Thirty Minutes Of Ambient Guitar Music

I'm not sure what it says about where my head is at right now but I'm being drawn back once again to the sounds of Vini Reilly's guitar and with that to the idea that guitars can make ambient music. A couple of albums have come my way in the last year that slot right into this- Kevin McCormick's Passing Clouds and Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles. It may be no coincidence that both of the guitarists behind these albums are from the Manchester area (Kevin is now residing in Mobberley, a village not far south of Manchester and whoever Thought Leadership is lives in Edgeley, Stockport). Vini Reilly's guitar and echo and chorus pedals have been making their hard to pin down but spellbinding sounds since the late 70s when he was placed into a room with Martin Hannett and they came up with The Return Of the Durutti Column. I first heard Durutti Column's music in 1987 and it's been close to my stereo ever since. Vini has retired, his health poor since having three strokes back in the late 00s but his legacy as one of Factory Records' true geniuses is secure. 

This mix pulls together some Durutti Column songs ('silly little tunes', according to Vini) along with Kevin McCormick and Thought Leadership and the former Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie who has been releasing ambient guitar tracks onto his Bandcamp page for some time. A chilled and slightly melancholic autumnal ambient guitar mix for late September 2025. 

The world is a shitshow and a bin fire. Trump and Netanyahu lie and deceive from the stage at the United Nations. Farage lies about immigrants. Starmer follows Farage down a path that can only be a dead end. Racists hoist flags from lampposts and paint roundabouts. Life seems to get a little bit worse every day. But we still have music- and we will have it long after Trump, Netanyahu, Farage and all the rest of them have shuffled off the stage and disappeared. 

Thirty Minutes Of Ambient Guitar Music

• Durutti Column: Sketch For A Manchester Summer 1989
• Robin Guthrie: Mountain
• Kevin McCormick: It's Been A Long Time
• Kevin McCormick: Alone In A Crowd
• Thought Leadership: III
• Durutti Column: A Room In Southport
• Durutti Column: Royal Infirmary
• Michael Hix: Pure Land

Sketch For A Manchester Summer starts with the rain falling, taped from the door of Vini's West Didsbury home thirty six years ago. It rains quite a lot in Manchester- you might have heard. The synth that bubbles away with the rain is joined by Vini's guitar and for a couple of minutes a rainy Mancunian summer is the only place to be. The song is tucked away on an album of rarities, sessions and unreleased recordings, The Sporadic Recordings- some of them were done at Sporadic Studios, Manchester. CD only, now fairly rare. 

Robin Guthrie's guitar lit up Cocteau Twins and for the last few years he's released all sorts of music onto his Bandcamp page, including lots of ambient guitar pieces. Montain was recorded in Brittany, France in 2022, a track Robin refers to as an 'orphaned track', one which didn't find a place at the time. Released on Bandcamp a year ago, September 2024.

Kevin McCormick made several albums of guitar music in Manchester in the late 70s and early 80s. His work was lost for decades and then rediscovered and re- issued in 2021 on the Smiling C label. In 2024 Kevin released a new album, Passing Clouds, one I can't recommend enough. It's Been A Long Time is from it. Alone In A Crowd is from an album recorded with David Horridge, Sticklebacks, polished at Stockport's Strawberry Studios after initial recordings on Kevin's  four track home studio. 

Thought Leadership's Ill Of Pentacles came out on cassette and digital in 2024 and then on vinyl via Be With this year (all gone, I missed out too). It's a wonderful album, recorded at home in Edgeley, Stockport and other than that there's very little information. It was recorded in January 2024 with guitar, pedals and drum machine and the tracks are numbered I to X. 

Snowflake is from Short Stories For Pauline, a lost Durutti Column album recorded in November 1983 that could/ should have been Vini's fourth on Factory. A Tony Wilson A&R oversight saw it shelved in favour of Without Mercy (the song Duet from Short Stories was expanded into Without Mercy). Tony got it wrong- Short Stories is a Durutti Column masterpiece that finally saw the light of day on Factory Benelux in 2012. Worth the wait. 

Royal Infirmary is from 1986's Circuses And Bread, Vini and drummer/ manager/ friend Bruce Mitchell joined by John Metcalfe on viola and Tim Kellett on trumpet. The piano/ guitar interplay on Royal Infirmary is next level Durutti Column beauty. 

Michael Hix released an album as Wonderful Aspiration Of The Source, a guitar only ambient/ cosmic instrumental ten track album that came out two weeks ago. Hix is one of the founders of Nashville Ambient Ensemble. Find it here. 

Half An Hour Of The Durutti Column

I've been listening to Durutti Column and the music of Vini Reilly since the late 1980s and I still regularly find new things to enjoy in Vini's back catalogue, songs and tracks that I've missed or not heard properly before. Vini was so prolific that he often gave music to labels other than Factory, just to get it out there. A friend recently lent me the Sporadic Recordings CDs, three limited edition discs of recordings that came out at various points between 1989 and 2007, and there's a wealth of songs on the discs, some of which I knew (some were released as extras when his Factory albums were repackaged and re- released, some I've stumbled across on Youtube or gone looking for via interviews). I thoght some of these, together with some other possibly lesser known Durutti Column songs, would make a good thirty minute mix for my Sunday series.

Half An Hour Of Durutti Column

• Sketch Of A Manchester Summer 1989
• Royal Infirmary
• Dry
• 30 Oldham Street
• Take Some Time Out
• Bordeaux
• People's Pleasure Park (Version)
• [Canadian Customs]

There's a strong sense of place in Vini's songs and their titles. He often names songs for or about places. This mix kicks off with a Sporadic recording track, one of my favourite DC songs, recorded on a very rainy day in June 1989, Vini taping the sound of West Didsbury rainfall and playing along with it. Royal Infirmary is from 1986's Circuses And Bread album, a minimal, haunting piece for piano and guitar. Dry was the title track of a 1991 album that came out on Materiali Sonori, an Italian label, and is named after the bar Factory opened on Oldham Street, Manchester. The drum machine and synth backing to Vini's guitar playing is superb- it's followed by a version of the same song, this time named after Dry's address (released on the Sporadic Recordings). Dry had it's own Factory number- Dry201. When it opened there wasn't much else like it in Manchester and it was in a then very unfashionable and semi- run down part of town (today's Northern Quarter). 

Take Some Time was recorded for Factory but shelved until 2012 when it was on the Short Stories For Pauline album, a lost/ found treasure trove of Durutti Column songs. Bordeaux is on 1983's Another Setting (Fact 74). People's Pleasure Park is from the Sporadic Recordings- the original version came out on 1989's Vini Reilly album, Bruce Mitchell's drumming particularly on point. [Canadian Customs]  closes The Sporadic Recordings Disc 2 (from 2007) and is a couple of minutes of Vini playing guitar followed by some audio of the group going through customs on their way from Canada to the US. When challenged by the border guard about what kind of music they play Vini shoots back, 'avant garde jazz classical'.