The title of Vini Reilly’s first new music in 14 years under the Durutti Column moniker, Renascent, derives from the Latin re (back) and nasci (to be born): reborn, born again, back to birth. For devoted Reilly listeners, it may be unavoidable to go all the way back to 1980, to post-punk, Anthony Wilson and Factory Records. There, alongside the gothic scythe of Joy Division (soon to become New Order) and the rhythmic bustle of A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column brazenly ploughed an altogether different field, one enriched by crystalline, shimmering guitar, heavenly washes of beautiful tone and vivid serenity, gently picked motifs more in tune with classical guitar and the nascent ambient and new age scenes than the power-chord rattle of the Sex Pistols or Ramones.
The fact this music was born of gritty post-industrial Manchester is no mean feat; the fact Wilson, through his genuine love of Reilly's music, championed it, let alone released it at the height of post-punk England, is more than commendable.
Renascent finds Reilly, as perhaps one might expect, at the intersection of ambient, new age and the expansive terrain explored by progressive post-psychedelic travellers. The later work of Manuel Göttsching springs to mind, particularly in Reilly's expressive, reverberant soloing, drifting through washed-out, dreamlike atmospheres whose textures seem to dissolve almost as quickly as they appear.
A brief glance through the evocative track titles signals familiar thematic touchstones for Reilly. "Echoes in the Memory", "Time Present and Time Past" and "Vapour in a Matchbox" all point towards questions of time, memory and impermanence, themes perhaps more resonant today both on a personal level for Reilly, now approaching the fifth decade of his career, and more broadly in relation to the state of earthly existence itself, hinted at in the closing "All They See Is Fire". On both "Agonistes" and "Sargasso Sea", the restless evolution of Reilly's guitar work, and on the latter, his piano playing too, is accompanied by the subtly ecstatic vocals of fellow Mancunian Caoilfhionn Rose, whose voice lends a further ethereal quality reminiscent of Harold Budd's collaboration with Cocteau Twins on The Moon and the Melodies. It is an atmosphere Reilly himself can reasonably be considered a pioneer of, at least within British post-punk as it gradually fragmented and, almost a decade later, rebirthed itself into dream pop.
On several tracks Reilly allows his own voice to surface. As on the earliest Durutti Column records, it remains little more than a murmur; the human, the real and the sublime dissolving into one another in a quiet, reserved melancholia. Two twinned pieces, "Your Shadow at Morning" and its counterpart "Your Shadow at Evening", sit at the heart of the album's two halves. The former is an expressive, fluid, almost liquid meditation, flashes of brightness breaking through its pensive cloudiness. The latter is propelled by a jagged rhythmic pulse, delayed guitar lines shooting into the distance, their echoes erratically piercing the ether.
The times may indeed change, but some things remain reassuringly constant, and with Durutti Column that is more than just fine. Renascent is a sublime and deeply welcome late-career triumph from a musician forever out of time and out of place. Yet through the haze, Vini Reilly's unmistakable silhouette remains perfectly, beautifully in view.
The Durutti Column - Renascent is available now on vinyl & CD
