Kevin McCormick, David Horridge

𝘼𝙞𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙒𝙤𝙤 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝘿𝙪𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙩𝙞 𝘾𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙢𝙣 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙞𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙨, 𝙎𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝘾 𝙥𝙡𝙪𝙘𝙠 𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙖𝙣 𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙮 ‘𝟴𝟬𝙨 𝙖𝙢𝙗𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙟𝙖𝙯𝙯 𝙜𝙚𝙢 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙈𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙝𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧’𝙨 𝙆𝙚𝙫𝙞𝙣 𝙈𝙘𝘾𝙤𝙧𝙢𝙞𝙘𝙠 & 𝘿𝙖𝙫𝙞𝙙 𝙃𝙤𝙧𝙧𝙞𝙙𝙜𝙚.

Nigh on impossible to find 2nd hand, 1982’s ‘Light Patterns’ remains the sole full length recording by McCormick & Horridge, a duo who met whilst working at the Labour exchange office on Aytoun St in 1970 and would go on to play various Manchester clubs and nightspots during that decade. Bonding over a mutual love of the ‘60s/‘70s’ more worldly, languid styles from John Martyn to Alice Coltrane and Terry Riley, and even the airy classical parlour music of Satie from long before, their bedroom recordings elided acoustic guitars and webs of FX in a modest but properly immersive style that ran counter to the city’s prevailing hard rock and emergent punk sounds; effectively paralleling aspects of a style that Vini Reilly was fostering over in Didsbury, and, with the benefit of hindsight, would predate similarly beautiful efforts from KS Eden (check Stroom’s ‘Passed Beyond’ comp!) by a few years, and even the recent debut from Celestial by some 4 decades.

Strung out with a Manc melancholy surely detectable by anyone who’s revelled in the city’s drizzle, McCormick & Horridge’s quietly lyrical craft quintessentially speaks to a quieter flipside of Manchester’s party life. Their music offers a blissed and lissom soundtrack to hash toking loners and trench-coated plodders encouraging users to slip into oneiric states of mind between the spare touch of ‘Glass Dreams’ and the cosmic contrails of ‘Special Places’, evoking widescreen cinematic panoramas in the sublime scape of ‘Last Chances’ and crucially never slipping into anything miserable, alway keeping it the right side of gloomy with the optimistic pucker of pieces such as ‘Sandpatterns’ and the skin-stroke delicacy of ‘Quickdance.’

Use your ears; it’s a real no brainer.