Fidelity by The Durutti Column

Fidelity is a 1996 studio album by cult Manchester ensemble The Durutti Column.

Originally released by Les Disques du Crépuscule on CD only in April 1996, Fidelity featured 10 tracks written and performed by Vini Reilly, with occasional guest vocals by Eley Rudge. In addition to Vini’s trademark guitar stylings, the album showcases sleek electronic textures and programmed beats, with stand-out tracks including Grace and Future Perfect.

This digital edition features two bonus tracks: My Only Love was originally released in 1995 on a covermount CD with a specialist guitar magazine, while experimental piece The New Fidelity was issued on a Portuguese compilation album from 1992 called Hare, Hunter, Field.

The cover artwork by Crépuscule design director Benoît Hennebert is based on a portrait by Vini Reilly of filmmaker Carol Morley.

"Tracks like Sanko and Future Perfect are underpinned by the resonant grumble of their basslines and steeped in the crystalline, gauzy fragility of their melodies" (Electronic Sound, 12/2023)

"Having dived into more familiar analogue territory for 1994's Sex and Death, here Vini Reilly transferred to Crepuscule for a slight return to the style of 1990's Obey the Time, which had found him exploring his native Manchester's contemporary electronic dance culture. This time Reilly was subtler, resulting in a lengthy collection that's aged considerably better. There are signs of the time, of course: shuddering vocal samples, alongside operatic melodies, decorate Abstract of Expression and his own voice, draped in reverb, is underpinned by a swaggering baggy beat on Remember Me. Sanko, meanwhile, dispensed with Reilly's trademark guitars in favour of skittering percussion and dreamy sequencers, while Eley Rudge's delicate vocals and those sequencers should have ensured Future Perfect's reputation of the early 00s chillout era. Rudge also softens the impact of the title track's battered drums, but the trumpet-embellished G&T displayed Reilly's Spanish influences more prominently. Overlooked at the time, Fidelity is hugely worthy of reinvestigation" (Classic Pop, 12/2019)

"Like a stopped clock, there have been moments when Vini Reilly's hermetic visions have serendipitously chimed with the times, the slo-mo beats of Obey the Time having briefly aligned him with the chillout boom. Fidelity, too, if full of shuffling breakbeats and floaty atmospherics, although beatless efforts G&T and the elegiac Storm for Steve are more classic Durutti. Reilly sings an appealingly woozy Remember Me himself, but his masterstroke is is recruiting the untutored Eley Rudge to front two numbers: the title track is a worthy lo-fi companion to Massive Attack's Protection, while Future Perfect is the purest pop song Reilly's ever written, the lyrics doubling as a neat summary of his stubbornly enchanting worldview. 7/10" (Uncut, 04/2020)

"Fidelity fuses chill-out room samples and beats alongside Eley Rudge's choirgirl voice on this rarely-heard gem" (Plan B, 03/2008)

"As with much Durutti Column, so much relies on the listener's mood, but this is both amiable and slightly edgy" (Record Collector, 04/2008)

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