Non-Consumers’ Product Guide: Factory Benelux Day, pt 1

Keep your money. There’s nothing for sale. Part 1 of 2. Or 3.

Today is a day of experiment, for non-consumers.

The experiment involves the Factory Benelux record label, beer, gin, drugs, cheese and, with just a dash of luck, sex. Its purpose is, like Boris Becker in a convivial restaurant, three-pronged.

1.  BELGIUM, NETHERLANDS, LUXEMBOURG

Factory Benelux was long seen as a second-string adjunct to the Factory Records label, and a bit of a positioning insult to some of the bands it released. But will the experience of listening to the entire Factory Benelux 45 catalogue be enhanced- by the listener’s positing within Benelux itself?

2. NATIONAL TAT

Will different items typical of Benelux- alcohol, cheese, and space cake, to name three- contribute to, or even chime oddly with, the experience of particular music? For instance, do you want the space cake to have kicked in before ‘Black Death’ by Crispy Ambulance, or after? No- really.

3. CULTURAL EDUCATION – marked  !*!

As a pleb without a degree, Factory Records was part of my education. An example; through liking Factory, and so reading interviews and articles, I first heard of the film ‘Nosferatu’. Like many others, I learned about the things that were part of the Factory aesthetic. Hats off to Tony Wilson for that. Paul Morley also played a big role in this cultural dissemination. In his brief sections of the 1984 Joy Division biography ‘An Ideal For Living’, Morley managed to reference, in my opinion passionately and unpretentiously, various radical political movements, ‘The Outsider’ and ‘The Fall’ by Albert Camus, Futurism, Hans Richter, Alfred Kubin, Nietzsche, Yukio Mishima, Genesis P. Orridge, Dostoevsky, Robert Graves, and ‘We’ by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Good going; Joy Division were in the realm of pop music and ordinary people, in the end. But the questions remain- does the Factory Benelux 45 catalogue offer the same tangential auto-didactic stimulation? And if not, whose fucking fault is it?

One thing’s for sure- the Factory Benelux label was established in 1980 by Michel Duval and Annik Honore, the latter an exotic Flemish beauty of such navel-revealing, aperatif-drinking, tram-riding, library-using European sophistication, she sent craven belly-fizzes right up defenceless Macclesfield Tory Ian Curtis.

Let’s go.

ACR: Shack Up/And Then Again 7” 1980

We’re up, straight away. No beer, no space cake, nothing. Not so much dancing, as kicking the furniture. It certainly sounds like there’s an onanistic Euro dance/sex event in progress, and it’s only 9am.  This is all happening in a small flat, by the way, facing a Dutch canal.

!*! This record contains the lyric, ‘Dirt on the dresser, dirt on the floor’. The oblique, threatening imagery of early ACR- which suggests a taste for some Lou Reed-endorsed European novels, as well as William Burroughs, in ‘Thin Boys’ – is a tribute to unsung lyricist Simon Topping. ‘A wife, with eyes of green and soft white skin, to bear me a child’. ‘As I was waiting for my ferry home, I saw a man get stabbed’.

The Durutti Column: Lips That Would Kiss/Madelene 7”/12” 1980

Childish jokes are great. So was Ian Curtis, and this is a musical tribute to him.

Here’s my favourite online piece on The Durutti Column: www.tangents.co.uk/tangents/main/2001/march/durutti.html

‘Madelene’ has the faintest echo of an electronic dance beat, and is floaty and bright. For the first time, there’s light on the canal and boats, and the sense we’re listening to a European record, in Europe.

!*! It was good of new wave record label Factory to get involved in Europe. In a Factory documentary Vini Reilly said, “I really enjoyed playing in Europe…it was very civilized, people were less aggressive.” As well as preferring it to London, a lot of people around Factory understood Europe’s charm. Mostly, continental Europe is gentler than the UK- it is. Horses for courses. Frankly, it’s time for coffee in an unbelievably tiny cup.

Section 25: Haunted/Charnel Ground 7” 1980

Another musical tribute to Ian Curtis. Quick guess- it hasn’t been played at any family memorials over the years. I love ‘Charnel Ground’, though; feathery Martin Hannett-produced insinuations, a sound that many people today seem to call Cold Wave. Section 25, founders of Cold Wave, hailed from Blackpool.

!*! Martial totalitarianism. Ian Curtis was interested in uniforms; he used  to draw different German uniforms in sketchbooks. He owned a book of ‘30s collages by the anti-Nazi modernist John Heartfield that used a lot of aggressive martial imagery. Section 25 also had a strong martial feel about them. This totalitarian martial aesthetic- maybe even more resonant today, post-Soviet bloc, than it was in 1980- also invests great European films like ‘The Damned’, ‘Come And See’, ‘The Tin Drum’, ‘Army of Shadows’ and ‘The Red And The White’. It isn’t about silly provocation, or childish drawings- it’s about authority, history, memory, seduction and transgression, and has great cultural power.

Crispy Ambulance: Live On A Hot August Night 12” 1981

This is one of my favourite records that Factory ever released. Two angular pop songs, from post-punk Manchester, with love. Easily as good as Wire. The 10-minute bell-ringing Zen Buddhist outro to ‘Concorde Square’ would be perfect for the space cake, but it’s still only 9.35am, and there’s beer, cheese, ham…oh, go on then.

!*! Alan Hempsall from Crispy Ambulance was a big proselytizer for JG Ballard. In 1980 he did a brilliant interview with Joy Division, peer to peer, where he chatted with Ian Curtis about Ballard and his influence on their bands. Another tick for Factory was the way they raised Ballard’s readership among people who happened to like post-punk music.

Section 25: Je Veux Ton Amour/Oyo Achel Ada 7” 1981

A French version of ‘Dirty Disco’ – boo. ‘Oyo Achel Ada’ is an enjoyable drum-thumping proto-trance intoxicant, vaguely reminiscent of ACR’s ‘Blown Away’. The space cake’ll take at least an hour, by the way.

New Order: Everything’s Gone Green 12” 1981

This 12” has the best song New Order ever recorded by a country mile- ‘Cries and Whispers’- and a truly beautiful modernist geometric abstract sleeve by Gillian Gilbert.  

!*! Gillian, Steve Morris, Bernard Sumner, Donald Johnson, and others in the Factory camp would often inspire and contribute to the work of  designer Peter Saville. At this time, the Factory and Benelux sleeves, mostly by Saville and Benoit Hennebert, referenced classic Modernist imagery: Futurism, Italian Rationalism, Constructivism, 1920s graphic design, and abstract painting. The Factory Benelux letterhead used Communist graphic motifs; a hammer, and a cog wheel.

The Names: Postcards/Calcutta 12” 1982

The first of our groups to hail from Benelux- Brussels, in this case- and, thank goodness, what a start; it really is utter fucking bollocks.

Fantastic Hennebert sleeve. Good typeface.

Minny Pops: Time/Lights 7”/12” 1982

Minny Pops came from Amsterdam, and were fabulous. Art, pop music, backdrop projections, standing still on stage wearing shirts and ties. Ja!

‘Time’ is great, with a funny Dutch-accented hookline- “We are wasshting, preshiousshh ti-i—ime,” that everyone should take up, and use at work.

ACR: Guess Who? parts I & II 12” 1982

This sounds like an elderly funk band playing in a dying submarine. It was recorded in Brussels. I think ACR may have been on smack at the time, although this is possibly a naff scurrilous rumour that I am not interested in starting, never mind spreading around. I love it, though. Every time I hear ACR, I get the same edgy, mysterious feeling. The tower and the grey sky. Aircraft, and flight.

Swamp Children: Taste What’s Rhythm 12” 1982

Jazz funk. I like it. So much, this 12” could make me wear pink Lacoste, change my name to Dale, and go on soul weekenders every morning and afternoon, for the rest of my life. With lunchtime breaks for a quick tear-up outside the Kippax.

Swamp Children became UK jazz pioneers Kalima, after a while. Swamp Children’s sole LP ‘So Hot’ is one of the best unsung Factory albums, a sort of spliffed-up Burt Bacharach/Astrid Gilberto feel.

Durutti Column: Les Deux Triangles 12” 1982

More beautiful piano ruminations, recorded in Brussels.

!*! Factory was part of putting Brussels, rightly, on the musical map. There was a Brussels fascination going on among some British groups- Josef K did much recording there. Brussels is great- there is something otherworldly about its best bits- and, in a truly serendipitous cross-cultural pile-up, I think some of the art most evocative of Brussels is actually by Amsterdam modernist painter Carel Willink, who has lots of work displayed in both cities.

Hello- here comes the space cake. Think I’ll crack a Westmalle Dubbel, as well- a kind of tasty Special Brew made by Flemish monks. Part 2 to follow.