Heute erscheint mit Half-Told Tales nach mehr als drei Jahren Wartezeit ein neues Album des Indie-Duos ARAB STRAP. Exklusiv für Popmonitor hat AIDAN MOFFAT das mysteriöse Artwork ausführlich entschlüsselt …
I never know what an album’s themes are until it’s almost finished, usually just before the mixing phase, when there are only two or three vocals left to record, and the album starts to reveal itself. With Half-Told Tales is was pretty clear that time and its passing was the glue that held the songs together – my grown-up son in Be a Man, my ageing body in Glamour Magick; the myth of a glorious past in Fighting For You, and dreams of youth in Dollar Park; childhood and funerals in Mr. Splitfoot, and then the last track, Beats Per Minute, sums it all up with time science … So time was the theme, and I wanted to represent that in the artwork too – but I wanted to avoid anything obvious and clock-like.
I originally looked at paintings from mythology, focusing on Father Time, to try and visually tie it into the last two LPs, but we decided to move away from that style and do something new, so I started researching old science books. The front cover is an old illustration from a hundred-year-old textbook and shows the most primitive clock that humans used – a vertical gnomon, just a stick and a rock in the ground. I’ve no idea why it caught my eye, I just go on instinct, but I scanned it then digitally coloured it, keeping it as simple as possible to contrast with the last two LPs, which both feature old classical paintings and were quite visually dense.
That then led to further research into science books, which inspired the layout of the lyrics, and I added in a few scientific exercises that I pulled directly from genuine texts on the nature of time. I wanted to give it a textbook feel, but also keep the minimalism of the front image too – there were originally no words on the cover at all, but at the very last minute we decided to add the “FIG 1” and “FIG 2” text to enhance the textbook feel, and it helped tie it all together. I had other big ideas for it too – spot gloss and die cuts etc. – but we’re also quite conscious of how ridiculously expensive records can be these days, and it was already a double vinyl, so we thought it best to keep it as affordable as possible.
My favourite part of the artwork is label D, which has an added erratum sticker. These were slips that publishers glued into books when mistakes were noticed after printing – rather than destroy and reprint, they just stuck these little notes in. When I was laying out the lyrics I noticed that we’d used the wrong vocal take on track 14, and on the recording I get a very big number wrong. It was a blessing in disguise, though – we couldn’t go back and remix the song, so instead an old-school erratum slip was added to the corresponding label, and it really suits the feel of the artwork. Sometimes mistakes are great!
ARAB STRAP
Half-Told Tales
(Rock Action Records)
VÖ: 04.09.2026
