You’ve no idea my excitement when I saw the announcement of a new Blood Orange single a few weeks ago. Not just because I’m a fan – while Dev Hynes doesn’t really fall under the remit of this site, I’ve been a fan since his Lightspeed Champion days – but because listed at the top of the numerous famous “featuring” names was The Durutti Column.

Vini Reilly has famously been out of music for a long time, having last released new music with 2010’s A Paean To Wilson and suffering a stroke in 2011 that left him unable to play guitar, and in his first interview since then with The Guardian in 2023 he basically said he was done with music. So seeing him name-checked in such a high profile press release was unexpected and exciting. So yes, I will admit that when the song/video for “The Field” dropped last week, I was a little disappointed that instead of a new performance from Reilly, it was a sample of the acoustic guitar riff from “Sing to Me”, taken from his 1998 album Time Was Gigantic… When We Were Kids.

But it’s a beautiful little riff that elevates the song, and sent me back to investigate the album, which I’ve only listened to a few times – like many/most, I usually head back to the first couple records, but there’s still a lot of magic in those later records. “Sing To Me” was never an official single – I don’t think they bothered releasing Durutti singles by then – but it did get a nice little “visualizer” a couple years ago, so you have something to look at while listening.