Another Setting: The Durutti Experience

Six years ago, when I started to become a human being for the first time since birth, a family friend & role model gave me a set of various tapes, magazines, books, & records in an act of suicidal charity. My father & I had been summoned to his house where we sat in his front room as he handed us countless items, all under the heavy feeling of his emotion - which radiated off him nearly like an odor - that emotion being severe depression. With the pretense that my good friend who I admired greatly may kill himself in the following days after giving me his belongings, I instantly became very protective of it all. In that moment, it felt I was holding the last I may ever hold of him. As it turns out, S didn’t leave us that week, nor did he leave us the following month. But he is not with us now. He had given me many things that I did not recognize & some things I only recognized partially. That which I recognized: The Jesus & Mary Chain’s “Automatic,” My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless,” & The Cure’s “Wish” (Japanese Release). All on cassette, in various states of well-being. That which I did not recognize: Patti Smith’s “Wave,” James Chance & the Contortions “Live in New York,” & Sex Gang Children’s “Dieche.” All on cassette, in various states of well-being. Shawn has said to me in regards to these: “One day you’ll understand.” Amongst these though, was The Durutti Column’s “The Guitar & Other Machines.” Which featured cover art that perplexed me, simplistic & reminiscent of the Warhol screen prints I loved in a way, but far more innocuous. Highlighted with what looked like tape, or maybe a dying marker, with the band's name in the process of being eroded by color. I tossed it around a few times in my hands, thinking of S & wondering if this was the last time I would ever see him, & in a flush of anxiety I clutched the cassette like pearls & stared straight ahead into the front view & out his driveway. I didn’t see S for a few weeks after this. But when I did, he was alive. Returning home with a new stack of musical mediums I never considered, I went about the task of at least Googling some names. I’m not going to say I became a savant in that afternoon, some of what I listened to didn’t click with me then, but when I began on the Durutti Column’s first album, ‘The Return of the Durutti Column’ (intending to work my way up to ‘The Guitar & Other Machines’) I was, well. I was slightly confused. I had been, at times, shocked by music. There were childhood memories of staring up in awe at Dave Vanian, or obsessing over wanting to be a punk. But this sensation wasn’t necessarily shock. I sat a child in a large chair, watching the white wall, with a brain puzzled by the various moving parts of the album. I was not unsettled. I was not displeased. I was simply confused, listening to a drum machine repeat a single sound, but hearing dozens of other noises moving like small animals in the overgrowth, & I felt as if rain were beginning to subtly drop onto me while I sat under a roof, & I was almost concerned for the music itself. When I left my room after that first record, I stared out the kitchen window, & wondered: if I were to ask a song if it was okay, would it respond ? I went back in, & kept going. Since this surreal gifting of several untouchable treasures, I have returned to the Durutti Column & Vinni Reilly in small bursts over the course of the past few years since. Many things have changed in the time between the band’s first becoming real to me & now, but the sensations I feel in regards to them are almost the same. Except now that I am older I can tell you what it was I was feeling the first time they came to me. Several months after acquiring the album, I fell back into the Durutti Column partially due to a new friend who was also in love with Factory Records. For whatever reason, when I received them this time, I went straight to 1986’s “Circuses & Bread.” It stuck. As a matter of fact, like a ghost, it seeped into me. The functions of this album wherein I could hear every fingertip grazing the string of a guitar, a whir in an open space filled with strands of tall grass, something to sweep you away. I was again, not shocked, I felt no overwhelming horror, I felt only a quiet surprise that this had not previously entered me, & I was decidedly contented. The uncontrolled, whisking sounds like the sounds of the industrial city, trains passing by & printing presses collapsing into their parts, the sound of a grey sky over a busy day. Sitting there with ‘Circuses & Bread,’ & sitting with the Durutti Column for all these years has always felt like people watching. When I listen to them, usually upon waking or before sleeping, it is in my most disillusioned moments. From the half-existence of waking moments, I am reminded by this music that there is a world outside which moves in reactions & in a continuum, moving parts all shifting together. I am reminded of the desolate shopping mall I frequent, & how all the vendors converse from their squares to each other & to customers under dim & flickering lighting. I am reminded of moments in time, at bus stops, watching a dark cloud come in at the same time a stop light turns to green, & the cars begin to rush to their destinations again only to halt once more somewhere, at another light, another stop sign. To begin again. The world outside of our singular existence is moving all around us, in tandem with itself, & every time I accompany myself with the music of the Durutti Column, I am quietly comforted by the remembrance that all life is dependent on each other, & that all I cannot see from my bedroom remains there nonetheless. Even when I cannot know it personally. The Durutti Column are an interesting act, one which evades categorisation within the time but also within the label they hail off of. Despite being an early Factory band, there have been many a time I’ve encountered a Factory devotee who have overlooked one of the most unique & key elements of the label’s catalogue. They are a band of atmosphere, of tone, closer to Ambient 4 than Japanese Whispers, but still filled with a certain worldliness that you cannot mistake for anything other than the human experience. They are a band which arrives to me in waves, there are periods of days where I listen only to the Durutti Column & nothing else. There are months where I don’t listen to them at all. But they have always stuck with me, apart of the disfiguration of art itself in mind, & apart of the way I process the world around me. The subconscious soundtrack to my disassociated drifting in this world, & the experience of that world delivered in gentle spades when I am isolated. It’s a comfort I value immeasurably, knowing how incurable loneliness can be at times. Reilly & friends have given me a gentle breeze of which brings the sound of music, a music which nestled itself inside of me & arises from its rest when it’s needed the most. I love you.