David Horridge - Journey Within

Smiling C return to 80s Manchester's parallel dimension with this previously unheard collection of home recordings by David Horridge, who you'll likely remember as the other guitarist on Kevin McCormick's elegant dreamzoner, Light Patterns. Since these five tracks were recorded in 1982, the same year in which Light Patterns was first released, there's a very clear continuation of theme and tone. Elusive, vaporous guitar figures of the same astral plane as Vini Reilly and Maurice Deebank, though somehow shadowed with an even more lonesome outsider tone (i realise that's quite the qualification). If there is a difference to Light Patterns then it's in that very distinction - this is very solitary music, almost certainly conceived for an audience of one, a DIY attempt to channel Gottsching for its own inner world journeying/escapism. As if to confirm it, there's the bontempi bossa nova of the closing track to suggest the lonely paradise of the desert island union of Durutti Column and Steve Hiett. A long way from Manchester just as it was becoming the centre of the world, which is about as outsider as it comes.