So…Kooky was, still is and always occasionally will be Alex and Phil or Phil and Alex.
We are sorry that it has been a while. Please do not think our love for the music of The Durutti Column has waned; any more than yours. As big fans it is great to announce that we will be releasing some more Durutti Column music over the next twelve months on vinyl.
Vinyl will be 180gm with anti-static inner sleeves. No download codes but we hope to add a CD version with the release.
All will be available in a limited vinyl colour runs but plenty to make it easy enough to get hold of one. The limited runs will be at the ‘indie’ shops ‘though and we buy from ‘proper’ people ourselves.
None of these will be Record Store Day releases. It just doesn’t work that well in getting one to those who want one.
Every penny goes to the band – Simple.
So that is all profits from digital and physical sales.
* Albums were previously only released on compact disc through Kooky.
Thank you for sticking with us. It means a lot. We have never taken your love and support for granted. We have never been away, just popped out.
More news to come…
Lotta Continua
The debut 7” vinyl from bloody/bath ‘Idle Hands’ is out now released by Kooky>Too. It’s a peach – a gloomy neu wave banger for our gloomy fin de siècle death-spiralling age.
Championed by John Kennedy on Radio X as his “hot one” and Steve Lamacq on 6 music as “.. so elegant and haunted, in an almost gothic way, but with that bass momentum of a proper post-punk song”.
Sonically a bout of sleep paralysis, emotionally a midnight text from your favourite ex, bloody/bath are feverish, and bewitching taking a post-punk passage that sounds distinctly their own. Catchy melodies dance throughout the tracks, disguising a heaviness, a desperation, drowning somewhere beneath the surface. Louder Than War describe the bloody/bath sound as “Stop-The-Clocks pop. Music to submerge yourself in. Wallow deep, then count your blessings”.
Bloody/bath have steadily created a large following on spotify with over 1.8 million streams and over 36,000 monthly listeners – particular streaming numbers in London, Berlin and across Eastern Europe. Summoned initially by Northampton singer-songwriter Kailan Price, but now a fully-fledged five-piece band, interest has been soaring following their incendiary live sets invited to play for Slow Dance at the Brixton Windmill, and other shows in London, Bristol and Bedford with Ritual Howls, Do Nothing and Minor Conflict.
The limited edition 7” single is available from Bandcamp and all good record shops distributed by Cargo.
Label Notes: Kooky>Too is an offshoot of Kooky Records est 1996 previous output including the acclaimed Durutti Column album ‘A Paean To Wilson’, Maps, Pram, Seafood, and Misty’s Big Adventure. This is the debut label release.
Released 11th February 2022
“Sunlight to blue … Blue to blackness” – This was one of the more upbeat title suggestions for the very bare, back to basics, reflective album from The Durutti Column. Originally released in June 2008, Sunlight to Blue… was a conscious response to the previous two polished and ‘studio-based’ releases.
Here he created some sparse, simply beautiful ‘sketches’ as he once called them, more reminiscent of his work from the early eighties. Many of the pieces are instrumentals played on his Juan Montero flamenco guitar, and he returns to ‘Without Mercy’ for the last track ‘Grief’ whilst reinventing ‘Never Known’ from LC.
Now, for the first time, the LP is available remastered and re-packaged as a gatefold double 12” 180gram vinyl release.
This album also saw the debut of the then talented young pianist and singer, Poppy Morgan, who co-wrote the melancholy Ananda as a duet with what Reilly dryly called ‘intrusive guitar’.
For the uninitiated, Vini was the first artist signed to Manchester’s influential Factory Records, co-wrote and played on Morrissey’s first solo album ‘Viva Hate’, and was heavily featured in the Manchester music culture film, ’24 Hour Party People’. Vini Reilly has recorded under the name The Durutti Column since 1978 and has a rich portfolio of work, releasing over twenty albums in this time.
Ever critical of Vini’s voice, but ever a fierce champion of his talent, the late Tony Wilson would surely appreciate this return of The Durutti Column.
Release Date: 04/08/2020
The first stand-alone vinyl single to be released by The Durutti Column this century will be released on Vini Reilly’s Birthday early August 2020. ‘Free From All The Chaos’, was originally on the CD release ‘Chronicle’ presented with the unreleased track ‘Number Three’, from the same sessions, also includes the voice of singer/songwriter Caoilfhionn Rose a collaborator with the band over the past five years.
A series of releases originally on the KOOKY imprint will be re-issued for the first time on vinyl, including the very limited CHRONICLE album. ‘Chronicle’ is a body of work commissioned from Vini Reilly as an autobiographical project concluding with a series of live shows.
It will be released for the first time in VINYL format later this year.
A limited run of 750 copies c/w a Trevor Johnson designed sleeve on crystal clear vinyl.
Released in 1983, label-owner Miguel met the band in the Manchester before subsequently inviting them to record a single in Portugal. As the story goes, Vini came and recorded a whole albums worth of material, which would be quickly developed into following releases. This was the pre-cursor to Without Mercy and it contains some beautiful little tunes and is highly under-rated and overlooked.
The original release was a soundboard recording of originally 4000 vinyl copies and a subsequent 1000 CD re-release on Kooky. “An interesting wheeler-dealer, involved in bootleg recordings at the time, arrived in his cream Rolls Royce at a Mayfair hotel restaurant that he had appointed. He brought cash and me and Vini scribbled out a contract and an agreement on a white napkin that had been surrounding Vini’s burnt bacon.