Long Fin Killie
Valentino

I wonder how many still remember Long Fin Killie and that trio of albums curiously titled after prematurely deceased icons (the illusionist Houdini, actor Rodolfo Valentino, and aviatrix Amelia Earhart), so praised by critics - Italy's Blow Up included this album in the list of the best of 1996 - yet quickly forgotten after the end of the game, which happened in 1998. And it's a shame, because this Valentino, over ten years after its release, still holds up strongly through the passing seasons.

Colin Greig (bass), David Turner (drums), Philip Cameron (guitar), and especially Luke Sutherland (vocals, guitar, violin, sax, and other stuff), signed with Too Pure, offered a rock that was both powerful and sophisticated, absolutely unlike what was popular in Albion at that time. Polyrhythms built on frenetic percussion and harmonic guitar (Pele) intensely nervous guitar riffs accompanied by vocals both lyrical and distorted (the single "Hands and Lips", or the psychodrama staged in "Girlfriend"), drum loops that repeat until they achieve a disorienting, almost ambient effect ("Coward"); the track that titles the album must be mentioned: a guitar in delay, the bass pulsation providing a minimal rhythm, and the closing entrusted to the sax.

Truly, time has not done justice to this band and especially to Sutherland's talent, who completely abandoned the music world (apart from an anonymous electronic music project and some appearances as a multi-instrumentalist at Mogwai concerts) and has definitively established himself as a writer and playwright.

If a good album should be able to awaken obsessions believed to be dormant or (if necessary) create new ones, then this Valentino fits the profile: it insinuates itself into the folds of the heart, perhaps never to leave.
Because this is also what we want from music: that it becomes like the scalpel we use to look inside ourselves.