Aidan Moffat announces new L. Pierre album

1948- will be the final album from the Falkirk songwriter's long-running alter-ego

Aidan Moffat continues to keep his schedule busy, having announced the release of 1948-, the fifth and final album under his L. Pierre alias. Due to come out on 28 April via the Melodic label, the album will be a 12" vinyl-only release, hitting the shelves 'naked' with no sleeve.

In his own words, the album is "a self-destructive dialogue on the value of music and its new platforms, culture’s cyclical nature, the supposed death of the album – and the seeming immortality and inherent nostalgia of vinyl."

1948- contains samples from Nathan Milstein’s version of a Mendelssohn concerto that formed the very 12” LP in 1948, and contains a locked groove at the end, meaning "the album won’t stop until the listener decides it should (which also works as an analogy for the resilience of vinyl in our digital age). And because the death of the album is proclaimed every few months these days, I wanted it to sound like a sort of ironic requiem. The title’s an unfinished tombstone with no date of death."

You can watch a teaser video for the album below, which follows Moffat's recent Arab Strap reunion and his involvement in the Where You're Meant To Be project. Further explaining the concept behind 1948- (the first L. Pierre release since 2013's online-only The Eternalist), he adds: "I don’t want a pristine, digital document that could last forever; I want the music left to the elements, I want it to live and scar, with each record’s acquired crackles, pops and scratches making them unique and identifiable to their owners.

"While the natural thing to do with a naked record is protect it, I think it could be interesting to see how folk respond when we hand that responsibility over. Also, the sleeveless LP will look like one of those dusty, vulnerable strays you find in charity shops, which is precisely where L. Pierre began." 

1948- is available via Melodic from 28 April, and can be pre-ordered here