2025 repress
BACK IN PRINT! Smiling C's reissue of Light Patterns, the sole album by Manchester-based duo Kevin McCormick and David Horridge first issued via Sheet back in 1982, seemed to hit a sweet spot on its initial re-release in 2021, copies disappearing before we had time to fully process its subtle charms. It's appeal has continued to endure way beyond any plaudits it might (or in this case, definitely did not) receive four decades ago, 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 de rigeur, 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.
FFO: Durutti Column, G.S. Schray, Gaussian Curve, Roger Doyle, Steve Hiett
