durutti column: dry

Spittle Records present a reissue of The Durutti Column's Dry, originally released in 1991 on Materiali Sonori. Durutti Column are still one of the most sought-after band of the English post-punk. Since their first album The Return Of Durutti Column (released on Factory in 1980), the guitarist, pianist and composer Vini Reilly has published a series of remarkable albums that filled the gap between new wave and ambient music. Reilly and Bruce Mitchell (who's been working with such major artists like Simply Red and Rod Stewart) represented the future of the Manchester scene moving forward from the forerunners (Joy Division, A Certain Ratio, etc.) to the new musical heroes (Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, and the likes). Materiali Sonori invited The Durutti Column to the first edition of the Greetings Festival in San Giovanni Valdarno in 1985, and build since then a steady relationship with the band. It was precisely Vini Reilly that started the record series Greetings (dedicating to the Belpaese tracks like "Florence Sunset", "San Giovanni Dawn", "For Friends In Italy"). Subsequently, Materiali Sonori dedicated the first cover of the magazine Sonora to Reilly and Mitchell (including a previously unreleased track on the magazine's compact disc). Dry is conceived as a new journey among Vini inventions, through rarefied moods and subterranean streams of sound. The fifteen songs (lasting fifty-five minutes) were recorded in Manchester in 1990. Vini sits in on guitar and piano, while Mitchell is on electronic and acoustic percussion, other instruments such as the clarinet (played by Zinnia Mitchell-Williams, Bruce's daughter), harmonica, viola and keyboards are also featured on the session. Here, once again, Durutti Column's music could be defined as half-way between melancholy rock and "progressive" new age. Licensed from Materiali Sonori.