Durutti Column paired Reilly’s non-rock sketches with Hannett’s electronic textures to produce “perfectly realised, correctly ambient and inventive music.” The infamous sandpaper sleeve was somewhat less user friendly. Inspired by a 1959 Situationist publication by Guy Debord and Asger Jorn, the relentless iconoclasts at Factory hoped that the abrasive packaging would destroy existing record collections.

The new vinyl edition on Factory Benelux develops rather than replicates the original packaging. On the front cover, a sheet of coarse glasspaper is seated beneath a die-cut based on the 1978 Factory ‘bar graph’ logo designed by Peter Saville. The back cover and inner sleeve feature period Durutti images by noted photographer Daniel Meadows. The bonus Hannett ‘test card’ flexidisc is now a hard vinyl 7-inch disc, with improved sound quality. The album itself includes two extra tracks, Madeleine and Lips That Would Kiss, previously issued as a separate 7-inch single on Factory Benelux in October 1980.

The inner bag also features extensive liner notes with quotes from Vini Reilly, Martin Hannett, Tony Wilson, Peter Saville, Daniel Meadows, John Brierley, Bruce Mitchell and members of Joy Division, who assembled most of the sandpaper originals in 1980. The package is housed in a re-sealable polythene wallet, thus ensuring that adjacent records in your collection remain intact.

We currently have 3 different variations in stock: red glasspaper and red vinyl single; black glasspaper and red vinyl single; black glasspaper and clear vinyl single.