Factory Records: Communications 1978-1992 (Rhino) Released 19/01/09

While the box set isn’t definitive, there’s enough here to thoroughly educate those with an interest in the label whilst satiating fanatics with meandering detours through the lesser known back-catalogue – including one-off appearances from James, The Railway Children and Miaow, to name but a few.  Notable Factory exceptions include ESG, the post-punk/house Bronx sisters who played the opening night at the Hacienda, but who couldn’t be featured due to licensing problems.  

Wilson’s favourite Factory track, Joy Division’s ‘Atmosphere’, is also omitted.  But then, maybe that’s because Factory was about more than the self-stylised career of Wilson, a career that was increasingly dominated by an obsession with techno in the latter, ‘madchester’, era of the label.  It’s indisputable that when Tony Wilson died in August 2007, a lot of the Factory spirit died with him – just as Ian Curtis’s death was the loss of Factory’s boy-wonder, in a tragedy that pre-empted the lurching inspirations of the entire Factory venture.  

There’s still plenty to be gained commercially from stoking the embers of the burned out Factory phenomenon if 2007’s monochromatic ‘Control’ is anything to go by.  In its crudest form, the Factory box-set does little more than just that.  And yet, as the music industry limps forth into 2009 trailing the wreckage of countless bought-out and gone-bust independent dreams, now may be a more important time than ever to remind people of the wondrous woolly mammoth that was Factory – a financially shot musical empire built on the fucked-up musical fanaticisms of Manchester’s party people.