DURUTTI COLUMN - Renascent

It took sixteen years to hear a new work from English guitarist Vini Reilly's project, following a period marked by serious health problems and a long recovery. Durutti Column is a legendary creature in the world of independent music, having emerged from the clamour of Manchester's post-punk scene and tied to Factory Records. While Joy Division and then New Order were electrifying venues and making noise, Reilly & co. offered, with the debut “The Return Of The Durutti Column” (1980) and the masterpiece “LC” (1981), an almost entirely instrumental body of work, tinged with dream-pop and new wave, pared-down in texture but never in the harmonic solutions of the guitar, which sat at the centre of every composition.

That fire now burns intermittently, but the great love for the instrument, for its performance techniques and for a kind of contemplative, timeless music remains intact, recalling Reilly's overseas alter ego, Mark Nelson with his Pan American project. “Renascent” is therefore a long-awaited return, but a bittersweet one. This “rebirth” opens with the minimal style of “Echoes In The Memory”, with Americana shades reminiscent of William Tyler, and closes with the romanticism of “All They See Is Fire”, between sung verses and shards of guitar and brass.
The rest of the tracklist is split between fully realised songs and overly impressionistic sketches, alternating clear, emotionally engaging compositional ideas (“Sargasso Sea”, featuring the vocals of Caoilfhionn Rose, and “For Friends Everywhere”, with its delightful horn phrasing) with barely sketched openings (“Agonistes”) and not entirely successful forays into flamenco (“Your Shadow At Morning”), new age (“Time Present and Time Past”) and hip-hop (“Liars”).

Some tracks remind us well of who Durutti Column is and how they can still sound (“Vapour In A Matchbox”): an artist out of step with his time, yet still curious enough to look around and try something different. As Reilly sings on “Scammer”: “And I’m just this fucking elephant/ In a wide room of cells with sharp-shaped bones/ Those wounds are twice all the wild times/ That change the way they break”.

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21/09/2026