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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/factory_records_logo_1978.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:350:A Factory logo.]]
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4[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/factory_logo_2.jpg]]
5[[caption-width-right:350:Another one.]]
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7Factory Records was a Manchester-based independent record label, active between 1978 and 1992, that was home to many prominent acts in the area such as Music/JoyDivision[=/=]Music/NewOrder, Music/HappyMondays, The Durutti Column, and A Certain Ratio. Alongside Creator/MuteRecords and Rough Trade Records, Factory served as one of the "big three" labels of the British AlternativeRock scene. The label took its name from Creator/AndyWarhol's studio, The Factory.
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9Factory was formed in 1978 as a club by TV presenter Tony Wilson and band manager Alan Erasmus, holding performances from a variety of PostPunk and {{industrial}} bands, many of whom would become signees on the label. Factory began releasing singles and albums in 1979, with their first album being Joy Division's debut ''Music/UnknownPleasures''. Similar to Creator/FourADRecords, another British PostPunk label with a cult following, Factory used a ProductionPosse (including RecordProducer Martin Hannett and graphic designer Peter Saville) to give the label and the artists recording for it a particular sound and image, one that ended up extending to the artists' genres as well, with Joy Division in particular becoming ''the'' defining band of the post-punk movement.
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11Factory also used a unique (in all senses of the word) cataloging system that provided numbers not just to recordings, but also artwork, projects, and whatever the hell Tony Wilson felt like assigning a number to. This included the Haçienda, a Manchester club that Factory owned (FAC 51); a lawsuit filed against the label by Hannett (FAC 61); a nameless stray cat who lived in The Haçienda's basement (FAC 191); a short-lived hairdressing salon in that same basement (FAC 98); a table (FAC 331); a bet between Wilson and Joy Division manager Rob Gretton (FAC 253); a dental surgery procedure Gretton underwent (FAC 99); and a Happy Mondays album issued in 2007-- long after Factory went bust-- on a completely different label (FAC 500). A complete list of these numbered non-music items can be found [[https://www.discogs.com/label/857-Factory here]].
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13Factory was well-known for only having a handful of acts releasing material for them at any one time. Aside from Joy Division/New Order and Happy Mondays, the label's other stalwarts included A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column, Section 25, Northside, The Railway Children, Cath Carroll and Kalima. They also released one-off singles from Music/CabaretVoltaire, James, Music/OrchestralManoeuvresInTheDark and Crispy Ambulance.
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15In the early 80's, Factory opened branches in America and Australia. It also created a European division, Factory Benelux, which got many exclusive releases (some of which had been passed over by the British label).
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17By the mid 80's, the success of AlternativeDance bands New Order and Happy Mondays (the former of whom was born from the ashes of Joy Division following Ian Curtis' 1980 suicide) allowed Factory to open to a variety of acts, particularly in the techno and acid house genres. It also expanded into ClassicalMusic with the Factory Classical label, which was launched in 1989.
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19However, the success would not last forever; in 1992, due to the costly failure of Happy Mondays' album ''Yes Please'' (itself having already burned through most of the record label's money) and the lengthy delay in New Order following up their acclaimed 1989 album ''Music/{{Technique}}'', Factory began to have serious financial problems. While London Records was interested in buying Factory, the deal went south when they found that Factory's earlier practice of not using contracts meant that the bands held the rights to their own backlogs, not the label. Thus the label was forced to declare bankruptcy in November 1992. Many of Factory's artists, including New Order, would go on to sign with London Records anyways; it would be through them that New Order would finally release ''Music/{{Republic}}'', the ''Technique'' follow-up that could've kept Factory going.
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21In 1994, Tony Wilson revived the label (in partnership with London Records) as Factory Too, with the Durutti Column and some new acts on the roster, but this incarnation ended later in TheNineties; during its brief lifetime, Factory Too also had an offshoot label called Factory Once, which was devoted to reissuing Happy Mondays and Durutti Column material previously released on the original Factory Records. In 2004, Wilson tried to revive Factory again under a new name, F4, but the label signed only two acts (The Durutti Column and HipHop group Raw-T) and went under after only a year.
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23Tony Wilson died of cancer in 2007; his coffin received the last Factory catalog number assigned to date, FAC 501. The highest Factory number is FAC 511, which Wilson gave to a 2004 memorial event for Rob Gretton, who would have been 51 that year.
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25A sightly inaccurate and somewhat flippant history of Factory Records was depicted in the 2002 film ''Film/TwentyFourHourPartyPeople'' (FAC 401). Another Factory-centric film is ''Film/{{Control}}'', the 2007 Ian Curtis {{Biopic}}; no Factory number was assigned to it due to it releasing roughly two months after Wilson's death. However, Wilson produced the film, making it the last major project he worked on in his lifetime.
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27In 2006, British author/music executive James Nice released ''Shadowplayers'', a {{documentary}} film about Factory's history; he turned it into a book in 2010. In 2012, Nice revived [[http://factorybenelux.com Factory Benelux]], which releases both reissues and new recordings by Factory artists, preserving and extending Factory's legacy into the 21st century.
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29!!Factory performers with Website/TVTropes pages:
30[[index]]
31* Music/CabaretVoltaire[[note]]Only their appearance on ''A Factory Sample'' (FAC 2) and the "Yashar" single (FAC 82)[[/note]]
32* Music/{{Electronic}}
33* Music/HappyMondays
34* Music/JoyDivision
35** FACT 10 - ''Music/UnknownPleasures'' (1979)
36** FACT 25 - ''Music/{{Closer}}'' (1980)
37** FACT 250 - ''Music/{{Substance|Joy Division Album}}'' (1988)
38* Music/NewOrder
39** FACT 50 - ''Music/{{Movement}}'' (1981)
40** FACT 75 - ''Music/PowerCorruptionAndLies'' (1983)
41** FACT 100 - ''Music/LowLife'' (1985)
42** FACT 150 - ''Music/{{Brotherhood}}'' (1986)
43** FACT 200 - ''[[Music/SubstanceNewOrderAlbum Substance]]'' (1987)
44** FACT 275 - ''Music/{{Technique}}'' (1989)
45* Music/OrchestralManoeuvresInTheDark[[note]]Only OMD's first single ("Electricity", FAC 6)[[/note]]
46* Music/SexPistols[[note]]No musical releases, but Factory released ''The Heyday'' (FACT 30), a "documentary cassette" of interviews with band members[[/note]]
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48!!See also:
49* FAC 401 - ''Film/TwentyFourHourPartyPeople''
50* ''Film/{{Control}}''
51[[/index]]

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