The Durutti Column Renascent Listening Session

Head Hi invites you to experience and honor legendary English post-punk band The Durutti Column's new album ‘Renascent’ along with quintessential classics ‘The Return of The Durutti Column’ (1979) and ‘Vini Reilly’ (1989), all on vinyl heard through Head HiFi's vintage Klipsch LaScala sound system. Join us on Thursday, August 13 for this exclusive listening session tour in some of the best Hi-Fi listening spaces in New York and Los Angeles, in partnership with In Sheep's Clothing and label London Records.

Participants will receive exclusively ‘An introduction to The Durutti Column’, a 10-track Durutti Column CD sampler spanning the band’s career (limited quantity per event, first come first serve), and have a chance to buy a unique tote bag – both items were made specifically for these listening events and not be available anywhere else. ‘Renascent’ will also be available for pre-order with RSVP below and for purchase at the event Head Hi.

See you there!

----

More about the music: Total originals are a rare thing. Yet across five decades, guitarist Vini Reilly and his band, The Durutti Column have created their own, instantly recognisable style of music: intricate but unflashy, immediate yet timeless, melancholic but ecstatic. Primarily instrumental, The Durutti Column have, over their long career, produced indie chamber music (1983’s Another Setting), a modern classical suite (1984’s Without Mercy), sampledelia (1989’s Vini Reilly), dance music (1990’s Obey the Time) and flamenco-infused pop (1998’s Time was Gigantic… When We Were Kids), while always sounding unmistakably, indelibly, themselves. Now, 46 years after their debut, they have a new album, Renascent, to crest that incredible catalogue. 

On arrival in 1980 with The Return of the Durutti Column, the band had no obvious precursors. Despite Tony Wilson setting up Factory to release Reilly’s music, Durutti’s pastoral, romantic ethos had few peers within urban, cynical post-punk. Since the turn of the century, however, Durutti have seen an increasing number of successors, with acts as diverse as Frank Ocean, The Avalanches, Yung Lean, Youth Lagoon and Mark William Lewis declaring or demonstrating their influence. This increased visibility has brought Durutti Column a new generation of fans, and with the new album’s title, Renascent meaning “being reborn, reviving, springing up afresh” (OED), it represents a renaissance not just in the band’s popularity but in their artistry. Durutti’s first collection of new material since 2010’s A Paean to Wilson, the title also suggests a return to beginnings, with the album boasting a Factory Too catalogue number courtesy of Wilson’s son, Oliver. Musically, the album channels both ‘Time Present and Time Past’ as its lovely, Philip-Glass-like instrumental has it, moving forwards while also looking backwards. Appositely then, the artwork is designed by original Factory collaborators 8vo, who reunited especially for this album. Like Durutti, 8vo combined modernism (grid systems, typographic precision) with Romanticism: the lustrous purples, greens and oranges of Renascent’s artwork being gloriously sensuous rather than graphically stark, perfectly capturing the contents. 

----

Head Hi is an organization dedicated to art, architecture, design and sound specializing in publications and cultural programming with an espresso bar located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the Navy Yard. We feature a curated selection of publications from around the globe. Working with local and international artists, designers, publishers, and organizations in various fields, Head Hi is a space for exploration and interaction that hosts talks, book launches, exhibitions, music, performances and other events. Head Hi Fi enhances the experience of sound in the space with its vintage Klipsch La Scala speakers. @headhi_ny

In Sheep's Clothing is a source for analog music culture. Founded in 2018 as part of the first wave of jazz kissa inspired listening bars in the United States, ISC has since expanded to a label, distributor, and online music publication while continuing to curate listening events around the world. “to hear more, say less”. @insheepsclothinghifi

London Records has been responsible for some of the most amazing aural experiences of the past eight-decades. By any barometer, London Records has achieved staggering success (chart success, cultural shifts, a broad expanse of genres), and then some. But if you really want to assess a record label’s true importance it has to, quite simply, come down to the music. And London Records has released some of the most essential music by some of the most vital bands and performers in existence. In its current rebirth the label plays home to some of music’s most exciting new talent such as Alewya, Joalin, Shadowchild and The Busy Twist (under its LDN sister label), as well as coming full circle, working once more with the likes of Goldie, Orbital, Blancmange and Shakespears Sister (on London Records). Its lineage of acts reads like a veritable who’s who of popular music: Bananarama, Fine Young Cannibals, Flowered Up, Sugababes, East 17, Bronski Beat, Echo & the Bunnymen and Orbital are just some examples of the label’s deep reaching and profound cultural influence. The label has brought the likes of Orbital and Shakespears Sister back into the charts with new music, and also creating the exciting new imprint, LDN, an incubator for incredible, forward-thinking new talent. @londonrecords