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Use Hearing Protection: Factory Records 1978-1979

RHINO 7/10

Limited-edition boxset commemorates cult post-punk label’s eccentric early output

A vinyl repress of Joy Division’s revered debut album Unknown Pleasures is the musical keystone in this deluxe limited-run boxset, which collects together the first 10 items in the fabled Factory Records catalogue. Alongside artwork by Peter Saville and Linder Sterling, plus other esoteric holy relics from the cult Manchester label, is the seminal “Factory Sampler” EP (FAC2), first released in December 1978. Once again, Joy Division inevitably dominate with their sullen slabs of post-punk brutalism, “Digital” and “Glass”, although two embryonic tracks by Vini Reilly’s The Durutti Column teasingly hint at the Pil-style industrial-dub direction the band might have taken before original vocalist Phil Rainford departed. Briefly signed to Factory, Sheffield electronoise provocateurs Cabaret Voltaire also stir up paranoid, menacing, techno-futurist unease with “Baadermeinhof” and “Sex In Secret”. Only Brummie humourist John Dowie’s trio of comic poems sound dated and incongruous today. Also still in larval form here are A Certain Ratio, whose chilly, abrasive, death-disco single “All Night Party” (FAC5) feels too in thrall to the doomy Joy Division aesthetic. Extras: 6/10. Among the bonus material is a rare white-label single by Buzzcocks singer Pete Shelley’s krautrock-meets-punk side project Tiller Boys, a welcome memorial to a Factory contemporary and fellow Manchester music legend.