David McClymont is probably best known as the bass player with Orange Juice between 1978 and 1983. He played on all the Postcard releases, and the first two albums released by Polydor, with his departure being down to that old favourite, ‘musical differences’. By 1986, he was a member of The Moodists, a post-punk band that had formed in Australia back in 1980, but had spent much of the decade living and working in London, and were indeed briefly part of the Creation Records roster in 1985.
David came in as the replacement for long-time member Chris Walsh, who had been with the band since 1981, and would play on their two final EPs, which were issued by T.I.M. Records, a short-lived London-based indie label that was in existence between 1986 and 1988. While I have no firm knowledge of the timeline, David moved to live in Melbourne after The Moodists split up, becoming so immersed in and knowledgeable about his new home that he became one of the co-authors of the city’s very first Lonely Planet City Guide published back in 1993.
He continued to keep up an interest and involvement in music, albeit in a low-key fashion, certainly to those of us here in the UK. In 2014, he started to release material under his own name on Bandcamp, but very much totally under the radar of those of us who remembered him from his days with Orange Juice.
He had, however, kept in contact with a few old friends from Scotland, including Stephen McRobbie (aka Stephen Pastel), whose encouragement and advice helped lead to the release of the compilation double-album, Centuries, in 2022, made up of 27 songs that had been self-recorded over a period of ten years. The compilation was issued by Last Night From Glasgow, with the label then also electing to release, in 2023, Mountains, an album of entirely new music.
mp3 : David McClymont – Lost In Transit
There’s a fair degree of abstract/experimental music on both albums, alongside what can easily be classified as straight-forward pop songs of the low-key variety. Lost In Transit is one of those.
JC
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 