Kevin McCormick & David Horridge - Light Patterns
£23.00
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BACK IN PRINT! Smiling C's reissue of Light Patterns, the sole album by Manchester-based duo Kevin McCormick and David Horridge first released via Sheet back in 1982, seemed to hit a sweet spot on its initial release earlier this year, copies disappearing before we had time to fully process its subtle charms. It's appeal now is understandable, a hybridisation of the more vaporous aspects of the ECM catalogue, Durutti Column-like sensitivity and the dreamworld ambiance of much of the Music from Memory universe (Gaussian Curve and such like). So far so NTS-friendly 2021 (no bad thing ftr, in case that sounded salty), yet there's also a gentle poetry to Light Patterns that lends it an emotional dimension beyond its obvious elegance. The delay-rich tone of the guitars (not to mention their sharing of a city) makes Vini Reilly an obvious ally, though McCormick and Horridge feel a long way removed from the industrial austerity of 80s Manchester that birthed Factory. Still, there's a home-recorded, DIY assurance to their vision that affords both grace and the kind of power only really possible when you're creating with no-one but yourselves in mind. Reprinted in Smiling C's sales note are words from the original PR issued by Sheet, and they bear repeating here, too: "put the album on, lie back and enter the land of no floors”. Yes, and perhaps, no ceilings, either.
