Obey The Time
reissue liner notes (Anthony H. Wilson)


Absolutely in the middle of it

"I have but an hour of love, of worldly matters and direction to spend
with thee; we must obey the time."

The titles of Vini's albums and even the tracks themselves come from
the oddest places.  There's the easy way out; the female first name of
the muse of the moment, from Katharine to Pol in G (sorry Pol, you
were more than a moment), and all the rest.

Other times Vin would have something in mind and other times, I, as
one third of his management would flirt around with my latest
obsessions looking for a connection with Vini's pieces.

Part of this aesthetic derives from Italian directors in general and
Pasolini in particular who loved having different actors dub the
voices on his movies and almost intentionally doing the dubbing badly
so there was a creative tension between the physical performance and
the vocal performance; for the Durutti Column, there's usually some
interesting stuff in the space between the title and the piece.

The title of this album came screaming off the TV screen in somebody's
version of 'Othello' and captured exactly the feel of the work in
progress.  We were in the middle of the Aceeed explosion; if 
you lived in Manchester, you were absolutely in the middle of it.
Vini, like the rest of us, has lost the ability to age or atrophy, and
enjoyed the party.

He even explained why house made keyboards sound so fresh; something
to do with a chord being played with three or four notes into the
sampler but then different chords being triggered by a single key
stroke; creating mathematical harmonic relationships "which Schoenberg
had searched for but never found".

In experimenting with certain beats and ideas, Vini was indeed obeying
the time.

We're including as a bonus track here something that comes from the
late 90's.  But we submit it as a more recent example of Vini
'obeying' the time and as such connecting to the music of this period
and taking us up to where the ripples of 88 still make interesting
patterns on the shore.

The producer of his 1998 album, Keir, (another full-blown genius who
also tried to get Vini to stop singing and met the same fate as
everybody else) did this remix of 'My Last Kiss'; sorta post-trance,
sub-jungle, retro-ambient, or something.  It's called 'Kiss of Def'
which is partly taking the piss out of Barney's HIV lyric and partly
just a cool title.

We were going to give it to Glen and Geoff at Trade Two who were
looking forward to putting it on their club label, but it got snared
up with the lawyers on both sides.

And then, going back to 1990, there was Together, the 'Hardcore
Uproar' cultish and soon-to-be massive dance duo who did the
'Together' remix; two fantastic kids, one with the ability to sing
nasally out of the side of his mouth and the other, another young
Keir, brightest eyes of any engineer you'd meet back in 1990.  He died
that Summer in Ibiza.  Bicycle accident.  Fucking tragic.

That Summer I was in Varenna, a small village on the banks of Lake
Como, and Vini was short on titles for the pieces on this album, many
of them emerging from mathematical/harmonic or technological
inspiration rather than lovers he could name them after.  So Vin let
me take some of the titles from my experiences in Varenna.  'The
Warmest Rain' indeed.



Obey The Time

All tracks written by Vini Reilly.

Drums on 'Art and Freight' by Bruce Mitchell.

Computed and Engineered by Paul Miller at Home, except
'Contra-indications' computed and engineered by Andy Robinson at
Spirit Studios.  Hypnosis and medication by Sydney Gottlieb.
Food and relaxation by Dry.


The Together Mix

The Together Mix, written by Vini Reilly.  Remixed by Together.
A Factory Communications Record 1990.

Fridays, written by Vini Reilly.  Recorded and mixed by Vini Reilly
and Paul Miller.  A Factory Communications Record 1990.


Trade 2 Singles Club

Kiss of Def, written by Vini Reilly.  Remixed by Keir Stewart at
Inch.  A Factory Communications Record 1998.