Self Portrait: Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap
Another brick in the set
May 10, 2024
Web Exclusive
Photo: Aidan Moffat
For our recurring Self-Portrait feature, we ask musicians to take a self-portrait photo (or draw/paint a self-portrait) and write a list of personal things about themselves, things their fans may not already know about. them. This self-portrait is by Aidan Moffat of Scottish duo Arab Strap.
Arab Strap also features Malcolm Middleton and today the band released their new album, I'm fine with that, don't screw it up anymore, via Rock Action. The album follows their 2021 comeback LP, As the days grow darkerwhich was the first full-length duet in nearly 16 years (since 2005 The last romance).
Arab Strap recently toured in honor of the 25th anniversary of their 1998 album Philophobia, but we can't wait to perform the more energetic songs from the new album. “THE [Philophobia] The tour was fun, but I'm glad it's over so we can move on,” Middleton said in a press release announcing the album.
Moffat added: “H Philophobia The concerts were a way to say goodbye to our old ones. It's been a very mellow, quiet tour, so I expect this year we'll just play bang after bang—I think we've earned the right to make some noise now.”
The album's final single, “You're Not There”, is about a man who continues to write to his dead wife via text message. “It's a very common part of the grieving process now and can help mourners come to terms with their loss,” Moffat said in a press release about the song. “I like the idea that our phones can act as a kind of modern Ouija board – the difference of course is that most people don't expect an answer.”
The genesis of “You're Not There” was a piano piece by Middleton called “Joshua's Gone” that he wrote about his son's melted snowman.
“So it seems like it was always meant to be a song about loss and transience,” Moffat joked.
Arab Strap were interviewed on Under the radarthe first print issue of 2001, for The Red Threadan album released the same year.
Read on as Moffat writes about his passionate passions, preferred mode of transport and childhood career aspirations. Above is a self portrait photo he submitted to us.
1. I'm an AFOL — Adult LEGO Fan — and I spend a lot of my free time catching up on new bricks and sets and watching YouTubers leak leaks on future LEGO designs. I work on a MOC—My Own Creation in LEGO community jargon—whenever I can and I'm running out of storage at home, so I have annual clearances at Christmas when I donate unwanted sets to charities. I find it therapeutic. Building with LEGO is one of my happy places, and I enjoy the problem solving required to make things work and look the way I want—researching and sourcing parts, learning building techniques, and so on. We all know creativity is good for the soul, so when I'm not making music or writing, I turn to LEGO to scratch an imaginative itch. However, I'm too shy to share MOCs online.
2. I'm also a comic book fan and have been all my life. American comics were very hard to come by in Scotland when I was a kid, but when the new, darker wave of comics arrived in the 1980s I was a teenager – it was perfect timing and great company for my teenage mood. Glasgow's Forbidden Planet also opened around that time, and I've been a regular there for 35 years. As much as I love my job, I often dream of running a comic shop somewhere, focused on buying and selling Silver and Bronze Age issues, with some vintage game trading on the side. There are regular comics in Glasgow these days, and I'm thinking of booking a retail table at one of them, to make a bit of my dream come true. I always seem to be away on tour when they're there, but one year I'll make it.
3. I don't drive and probably never will. I was never really interested. I have always used public transport. I think traveling for a living also got me down because I already spend a lot of my life in cars and trucks and often find myself in the passenger seat yelling at bad drivers on the road. I don't think I have the temperament to be a good driver, nor do I have the eyesight, apparently – at my last appointment, the optometrist said I'd need special driving glasses now, so I'll probably do it. It also doesn't help that I've suffered from chronic motion sickness my whole life – which isn't ideal in my line of work, obviously – although I've recently been tempted by electric cars, so you never know. However, I do owe my friends and family about a million rides.
4. Most of the music I listen to these days is instrumental, usually in a modern classical or atmospheric vein, and I enjoy it largely in bed. There's a 90 minute show on BBC Radio 3 that I like called Night tracks, and I try to listen to every episode — although it's recently been pushed to five nights a week, and I'm finding it a bit overwhelming. However, he introduced me to beautiful music — most recently by Laurel Halo Atlas album, and Christina Vanjou's entire catalog — and it's become a regular feature of my bedtime routine. I love the adventure of radio, the way the right person can take you on an unexpected journey, as opposed to DSP playlist algorithms that just try to keep you in the same lane. I still listen to BBC 6 Music too, of course, and NTS has a whole library of great shows to take you down the occasional rabbit hole.
5. The first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was a ghost hunter. One of my favorite books ever –The Hamlyn Book of Ghosts in Fact & Fiction, Daniel Farson, 1978—had a section on Harry Price, the godfather of British ghost hunting, and a list of the equipment he used. I tried to collect as much as I could from the list and put together a small set until a survey came. We had a mysterious ornament in the house, a small porcelain statue that my mom claimed moved around as we slept – no matter how often she made it before bed, it would always be facing the wall in the morning. I suspect my mom was the culprit, though, because when I picked up my set and told her we needed to cover her good carpet with talcum powder to reveal any human traces overnight, she decided she didn't really mind and that's it. Recently I've started reading ghost stories and horror fiction again and listening to the brilliant Mysterious podcast on the BBC—I don't believe in any of that anymore, of course, and Harry Price was a complete charlatan, but I still enjoy hearing and reading the stories and am fascinated by the human need to believe in the supernatural. There's still a little boy inside of me somewhere, bag full and torch in hand, patiently waiting for a knock on the wall from a poltergeist or the glowing appearance of his grandfather.
from our partners at http://www.undertheradarmag.com/interviews/self_portrait_aidan_moffat_of_arab_strap
