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. That renaissance has revved up in the 2020s, with Durutti appearing on the soundtracks of hit drama The Bear and blockbuster game Grand Theft Auto, being sampled by Blood Orange (2025’s ‘The Field’) and hymned by Harry Styles as an influence on 2026’s Kiss All the Time. Disco Occasionally. With Durutti’s debut’s ‘Sketch for Summer’ hitting 25 million Spotify plays, this band who’ve always been beyond fashion, has soundtracked Dries Van Noten’s Autumn-Winter 2025 runway show and Jonathan Anderson’s debut collection for Dior’s Spring-Summer 2026 range.

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.

“Every single piece of music writes itself” says Reilly, the longevity of his mercurial, in-the-moment ‘sketches’ being proof you can capture ‘Vapour in a Matchbox’ as an immaculate solo guitar instrumental declares and demonstrates on Renascent. Because Vini Reilly’s vapour has substance and depth – alongside gossamer lightness and emotional immediacy – meaning those improvised ‘details’ become defined musical artefacts that are played live for decades afterwards.

Long-term drummer Bruce Mitchell recalls his introduction to this way of working during the recording of 1981’s Brian Eno-favourite LC. “You’d set the kit up, you didn’t know the song and Vin would play it at you – but he’d only play it at you once or twice, and he’d want the engineer to have his levels done while this was happening and then he’d want to record it.”

For Reilly the idea is “To break with whatever supports the foundations of musical formalism”, to remove the constraints of conventional thinking from music, again an essentially Romantic notion, but applied to distinctly modern methods. Producer/bassist Keir Stewart expands: “It has a lot to do with freedom. Vin wants to be there for as little time as possible, when the creativity’s happening, when the paint’s flying around. He doesn’t want to be around for the needlework”. This desire has only increased as Reilly’s health has deteriorated in recent years.

Like all Durutti albums, but more so, Renascent was recorded on the fly, “popping round to Vin’s and just trying stuff with a laptop or a field recorder” as Stewart puts it. The process started in 2017, then picked up during lockdown, when ‘popping round’ became a bit more involved. “Keir would drive his van outside Vin’s kitchen, because of Covid restrictions” remembers Mitchell, “and Vin would record in his kitchen straight into the van, while Keir sat over the knobs.”

Typifying Durutti’s career, Reilly’s guitar and drum machine improvisation, ‘For Belgian Friends’ (from 1980’s A Factory Quartet), long a live favourite, has been rendered renascent by Stewart’s studio needlework. Rearranged as an orchestral octet, ‘For Friends Everywhere’ is “the Durutti Column tune that’s taken the longest to complete” says Stewart, who, despite joining in 1998, still feels like the new boy – he was surprised Mitchell and Reilly loved the arrangement. “I was thinking about looking back across the decades, and all the people that have come and gone and been involved in the Durutti Column extended family, like bookending. The original has got a happy/sad thing going on, and the new version is joyful but there’s a lot of pathos in there.” With its reflective, nostalgic air complete with ‘northern’ French Horn, it’s like Brian Wilson producing the Hovis advert. It’s a lovely tribute: to Reilly, to music – and to friendship.

For Reilly, “empathy is the essence of humanity, if you lose that ability to empathise, it’s the deadening of your own soul.” It’s notable how many Durutti tracks are named after people (‘Katharine’, ‘Jaqueline’), dedicated to someone (‘Requiem for a Father’, ‘Detail for Paul’) or characterise someone (‘Pol in B’). This empathetic impulse runs through the new album: the single ‘Liars’ consists of Reilly repeating “I am sorry, I love you”. That empathy is also expressed in the love that Stewart and Mitchell have put into realising Reilly’s vision. “Vin’s songs are constantly surprising,” says Mitchell, “you want to keep on listening to them over and over again.” On hearing the completed Renascent Mitchell says: “it’s like a child that leaves home for a long time and then they return and you love them all the more all over again.”

That empathetic impulse is also evident in Renascent being among the most collaborative albums Durutti have made – and not just because of the increased input of Mitchell and particularly of Stewart. Reilly’s Manchester neighbour, folktronica artist Caoilfhionn Rose sings on the stately, yearning ‘Agonistes’ and sings and plays piano on the gorgeous, hymn-like ‘Sargasso Sea’. Unbeknownst to Stewart, the singer on the serene ‘All They See is Fire’ had transitioned from female to male after the recording, making Stewart’s decision to down-pitch their vocal entirely fitting. Lucas Elliott’s contribution then is typical Durutti Column serendipity, a happy accident produced by interactions between people, in all their unexpectedness and unpredictability.

Few people are more unpredictable than Reilly, who says, “From the moment we’re born we’re never ever instigative, only ever reactive. It’s like Newton’s law of motion, if you’re not pushing against anything, you lose momentum.” Durutti Column are still pursuing that momentum – the momentum of the moment – 46 years after their inception: they are Renascent.

Toby Manning, April 2026