Durutti Column London Riverside Studios

The Life Of Reilly

THE DURUTTI COLUMN 

Riverside Studios

THE SPARSE formality of Hammersmith Riverside Studios was perfectly in tune with the return of Vinnie Reilly. the last in the season of Factory Goes To Hammersmith. And if the audience was more balding and bearded than bleak and industrial, well, that was par for the course as well. Vinnie Reilly may look like the eternal child prodigy, but this is very adult entertainment.

Flanked by banners making a cryptic statement about the relationship between art and technology, and dwarfed by a grand piano, the boy wonder borrowed a phrase from Peel as introduction. "It starts quietly," he explained, "but it gets louder later on."

And so it did — but always the attention was lured back to Reilly's fluid guitar — the sound that is Durutti Column, as exemplified by their second piece, 'Sketch For Summer'. Surely one of the most evocative pieces of music ever released, wherever you heard it first, this was guaranteed to make that period of your life come flooding back.

From the duo of Mitchell and Reilly, gradually the numbers swelled to an eight-piece orchestra of sorts, shown to its best advantage on the condensed 20-minute reading of 'Without Mercy', the forthcoming Fac 84. The recurring motif was passed around like an old photograph, lovingly from cello to trumpet and around again - a rolling stone gathering a little moss here and there.

Then, having pushed our rapt concentration to its conclusion, the light relief. Blaine Reininger downed his viola, stepped forward and burst into his party piece — an unrecognisable version of ‘Sweet Jane', more Springsteen than Velvet Underground — then was gone. The brass section took their cue and encored with a Charlie Parker number, leaving Reilly and Mitchell to pick up the threads once again and ease us gently on our way. Surprised, enlightened and satisfied after an unexpected feast.

JANE SIMON