Track Listing

1. Sketch For Dawn
2. Portrait For Fraser
3. Jacqueline
4. Messidor
5. Sketch For Dawn (2)
6. Never Know
7. Act Committed
8. Detail For Paul
9. Missing Boy
10. Sweet Cheat Gone
11. For Mimi
12. Belgian Friends
13. Self Portrait
14. One Christmas For Your Thoughts
15. Danny
16. Enigma

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #165000 in Music
• Released on: 1996-12-02
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

A disconcerting, beautifully nocturnal mess of a record...
To call LC by the Durutti Column anything other than difficult would be, in a sense, somewhat misleading to those of you thinking of making the purchase. The music here is dense, ambient, and deeply atmospheric... moving in and out of different styles freely, whilst traversing a path that encompasses everything from ethereal summer jazz, to cloudy industrialist desolation. The effect is something like a combination of the Style Council and Can, if that particular band happened to be fronted by an even more morose Ian Curtis. Incidentally, the spirit of Curtis and, to an extent Joy Division is stamped all over this work... from the crystal-clear production of Martin Hannett on the bonus disk, to the Curtis tribute song, the Missing Boy.

Reilly’s vocals are both idiosyncratic and impressionistic, filled with a sort of limp detachment, which strangely enough, makes the songs all the more emotional... whilst the moody and ambient guitar parts weave in and out of one another to create a lush and dreamy sound-scape for the listener to immerse themselves in. Reilly’s voice is at times droning, which lends itself to the hypnotic impassiveness of the musical arrangements, something that could be said about the use of percussion of PIL’s the Flowers of Romance or the use of background guitar on the majority of Eno’s 70’s work. It gives a song like Sketch for Dawn I, the album’s introduction, or the instrumental piece Portrait for Frazer, a completely alien quality... it represents a staggering change of pace from the late 70’s into the early 80’s and certainly acts as something of a precursor to the more relaxed, grown-up territory of mid-80’s punk fall out bands like the Jam, the Police and the Attractions.

It can at times be a deeply inconsistent listen... largely due to Reilly’s scatterbrain diversity (and it certainly isn’t a record you would want to listen to before beginning your day). The other reviewer summed it up best as a ‘night-time’ record, and the comparisons with Pink Moon and a band like Labradford, with the music existing in it’s own nocturnal little world shut off from the influence of everything else around it. Stuff like Jacqueline (an instrumental love song with more poetry than Wordsworth), Act Committed and Detail for Paul have some of the most beautiful musical sounds ever committed to tape, with Reilly opening his heart to us like the proverbial bedroom poet, though, unlike the majority of others, is able to reach an audience (albeit a somewhat small one; with Reilly being in the upper-echelons of all-time cult artists) and share with us these astounding passages of sound.

It takes a few listens to really relax into the singular strangeness of what Reilly was doing with the band at the time of this record’s release... what with the pop charts saturated with synth acts like ABC, Tears for Fears and Duran-Duran... this however, is closer to the likes of Public Image, Joy Division, Mark Hollis and early period Fall, with Reilly putting his emotions at the fore and allowing his mumbled vocals to guide us right through to the end (or the dawn, for that matter). It takes dedication... but once the music reveals itself to us, the results are often mesmerising.

The first peak of Vini Reilly's long career
Picking up where the debut 'Return of..' left off, LC sees the trademark echoey guitar and warm electronic beats of that album supplemented by Bruce Mitchell's supple cymbal-less drums and Vini's first instrument, the piano. It's all pretty much variations on a theme, but what a theme ! Pretty much suitable to relax and think over to at any time of the year, songs like 'Sketch for Dawn' and 'Never Known' (my all time favourite DC moment) also features Reilly's wistful, smudged vocals for the first time. There's a few extra bonus tracks added on too, none of them fillers, and the original of 'The Missing Boy' (a tribute to Joy Division's Ian Curtis, who had died the previous year - 1980), which became a staple in DC's live set for years to come. This is truly beautiful album on many levels and along with 'Bread and Circuses' and 'Vini Reilly' their best; given the price well worth a throw. Indulge yourself..I'm so confident you'll like it I've even let you know where to find me.

A master at work.
LC is the first album on which the Durutti Column started to sound like the Durutti column, thanks to a quick change of guitar (to a stratocaster), producer and personnel. All the sounds on this album are actually wonderful. "Jacqueline", in particular is a true master guitarist at work, sounding like a love song without any words. Both "sketch for dawn" I and II are great, one an uptempo affair while the other is distinctly depressed, showing both sides of waking up, as far as I'm concerned, as sometimes I bound out of bed, and at others I just want to crawl back under the covers and go back to sleep. As everyone else has mentioned, "Never Known" is a particular highlight, as is the ode to recently deceased (back then) Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis, entitled "The Missing Boy", in which the discovery of Reilly's Piano Skills as a counterpoint to his guitar playing is a true revelation. In short, this is a great album in all ways - a singularly recognisable and gorgeous sound put into well arranged pieces of music and the first sound of Durutti's voice - the speak-singing of Reilly himself. Always a bone of contention among those who hear these records (at least, those I know), I believe that it is extremely important that Vini Reilly expresses himself through his own voice, especially on records as personal as this one clearly is. It merely adds another layer to his individual sound. To sum up I would say that this is the best early durutti album there is - a great place to start!