Price: £16.49
Format: CD
Artist: The Durutti Column
CatNo: FBN84CD
Tags (click for related products):
The Durutti Column Without Mercy 4CD
An expanded 4CD deluxe edition of Without Mercy, the fourth - suite-like - album by The Durutti Column (from 1984), which is widely regarded as Vini Reilly's most ambitious release.
 
In 1983 Durutti Column mentor/manager Tony Wilson asked Vini Reilly to abandon fleeting guitar miniatures in favour of a longform modern classical piece. The result was an ambitious 20 minute instrumental suite, Without Mercy, performed by core Durutti duo Vini Reilly and Bruce Mitchell along with Blaine L. Reininger and John Metcalfe (violas), Caroline Lavelle (cello), Tim Kellett (trumpet) and Maunagh Fleming (cor anglais).
 
Explains Vini: "Tony had just come in for a conversation one day and said, 'Look, you keep making these albums that you want to make, and I'm quite happy with you doing that, but just give me this one album and do it my way.' He wanted it to have a narrative determined by a Keats poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which he said was the poet's version of a pop song: boy meets girl, falls in love with girl, loses girl, blah blah blah. It was a very, very Tony way of looking at it. He had aspirations that I should be taken seriously.”
 
Produced by Reilly and Wilson at Strawberry Studio and Britannia Row, Without Mercy was originally split into 19 separate stanzas, some of which have now been restored using digital cue points on the CD. 
 
Bonus tracks include the original recordings of Duet, Estoril a Noite and Favourite Descending Intervals (all re-worked for inclusion on Without Mercy), as well as companion EP Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say, collaborations with John Metcalfe, Steven Brown and Benjamin Lew, and two previously unreleased live sets across Discs 3 and 4, recorded at London School of Economics in December 1984 and Oslo in December 1986.
 
The remastered set is housed in a clamshell box, with inner wallets and liner notes (by Reilly, Wilson, Mitchell, Reininger and Metcalfe). The cover painting is L'Etang de Trivaux by Henri Matisse (1916/17).
 
An exceptional edition of an exceptional album.
Disc 1
1. Without Mercy (Stanzas I-III)
2. Without Mercy (Stanzas IV-VII)
3. Without Mercy (Stanza VIII)
4. Without Mercy (Stanzas IX-XII)
5. Without Mercy 2
6. All That Love and Maths Can Do
7. Snowflakes
8. Profondeurs des Eaux des Laques
9. The Sea Wall
10. Duet
11. Estoril a Noite
12. Favourite Descending Intervals
 
Disc 2
1. Goodbye
2. The Room
3. A Little Mercy
4. Silence
5. E.E.
6. Hello(w)
7. Paresseuse Aussi
8. Mercy Theme (Live in Tokyo 1985)
9. A Little Mercy (Live in Tokyo 1985)
10. Estoril a Noite (Live in Rotterdam 1983)
11. Favourite Descending Intervals (Live in Manchester 2011)
 
Disc 3 (Live in London 1984)
1. Sketch for Summer
2. Jacqueline
3. Mercy Theme
4. A Little Mercy
5. Pauline
6. Mercy Dance
7. E.E.
8. The Room
9. Silence
10. Ornithology
11. Prayer
12. The Beggar
13. The Missing Boy
14. Friends in Belgium
 
Disc 4 (Live in Oslo 1986)
1. Mercy Theme
2. A Little Mercy
3. Pauline
4. Mercy Dance
5. E.E.
6. Silence
7. The Room
8. Dream of a Child
9. Tomorrow
10. Blind Elevator Girl