Darin Strachan is Straight Arms. In the past 12 years, he has lived at 10 addresses in 4 different states and recorded his music in any space he can find – in basements, attics, dining rooms.
The HiFi Defect with the LoFi Effect (2003) is an EP with 5 of Straight Arm’s earliest recordings. The songs are mostly acoustic based. One song, “Garbled Song,” was written as a poem by his grandpa in the 1940s about courting grandma.
The Final Broadcast of the Underground Radio Show (2006) was written over the first full-length album. Songs were recorded in Colorado, Ohio, and Kentucky. Independent radio stations were disappearing. In Cincinnati, WOXY was no longer broadcasting on the airwaves. This inspired the theme of the album. It begins with the static intro of a listener dialing in the final broadcast of a pirate radio station. The original songs are interspliced with some DJ commentary until the final off air static comes through.
Darin has played in a handful of bands including The Minni-Thins, Cowboy Curse, and For Algernon. He has toured a good portion of middle America with these bands, shared the stage with hundreds of bands including The Wrens, The Eames Era, Wussy, Troubled Hubble, and Coltrane Motion, and played at SXSW, Lollapalooza Battle of the Bands, and the Midpoint Music Festival.
Darin currently lives in San Francisco and continues recording Straight Arms music in whatever space he can find.
