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A Certain Ratio have released two companion albums on the same day. The Joy of Sextet and Force Majeure both arrived on Mute on 28 August 2026 on limited coloured vinyl, CD and digital, marking 45 years since the Manchester group recorded “Sextet” and 40 years since the release of “Force”. Two extra UK tour dates have been added to the October run that goes with them.

Two different answers to two anniversaries

“Sextet” was recorded at Revolution Studios in Cheadle Hulme, Stockport, in 1981 and released on Factory Records in 1982, the first A Certain Ratio album the band produced themselves. It spent 11 weeks in the UK Independent Chart and reached number one. The line-up on it was Donald Johnson, Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop, Peter Terrell, Simon Topping and Martha “Tilly” Tilson, who the band had met in New York while recording “To Each…”. Kerr has said Tilson’s lyrics “reflect her take on life in Manchester, ‘walk along the waterline, see the ships passing by, grey skies, still water'”.

“The Joy of Sextet” is a new nine-track mix of that record, built by Andy Meecham of The Emperor Machine from the original 1981 two-inch multitrack tapes at Vertical Lab. It keeps six songs from the 1982 album, drops “Skipscada”, “Rub Down” and “Rialto”, and adds “Tumba Rumba”, a “Waterline” dub and a 12-inch version of “Knife Slits Water”. The running order is “Lucinda”, “Crystal” in a night version, “Gum”, “Knife Slits Water”, “Tumba Rumba”, “Day One”, “Below the Canal”, the “Waterline” dub and the “Knife Slits Water” 12-inch version, each carrying an EM credit. Meecham described the work as a return to the desk: “Taking on an epic album like this involved pushing up the faders again from the original 1981 2-inch multitracks adding some new dynamics while recapturing the sound of 1981 without losing the original raw energy and feel. The talent, innovation and sheer musicality blew me away every day I worked on this. A labour of love, one I would undertake again in a heartbeat.”

Side-Line covered two of the singles from it, the “Knife Slits Water” mix in July and “Tumba Rumba” in August, after the two albums were announced in May. Meecham had already reworked “Constant Curve” for the band in 2023. Two further tracks, “Gum” and “Take Me Down”, went up as official audio streams on release day.

“Force Majeure” works the other way round. Rather than remixing the 1986 album, it compiles nine earlier versions of songs from that period, produced by the band with Stuart “Jammer” James, who died in Manchester in July 2015. James had recorded the material on four-track as working demos and later handed the tapes back to the group. Moscrop explained how they resurfaced: “Stuart helped us record the tracks to review the songs for a possible album, to work on arrangements and practice playing them live. Listening to the recordings many years later I was surprised at how good they sounded, so we decided to share them with everyone for this Force companion album”. The album runs “Only Together”, “Bootsy”, “Naked and White”, “And Then She Smiles”, “Take Me Down”, “Anthem”, “The Runner”, “Force” and “Nostromo a Go Go”. Two of those, the title track “Force” and “The Runner”, were not on the 1986 record. That album, recorded and mixed at Yellow 2 Studios in Stockport in July and August 1986, was produced by James with the band and featured Kerr, Moscrop, Johnson, Andy Connell and Anthony Quigley alongside Tom Barnish and Corrine Drewery.

“The Joy of Sextet” is out on “The Joy of Curacao” coloured vinyl, CD and digital; “Force Majeure” is out on “Unforced Purple” coloured vinyl, CD and digital. Both are sold through Bandcamp and the band’s own store.

A Certain Ratio tour dates 2026

The anniversary tour plays both albums in full, in two sets with an interval and no support act. Three shows are sold out, and two dates have been added since the tour was announced: a second Manchester night on 25 October and a Nottingham show on 1 November. The band said of the run: “We’re celebrating these two milestones with this tour, to say we are very excited is an understatement. It will be a real challenge, which we’ve already started preparing for, with nine months to go! We will be playing two sets with no support.”

07.10.2026 – Birmingham, UK – Castle & Falcon
08.10.2026 – Bristol, UK – Exchange
09.10.2026 – London, UK – Dingwalls
10.10.2026 – Lewes, UK – Con Club (sold out)
13.10.2026 – Newcastle, UK – The Cluny
14.10.2026 – Edinburgh, UK – The Voodoo Rooms
15.10.2026 – Glasgow, UK – Òran Mór
16.10.2026 – Blackpool, UK – Bootleg Social
17.10.2026 – Leeds, UK – Brudenell Social Club
22.10.2026 – Hebden Bridge, UK – Trades Club (sold out)
23.10.2026 – Stoke, UK – The Sugarmill
24.10.2026 – Manchester, UK – Band on the Wall (sold out)
25.10.2026 – Manchester, UK – Band on the Wall (added)
01.11.2026 – Nottingham, UK – JT Soarfest

About A Certain Ratio

A Certain Ratio formed in Greater Manchester in 1977 around Peter Terrell on guitar, Simon Topping on vocals and trumpet, Jez Kerr on bass and vocals, Martin Moscrop on trumpet and guitar and Donald Johnson on drums, with Martha Tilson joining soon after. They were among the first acts on Tony Wilson’s Factory Records, debuting in 1979 with “All Night Party”, produced by Martin Hannett, and mixing post-punk with funk, disco and Latin percussion at a point when few of their peers did.

Seven top-ten UK independent releases followed during the Factory years, among them “Flight” and “Waterline”. The studio albums ran from “The Graveyard and the Ballroom” in 1980 through “To Each…” in 1981, “Sextet” in 1982, “I’d Like to See You Again” later that year and “Force” in November 1986. Spells with A&M Records and Rob Gretton’s Robs Records came at the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, after which the band worked intermittently until “Mind Made Up” in 2008.

The current phase runs through Mute, which reissues the back catalogue and has released the recent studio records: “ACR Loco” in September 2020, the “A”, “C” and “R” EPs in 2021, “1982” in 2023 and “It All Comes Down to This” in 2024. The band’s Factory history sits alongside New Order and Happy Mondays in the label’s story, and Side-Line has covered the group’s Mute-era work since Andy Meecham’s “Constant Curve” rework in 2023. The line-up on the current tour is Jez Kerr, Donald Johnson, Martin Moscrop and Martha “Tilly” Tilson, who spend October playing “Sextet” and “Force” end to end.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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