DeViCom Biografie: Arab Strap

Arab Strap was originally a o one-man band, the brainchild of Aidan Moffat, who cobbed together 'self-indulgent wank' with two drums and a kazoo in his bedroom in Falkirk, Scotland. Nearby, Malcolm Middleton was doing similarly onanistic things witha guitar, under the name the Laughing Stock. Having vaguely known each other for five years, the pair decided to unite as Arab Strap (the name of a device Moffat found in a sex toy catalogue) in the summer of 1995, with the addition of David Gow (drums) and Gary Miller (bass). Within a few months they had been signed up by Glasglow's Chemikal Underground Records although their sound bore little resemblance to the current vogue for wall-of-sound guitars, relying more on the literary renaissance of urban Scotland typified by Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting. The duo's debut single, "The First Big Weekend", consisted of little more than a guitar, a drum machine and Moffat's deliberately banal cameo of The Simpsons, strawberry tonic wine and the Scottish football team losing to England in the 1996 European championships. Arab Strap's selective live appearances and the ensuing album maintained the downbeat, minimalist tone. Occasional folky tinges give their music a veneer of user-friendliness, but a certain lyrical bluntness ('tell me you want me in your cunt / tell me you know sure what you want') indicates that Aidan may not be a guest presenter for Top of the Pops quite yet.