The rep of the UK DIY scene has significantly grown since its initial subterranean emergence at the hinge of the ‘70s and ’80s. As a member of The Homosexuals, the coordinating voice behind the storied It’s War Boys label, and a recording artist of various pseudonyms, Jim Welton was a major figure in DIY’s narrative; on October 23 Superior Viaduct reissues the 1979 LP The Way Out and bonus “Move” 7-inch, returning to print the entirety of Welton’s output under the moniker L. Voag.
Jim Welton first turned up in The Rejects, recruited by Bruno Wizard for a new lineup of a band that had previously opened for The Damned, Generation X, Sham 69, and Wire. The Rejects’ four surviving songs deliver vaguely Wire-ish punk, though overall they were more about ragged propulsion than angular tension.
As punk began growing stale in the eyes of many who’d witnessed and participated in its birth, The Rejects morphed into The Homosexuals, who along with the Desperate Bicycles, Alternative TV, Swell Maps, and This Heat helped to form a solid foundation for the whole Brit DIY shebang. This Heat and Swell Maps are often considered in adjoining contexts, the former as top-notch punk experimentalists and the latter as a Rough Trade-fostered post-punk cornerstone, but the Desperate Bicycles and the Homosexuals have essentially remained at the heart of the DIY impulse.
The Bikes lent the rallying call (“it was easy, it was cheap – go and do it!”) while The Homosexuals thrived in near obscurity to rediscovered acclaim; in the beginning of 2004 The Homosexuals’ CD expanded upon their 1984 LP for Recommended Records and by that summer Astral Glamour, a 3CD compilation on Chuck Warner’s Hyped to Death, had arrived.
Added by the rapid-fire exchange of the internet, The Homosexuals sat atop a 21st century resurgence of interest in such never heard of and/or forgotten about acts as Beyond the Implode, Danny and the Dressmakers, Scrotum Poles, Cleaners from Venus, (And the) Native Hipsters, Thin Yoghurts, and The Door & the Window.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There was Milk from Cheltenham (also seeing reissue this week by Superior Viaduct), Nancy Sesay and the Melodaires, Amos and Sara, Amos and Crew, Sara Goes Pop, The Just Measures, Vic Serf & the Villains, Narky Brillans, Gus Coma, The Fear Merchants, and Modern Shit, the unifying factor of these names being Welton, who contributed to many pseudonymously and released the entire bunch on vinyl or cassette via It’s War Boys.
Numerous other worthy imprints made their DIY presence known including NB Records, Object Music, Fuck Off Records, and its sub-label Weird Noise Tapes, and Deleted Records; what It’s War Boys shares with them is a graspable vision derived from a need to examine aural extremes and a palpable love of sheer creation over a mere desire to reap its potential rewards.
Nowhere are these qualities more discernible than in Welton’s work as L. Voag. Falling outside of the It’s War Boys umbrella with no label affiliation, The Way Out represents Welton’s stated need to “taste eight thousand musical ideas at once” as it forms a “concept album” premise hypothesizing a world where Stockhausen storms the charts and pop songs as we know them languish in anonymity.
Voag is a character in this fiction attempting, and by Welton’s lights, failing to combine the opposing musical poles. Opener “Front Door” finds the audio slowly rising on forward-moving art-racket that wastes no time leading into “Hall.” One of the disc’s longer pieces, it caresses the ear like an Eastern European art-rock collective hoping to get signed to 2-Tone.
“Kitchen” is approximate in its avant-pop objective; amid the fringe-dwelling seesawing strings is a tune not terribly far away from Postcard territory. Aiding substantially in the dissemination is The Way Out’s making at Surrey Sound Studios, Welton employing the same 24-track equipment used by brothers Nigel and Chris Grey to record The Police; shining through with clarity instead of swimming in DIY’s familiar tape hiss is the skronk-tinged rant-infused faux-jazz fingersnap of “Toilet.”
“Living Room” consists of nature sounds, tribal drums, guitar tendrils, chanted vocal echo, horn fanfares, and a concluding bass solo, while “Bedroom” delves into glistening atmospherics and crooning. From there, the title track brings avant-jazz-inclined art-wiggle unfurling in a near-collage manner that’s characteristic of much of the album’s whole.
Starting side two, “The Lengthy Pause” features squatter-with-a-head-cold vocals, post-punk guitar a la early Rough Trade (Scritti Politti keeps coming to mind) and even a little Ubu-ish clarinet squawk. The concise “Franco’s Prayer” touches upon free jazz and connects a bit like Kleenex (through femme vox) conducting a fleet of metallic geese, and “The Raw End (of the Tits, Bum & Challenge Deal)” unspools as loose abstraction underscoring L. Voag’s influence on Nurse with Wound.
“Boxing and Sparring (With the Third Dimension)” mixes horn toots, key plonks, and rhythm thwaks into a clamorous, disciplined repetition; close listening reveals impressive sonic range. “The Goalkeepers Fear of the Piss-Up” offers more collage and a possible titular reference to a certain Wim Wenders film, and “Planning – Budgeting – Shopping” is a swirl of overdubbed voice, keyboard, castanets, and bowed strings.
The Way Out’s recording was apparently interrupted by an arrest and abuse at the hands of the UK’s Special Patrol Group, knowledge that lends “Helping the Police with Their Enquiries” a sarcastic touch as its layered patterns conjure superb tension. “Your Own Hair – Your Own Chance” lightens the mood, its airy chanted duet humorous as horns get roused from slumber.
As the LP nears closure “El Cada Dia Del Genté Comun” takes a welcome if too brief left turn into a blend of drone and a facsimile of modernist chamber classical, “The Tuned Knife and Fork Toned Down to a Light Lunch” overlays loops to productive effect, and finale “The Monumental” returns to the opening motif, audio gradually increasing on a riotous mingling of horns and percussion.
The L. Voag concept is extended to the bonus 7-inch; “Beauty Spreads” is ultimately too skewed to reside anywhere but on the margins, yet its core is indeed pop with noticeable funkiness in the bass line. The flip’s “We Dress up Our Ideas (To Make Them Seem Greater Than They Really Are)” grapples with compact collage once more, and “According to Freud” dives into punk-busker’s mode for a tidy dose of solo strum and bellow.
Rather than overstating an artistic notion, the pairing of LP and 45 strengthens the L. Voag concept and broadens the landscape very nicely. In retrospect, UK DIY was far less of a movement than a widespread occurrence and inspired underbelly to post-punk’s happening; The Way Out and “Move” are essential entries in its history.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
