music art film review - REDEFINE magazine » Art

Stacey Rozich’s Within Without Me & Roq La Rue Gallery’s New Space!

Vivian Hua — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:43:47 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Stacey Rozich’s Within Without Me & Roq La Rue Gallery’s New Space!

Roq La Rue Gallery has spent more than the last decade bringing fine artists from Seattle and abroad into their modest space in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. But come April 28th, 2013, their Belltown location will be closed forever — sadly dampening the appeal of the neighborhood’s last favorable drag — and will be joining Pioneer Square’s First Thursday art gallery circuit with their new space at 532 1st Ave S (near King St).

Kicking off their new space will be a folkloric and symbolism-laden show of the variety we’ve come to expect from REDEFINE favorite and watercolor master Stacey Rozich. According to Roq La Rue, this new show, entitled Within Without Me, “is a notable jump up from previous shows containing larger, more complex works rendered in her trademark mediums of watercolor and gouache, as well as a deeper, more profound exploration of contemporary global social political themes.”

The show opens Thursday, May 2nd, from 6:00pm to 9:00pm at Roq La Rue’s new location. See full post for a complete preview, or read our in-depth interview with Rozich where she talks about her roots, thematic inspirations, and emphasis on visual storytelling.

6 IMAGES TOTAL

“As I got older, I learned that if you can convey a story with an image, then you’re good; you’re golden. So I focused on having this background narrative that wasn’t quite obvious, yet each piece has a little vignette — a little drama in it.”
- Stacey Rozich, in her REDEFINE interview

The King Is Dead

It Takes A Village

Snacks Will Be Served

We Will Find The Jerk

www.staceyrozich.com
www.roqlaruegallery.com

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Stacey Rozich’s Within Without Me & Roq La Rue Gallery’s New Space!

Saya Woolfalk Artist Interview: The Possibility Of All Kinds Of Mixing

Rachel Hays — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:57:25 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Saya Woolfalk Artist Interview: The Possibility Of All Kinds Of Mixing

To experience Saya Woolfalk’s work is to become immersed in a scientific folklore where biology and anthropology inform fables of utopia. In Greek, “utopia” translates literally as “no” (ou) and “place” (topos), and in a collaborative series with anthropologist Rachel Lears, entitled No Place, Woolfalk posits ways in which “no placeians” can more readily become a part of a utopian society.

In her most recent development upon this theme, Woolfalk has incorporated a new element — that of dual consciousness and foreign beings, via the narrative of a fictional species called Empathics. Through the use of psychedelically-colored exhibits, scientific slide shows, dance performances, and a very multi-disciplinary artistic practice, Woolfalk is learning how to use art shows to create utopian worlds in and of themselves.

When one enters 3rd Streaming in New York City to witness Woolfalk’s current show, Chimera, one is immediately drawn to mannequins wearing felted costumes and floating on brightly-painted, patterned murals. These are Empathics, a new and fictional species in Woolfalk’s work, who contain genetic elements of both plants and humans. Their existence is a sci-fi-inspired commentary that speaks to many things — including the transformation of identities through biological hybridization — but the more important underlying vision is that of increased unity across all forms of existence. To express this singular vision through craft, Woolfalk utilizes an impressive array of mediums; murals and installations are supplemented by huge, full-color lithographs of Empathics in their costumes, as well as paintings created “by them” and displays of objects used in their fictional rituals.

Folkloric and scientific, fable-driven and meticulously chronicled, Woolfalk’s exhibits also show her as both participant and narrator. In her videos, Woolfalk narrates as a scientist, with the resolute calm found in any biology film. But her work deviates from the usual script in that the scientists describe a transformation they themselves undergo. Woolfalk and “other scientists” find evidence of Empathics in the wilderness of Upstate New York, and through exposure to their bones and spores, decide to undergo a series of changes that will lead them towards becoming chimeras themselves. Over the twinkle of atmospheric music, animations break down the ways in which spores enter the human body — but one soon finds that this is not only a biological transformation; it is also mystical. The scientists enter a ritual of guided dream therapy to learn how to embody their new state of plant-human consciousness, and through the introduction of a performance art element, the transformed beings emerge from behind the wall where the video is being projected, donning costumes that are on display.

The merging of a complete physical and digital reality is what Woolfalk says makes her utopian-driven work “real”. “When you come in[to the gallery], I want you to be in a world — but it’s our world,” she explains.

The world within the exhibit also reacts to the world outside the exhibit. Mythology dictates that Empathics create beautiful headdresses to disguise a second head which sprouts as part of their shift to dual consciousness, and such guises helps keep things from getting awkward in public or at their jobs. They also literally sell their skins; magical costumes they shed during the process help bring in extra income for their research. Regarding this very intentional detail, Woolfalk laughs and describes living in Brazil and studying folkloric performance, where “people are engaging in fantastic stories about struggle… and simultaneously selling trinkets because they need them… they actually help pay the bills.”

SAYA WOOLFALK ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

Woolfalk’s work is “becoming more of a fable” as it progresses, acting as a fantastical other reality that reflects the artist’s real-life external influences. The creation of Empathics, for example, was first inspired by the works of feminist science fiction author Octavia Butler, who discussed the idea of plant-human utopia.

“Originally, it was about physical action and ritual that would make [a] new place,” explains Woolfalk. But when conceptualizing what this transformation process would look like, Woolfalk began speaking to biologists at Tufts. Through discussions of the natural world, she began to “rethink physical adaptation and metamorphosis”.

“It’s not just that humans can just act on their environment and become whatever they chose to; the places that they are, the things that they encounter cause micro-transformations,” Woolfalk continues.

Such a statement is more than just environmental or a comment on slow changes through intuitive guidance. Woolfalk seeks to “break down categorization — not just human, animal, or interracial, but also intercultural or interbiological.” She welcomes “the possibility of all kinds of mixing”, and notes that her next iteration upon this theme “is the idea of consciousness between humans and technology.”

As Woolfalk continues to develop as an artist, she is not only incorporating the influence of anthropologists and science fiction writers, or folklore and biology. She is also growing to incorporate her audience as part of the exhibits. For her, “Audience has become part of the structure and circuit. I consider how their experiencing what I’m doing in order to feed it back more clearly.”

Woolfalk’s multi-faceted works all shrink down to a very natural process of evolution — one that welcomes the inclusive mixture of many ideas and techniques. Though each of Woolfalk’s works is fully-conceptualized prior to its creation, its final product is ultimately unpredictable, subject to flux as her ideas morph through what she consumes and how her mind processes. Each piece is “changing and emerging as it’s restructured by the logics I’ve been thinking about,” she explains. “[It is natural] to work in two dimensions — then three dimensions, then four dimensions… There’s a porous relationship between the pieces. It’s an organic process between logic and intuition.”

Come catch the last days of Woolfalk’s exhibits and your chance to feedback into collective consciousnesses.

Chimera at 3rd Streaming in NYC
Chimera runs through April 25th, 2013. A talk entitled “Brave New Land: Science Fiction in Contemporary Art” will take place on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013, featuring Saya Woolfalk, Chitra Ganesh, and Simone Leigh. Doors at 6:00; Discussion promptly at 6:30.

Space Is The Place @ Disjecta in Portland, Oregon
The group show, featuring works by Saya Woolfalk, Wendy Red Star, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and David Huffman, will end on April 27th, 2013. Admission is free, and Disjecta is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Saya Woolfalk Artist Interview: The Possibility Of All Kinds Of Mixing

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview: Saying YES To Raw Honesty

Maria Schettino — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:25:26 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview: Saying YES To Raw Honesty

Whether it’s a symptom of repressive cultural conditions or a question of derivative creativity, nudity in art causes a ruckus. Rashly criticized as an easy way to draw attention to one’s art or an exhibitionist ploy for attention, bare bodies are often a point of contention for both critics and viewers alike. The fine line between artistry and exploitative eroticism is often a blurry one. Ultimately, the intentions of the artist and the emotional subtleties communicated by the work itself determine its merit or lack there of.

In the case of 23-year old Amanda Charchian’s photography, revelation is the goal. It is a desire to construct timelessness that inspires her to photograph nudes. She favors skin over clothes because of its raw honesty, the removal of clothing a path to seeing ourselves in our purest most vulnerable forms.

(18 IMAGES AND 1 VIDEO IN FULL POST)

“I appear defiant because I have something to rebel against, something to be resistant to. Every artist I admire has something to say, to instigate, a passion to ignite.” – Amanda Charchian

To Charchian, those who criticize the use of nudity in art for its overused “shock” factor are failing in their analysis. “People have the inability to appreciate the subtle differences between artistic nuances,” she says. “How could anyone pass our purist physical state- something you can’t pretend doesn’t exist – as ‘unnecessary’ or ‘overdone’?”

Intentionally or not, stripping the human body often presents it as something exclusively erotic, limiting it as an object of desire and a vehicle for pleasure. Nudity and eroticism are commonly joined conceptually, but Charchian cleverly asserts that clothing is often the culprit in over-sexed societies.

“If clothing truly controlled lust and other ‘sinful’ inclinations surrounding nudity,” shequestions, “would we be such a sex-crazed society? In my travels to countries like Egypt and India where women are the MOST covered, the men are also the most hostile and aggressive with their eyes. It is pretty basic psychology that restriction creates desire.”

Repression has long been considered a catalyst for desire. The inability to separate nudity from eroticism is symptomatic of societal brainwashing and forced out of likely arbitrary, social, or religious mores. “When you specifically are told you can’t have something, you want it more,” Charchian explains. “In a culturally conditioned and ultimately stunted state, one cannot separate eroticism and nudity. But in my perception of nudity through the lens of a naturist, there doesn’t always have to be a sexual tension.”

“To say that these [nudity and eroticism] always go hand-in-hand would be to ignore individual sexual idiosyncrasies or fetishes,” Charchian continues. “Some people find a lot of eroticism in the fully-clothed. Sexuality is a complicated part of our existence, and that is why it is fascinating to me.”

As stated on her website, Charchian is an investigator of “the state of alienation through realms of the physical, psycho-social, and spiritual human condition.” Although it is not her specific intent to be provocative, Charchian is a rebellious insurgent within a constrictive culture, battling for openness in an otherwise restrictive society. She says “‘YES’ in a world of No.” With art as her agent, she is, by default, a kind of creative hellion.

“I appear defiant because I have something to rebel against, something to be resistant to. Every artist I admire has something to say, to instigate, a passion to ignite.” Charchian, does not, however, take her freedom of expression for granted. Her parents escaped an oppressive Islamic regime in Iran, which affected her massively. It is perhaps the reason for the amount of “deep celebration of female freedom and sensuality” she conveys within her work. “That wouldn’t be possible if I lived in Iran,” she says.

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview Continues Below

“YES” has become more than just a word for Charchian; it is a way of life. Appearing in her work both physically and symbolically, these three letters represent an ideology that fosters positive energy and the overwhelming power that comes with it. “‘YES’ is a mantra,” she states. “It is a word, but somehow it is beyond a word. It transcends its own meaning. For example, when our brain hears the word ‘NO’, our survival instincts, stress responses and heart rate increase immediately. But when the brain hears the word ‘YES’, absolutely nothing happens. It is a very spiritual word.”

Her piece eYES, for example, is a meticulously-assembled sculpture of the letters Y-E-S made, from Swarovski Spectra crystals and nickel-plated steel. The healing nature of the materials and the profundity of the message are a testament to Charchian’s affection for nature and her interest in mysticism. Citing the “historical and philosophical interplay between surrealism and occultism” as one of her influences, Charchian composes imaginative images that are undeniably mythical. A photograph from the series entitled Sworn In Swarkestone depicts a woman wearing a glorious black cape that spreads like the wings of bat; she stands with her eyes closed towards the heavens, in front of a mysterious faded stone building. The scene is ethereal and preternatural and indeed evokes a kind of pagan charm reminiscent of the occult.

AMANDA CHARCHIAN ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

Utilizing almost exclusively analog cameras, she believes that “film captures the energy that is emitted from organic matter better than digital does.” There is something about those lustrous silver oxide bits that is pure magic. Film is tangible and therefore more natural. “Perhaps it is because it is a physical object that takes up space,” she hypothesizes. “It can record another physical object better.”

Taking this idea even further, Charchian also keeps a number of “magical items” inside of her camera bag. It is an ephemeral collection of creative aids that are ever-present and always evolving. Some items she keeps handy include prisms, crystals, glitter sticks, expired film, fresh flowers, and vintage track filters. “It is always changing depending on what I have found along the way,” she explains.

Creative tools in hand, her process as an artist involves translating pervading ideas into concrete projects. Channeling this spiritual inspiration, she is more of an instrument than an architect: “My strongest works were ones that appeared to me as a fully formed vision that seemed impossible. The planning part comes from trying to manifest that otherworldly flash on the psychical plane without losing the divine nature of the original inspiration. Sometimes an idea haunts me literally every five minutes until I make it happen. It’s like being on the verge of orgasm for a very prolonged amount of time.”

Harnessing ideas and following them through to actualization is a means of transferring what comes from the subconscious realm into objects as works of art. Where photography is concerned, it is a way to capture a very distinct moment and cement it in time. However, Charchian does not shoot photos to remember things; she shoots to create an entirely independent event — a new memory. The shutter of a camera captures only an instant revealing what is not cognitively perceivable by the human eye.

“When you freeze time for an image, it extends beyond time, thus making it timeless,” she says. Within a circular time perspective, this frozen moment is a way to make that moment last forever. It creates a sort of temporal infinity. It does, indeed, become timeless.

www.amandacharchian.com

THE ENTIRETY OF AMANDA CHARCHIAN’S I IMAGINE YES IS THE ONLY LIVING THING SERIES

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview: Saying YES To Raw Honesty

Botanica By MOMIX Live Dance Performance Review

Vivian Hua — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:32:25 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Botanica By MOMIX Live Dance Performance Review

Upon first seeing the trailer for Botanica, I thought: here it is, a performance that might actually make use of the exciting psychedelic potentials that movement has to offer! Botanica breathes like a nature painting come to life, rooted in hypercolored projected imagery and manipulation of the human body through the use of unusual costumes and props. But powerful as it is when captured via still images, Botanica is a mixed bag when displayed as movement art; it delivers brilliantly in some regards but falls short in others.

Botanica by MOMIX is currently showing in Portland through March 2nd, 2013. * PURCHASE TICKETS *

As previously mentioned, the most vital elements to the art direction and execution of Botanica are its reliance on video projections and props, which include everything from mechanized gadgets and human-controlled puppets to banners, faux trees, plastic tubes, tutus, and blacklights. The conceptual framework underpinning Botanica is impressive, but I was left feeling as though the show itself is still at the starting end of its potential. Its use of video projections was constant, but only occasionally did they contribute to the overall effect; in fact, their low resolution and lack of movement seemed to place limits on an otherwise very dynamic medium. Yet such things are totally minor, and my prime complaint about Botanica would be that it sometimes focuses too much on the macro — the underlying concepts and images individuals would puzzle together to create — than on the micro. Sitting front and center as I was, the overarching message was sometimes lost from my vantage point, perhaps better viewed by those sitting further away; challenging dance routines fell by the wayside in exchange for big-picture visual ideas that make for excellent stills but could have used more innovation in the physical movements themselves.

This realization hit me directly following a very powerful dance performance which made little use of props. The routine, which is towards the end of the show, features fierce and powerful warrior women being carried by men, and the entire piece is an exercise in controlled chaos, with animalistic undertones. I was reminded then that the dancers can indeed dance, but that most of Botanica does not allow their skills to flower completely. The rare pieces which truly stand out from Botanica are those infused with equal strength in both prop and athleticism. The opening sequence, for example, features dancers emerging and receding from beneath opaque fabric like cresting waves, tickling patrons with mystery and intrigue with their every ebb and flow. In another, a dancer spins around the stage like a whirling dervish while donning a webbed costume which takes on a life of its own when met with centrifugal force. The most significant blending of prop and prowess, though, is found in a psychologically and visually-stimulating act where a prostrate female dancer crawls and spins atop a raised and mirrored surface, looking like an insectoid creature when she and her reflection are viewed in tandem.

Supplemented by a soundtrack one might find in the New Age or World Music section of any record store, the backdrop of Botanica is crafted from both the airy heights of Celtic faerie music and the depths of thundering percussion blanketed by moody vocals. This was at times welcome and tantalizing — but in the same vein as New Age imagery that features waterfalls and forests peppered with self-help quotes, Botanica has many moments of over-the-top cheesiness. When, for example, an entire stage fills with dancers waltzing around with imitation trees while a goddess sings atop, I can certainly appreciate the homage to nature and maybe even lightly enjoy the music, but the execution not so much, save for the beautiful lighting. It was almost as though these moments were put in place to ask the audience, “Are we really being serious right now?” And despite occasional stilted chuckles from the audience, it seemed more often than not that the answer was an emphatic yes. It was only with the greeting from a giant face-on projection of a seagull, followed by a dancer imitating a bird cawing and another rollerskating by in true iceskating champion form, that I began to slightly appreciate the silliness a smidgen, whether it was intentional or not.

I’m not going to pretend like I understand some of the cringe-worthy choices in Botanica or that I love it when human beings are imitating animals or plants. I can definitively say that I really don’t. But nonetheless, I respect what the creators are trying to do with Botanica. Even if it fell short of my expectations for mind-blowing psychedelic visuals, what is actually most notable is the show’s ability to be psychologically psychedelic. One is often completely bewildered as one tries to piece together certain executions and motivations on the part of the creators. I never once saw a concept or a prop coming my way until it did; Botanica‘s ability to make left turn after left turn is fun, and at the very least, its glowing moments are radiant.

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Botanica By MOMIX Live Dance Performance Review

Christopher Mir Makes Chicken Scratch Enticing.

Vivian Hua — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 22:16:40 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Christopher Mir Makes Chicken Scratch Enticing.

The childish use of color and scraggly linework of Hamden, Connecticut-based artist Christopher Mir are misleading; if these works strike you as digital MS Paint drawings made by a youngster, you’d be dead wrong. Herein lies the most well-rendered chicken scratch you’ve ever seen, set down with acrylic paints and enamel, and full of fascinating characters, unusual settings, and off-kilter subject matter.

In the full post, Mir offers some words about the inspiration behind a select number of pieces. Despite their simple and straight-forward presentations, Mir’s inspiration is often rooted in current events and older artistic works, as well as symbolic and esoteric knowledge.

(9 IMAGES TOTAL)

The Alchemist
“This is based on an image from a book called Alchemy and Mysticism. In the original work — from the 17th century I believe — the man in the foreground isn’t blue, but in the painting I wanted to make him into a Krishna figure or a water being. He’s there to water the trees and put out the fire. The entire image is open to interpretation, but in my mind, the symbol of the tree refers to our own feeling of being grounded — rooted within the body — or of being uprooted — lost in thought or egoistic delusion.”

Mir currently has a solo show at Benrimon Contemporary in NYC (514 West 24th Street, 2nd Floor) through February 23rd and another next month at TMproject in Geneva, Switzerland (2, rue des Vieux-Grenadiers).

Shaman

Snake Handler
“Some Southern Baptists use snake handling as part of their religious practice. My family on my mother’s side are Southern Baptists, and I like to work with images that relate to this aspect of my heritage. I also see this image in particular as a symbolic representation of male dominance and/or arrogance. The fact is that we are all female. Males are a mutant version of the female body template.”

Wedding Day
“This reminds me of Crazy Cloud (Ikkyu) who wrote a cycle of poems called “Skeletons” in which the world is populated with living skeletons. It is a profound meditation on impermanence and death. It is also not unlike the many “Death and the Maiden” images that Edvard Munch produced.”

Underwater Ali

Family of Trees

Miss Multiverse
“This painting is based on an Ellis Ruley painting. I was thinking about the Persephone myth as it relates to creativity. So in this case Persephone is a beauty queen with attendants. My reading of the myth: one needs a degree of innocence and childlike wonderment in order to make art that really connects with people and sustains itself.”

Just Between You and Me
“This is a painting of Kevin Richardson embracing a lion. Kevin is a South African animal behaviorist who has been accepted into a lion pride. I got the image as a screen capture from an Associated Press video on line. Coming to terms with our own animal nature — or how we are or are not a part of that nature — is a recurring theme for me.”

Not one of Mir’s works. :)

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Christopher Mir Makes Chicken Scratch Enticing.

Dana Popa Artist Interview: Uncovering The Intimate Details of Sex Trafficking

Vivian Hua — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:35:51 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Dana Popa Artist Interview: Uncovering The Intimate Details of Sex Trafficking

February 14th is known to many — whether they are coupled or single, in love or without it — as a day for amorous celebration, through intimate experiences and the exchange of roses, chocolates, and kisses. But beyond the major consumer holiday of Valentine’s Day lies a global activist movement of a similar name, called V-Day. Violence against women and girls can take many forms, and V-Day draws special attention to rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation, and sex slavery through a worldwide network of regionally-supported performances, documentaries, plays, rallys, and a variety of other events.

To call attention to this cause in our own way, we have decided to use the delicate work of Romanian and United Kingdom photographer Dana Popa as a foundational point. After learning of the horrible realities of the sex trafficking trade, Popa set about to unveil the stories of its former victims, all of whom were around seventeen years of age and in various stages of recovery when Popa met them. The result of Popa’s genuine quest was a piercing series called not Natasha, “Natasha” being the generic name given to Eastern European sex slaves.

Many series about sensitive topics shock one into sympathy. Not so with not Natasha; its images are often profound in the most mundane of ways, focusing not only on the women themselves but on the things that they leave behind — while, in Popa’s own words, capturing “a glimpse of their souls”. It is beyond the photos themselves where the heart-breaking tales often lie, in the form of deception and betrayal from former lovers, neighbors, and friends, and of societies that allow women to be sacrificed to patterns of abuse and pain.

In the full Q&A interview to follow, Popa recounts incredible stories — some of which are difficult to believe — while motivating us with powerful imagery. For more details on how you can be involved in V-Day events, please visit their website, or see more of Popa’s work on her website.

(17 IMAGES TOTAL)

“This work is dedicated to Dalia and all the girls who allowed me to have a glimpse of their souls and dig up a hidden, painful past. I hope I did it in the most delicate way.”

What circumstances led you to the not Natasha project?

What triggered my work was purely finding out what sex trafficking really means.

At the time, there was not much visual coverage of the illegal trade. Sex trafficking is the most profitable illegal business since the 1989 fall of the Soviet Union; it’s a form of violence against women from my society. Little do people realise what this illegal trade is and how big and profitable it has become. So I decided to try and get a closer look at sex trafficking and record what it means for the women to survive sexual slavery. I chose to have a glimpse of their souls — which at the time seemed very difficult to do, but that is what I was most interested in. After having heard their stories, I wanted to look at their traces — at what women who had disappeared for years and who are believed to be trafficked and sexually enslaved leave behind. This became essential angle and part of the narrative.

After being involved with this project I realised that its beginnings might have been triggered by my interest and knowledge of the woman’s position in societies like the one I was born in. I acknowledge this story as a way of standing up against the societies that know what happens to their women and hide it without even doing anything about it.

“Natasha is a nickname given to prostitutes with Eastern European looks.”

It must have been difficult to deal with such a delicate situation. Did you have training in communicating with these woman or face any difficulty? What were some solutions that you employed, and do you have any advice for those who are hoping to speak with a woman who has undergone sexual trauma?

The most pleasant part of the learning process was when I spent time at one of the shelters that offered them psychological assistance and accommodation for a month or so. I had spent two weeks with girls that just escaped sexual slavery. They were spinning stories about their ordeals every evening. This is what actually helped me frame the story and urged me to continue it at a later stage. The women accepted me in their lives, some for three weeks, some only for a few hours, depending where I’d meet them. They all understood immediately that I was not going to harm them in any way. It was not hard to explain the reasons of my work.

I did not have an official training in communicating with the women I photographed and interviewed. I acted instinctively, seeing their dignity, their strength and delicacy at the same time, their sense of respect for other human beings even after surviving such ordeals. Also, that hidden hope that lived in each one of them. I used to share long walks in the park with the girls at the shelter. They love the Saturday morning walks when they can watch the brides of the day. They just secretly hoped one day they can return to normal life. I was both discreet and protective, respectful to their wishes, and always asking for their consent.

One of the best pieces of advice that I had received in regards to portraying survivors and which I would say in my turn was to approach them with respect, to firstly see and show their humanity and dignity through my photography. Also, to have patience, something that I needed a lot in this long-term and slow-making project.

“I was twelve years old. I don’t want to talk about it.’ — Alina”

Are there any experiences from the women that you would like to share?

The women in these photographs are among seventeen I met, interviewed and photographed them. Some of them were too fragile; some very strong, trying to leave behind a hated past while still coming to term with profound emotional distress. At the beginning, they shocked me with horrific details about the rape and violence they had survived. They talked about the Odessa boat which later on I went on, too, about the brothels or rooms they were locked in, some for weeks, other for months or even for a year, about the way they escaped.

Aurelia, a girl from Ukraine, shouted at me, “My story, do you want to hear my story? You have heard it — over and over again.” Clearly distraught, she told me how, a year after she came back from the Czech Republic, the police came to the door and started to question her. Then her husband and her mother-in-law chased her away from home. They had not known she was sold as a sex slave by a good friend. Her life was destroyed, she said.

Dalia, 20-years-old, always dragging along her two-year-old daughter, was the first one I encountered at the shelter. Dalia was sold by her husband-to-be. This was a trafficker that acted on his own in Moldova and was dating girls from different parts of the country; after a considerate amount of time, he would invite them to meet his family in Turkey and get married. Clarisa was sold by her best friend and Elena by the old lady living across the road in her village. Svetlana by a woman at the market that she thought she knew very well and some others by relatives. In many cases, the girls and women sold as cattle on the black market are approached by somebody that they know and trust. Larisa had been trafficked into Albania; on her way to Italy, she fell in love with her pimp who fathered her twins. She escaped after three years.

In London, I met Svetlana, a young Moldovan who was sex trafficked into the UK. She showed me windows of particular Soho flats: the one with a cracked window was a “stinky” place; the one with a red light was a bit trendier. I later on entered five cribs with working girls. I met two Romanians on this occasion. One was wearing tiny white socks and a pink robe thrown over a black spandex costume. She was from a city two hours from my native town.

These women did not opt to become sex workers; they were locked in all sorts of locations, from flats and houses to brothels, threatened, beaten up and raped, put on drugs and alcohol and forced into it. When I researched my subject, it was shown that women from Moldova had been sent to as many as 42 destinations.

I am still in touch with a few of the women I met in this journey and in more often contact with a couple of them. As a reaction, they were interested to see my work. One of them decided to help me continue my visual work on sex trafficking as much as she could and another one looked on the book dummy with curiosity, since she had been very much part of the project both as a survivor and a great help in translating and making the liaison with other girls at the shelter. When she reached the end of the book, she closed it and said, “Okay, from now on, we won’t be talking about this anymore.” We still keep in touch.

“My husband-to-be sold me for $2200.” — Dalia

How much responsibility do you feel as an artist to contribute to the world in a positive way or to bring attention to misdeeds in the world? Do you ever create without a narrative or mission in mind?

The same responsibility one feels as a person searching for virtue, which it’s probably a very innate human characteristic. But it doesn’t mean I ask myself that question when I look at one of my pictures — does it contribute to the world? It’d be a scary question and I wouldn’t know how to answer it. To answer the other question, I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want to do before start shooting — I wouldn’t call it a mission or narrative — which obviously can mutate throughout the process.

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Dana Popa Artist Interview: Uncovering The Intimate Details of Sex Trafficking

Leah Gordon’s Kanaval Takes A Photographic Look At Haiti’s Carnival Via Mythology, History & Oral Traditions

Vivian Hua — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:34:17 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Leah Gordon’s Kanaval Takes A Photographic Look At Haiti’s Carnival Via Mythology, History & Oral Traditions

Lansè Kòd (The Rope Throwers) 1996

Every year, Carnaval comes and goes across the entire world, tantalizing everyone with its fanciful costuming and celebratory antics. But beyond the tourist circuit of Carnival lies another Carnival, in locales with a connection closer to the festival’s origins. Haiti is one of many countries that celebrates Carnival at their own pace, and over the course of many years, photographer Leah Gordon was able to capture the beauty of those festivities in Jacmel, a coastal town in the south.

Kanaval is a black and white photographic series, true — but it is, more importantly, a series on awareness, about culture, and inclusive of mythology. After this series was taken, Haiti suffered its devastating earthquake and Jacmel was completely decimated. Gordon’s photographs, along with her heart-felt introduction to the series and the many oral mythologies passed down to her from carnival participants, can be viewed in the full post. Together, they forever capture a wonderful space in time and call attention to Haiti’s creative and spiritual existence.

We begin with a tale from Madanm Lasiren, which is just the first of many.

Madanm Lasirèn (Madame Mermaid) 2003

Madanm Lasiren
Andre Ferner, 59 years

Lasiren is a spirit that lives under the sea and does mystical work there, she is a Vodou spirit, I dream of Lasiren all the time. That is the reason I do Lasiren for Mardi Gras. I chose Lasiren because my grandmother, father and mother all served the spirits, I love her & honour her. The baby that I carry in my arms is the child of Lasiren who is called Marie Rose. When I walk the streets I sing her song which goes ‘ I am Lasiren and I cry for Lasiren, when I work mystically in the night bad luck can come my way’.

I prepare for Lasiren by putting on a hat, a mask and carrying an umbrella. I put on a necklace and gloves. This necklace is called Mambo Welcome, it is a fetish. Because Lasiren is a fish she has to disguise herself as a woman to be at Mardi Gras. My mask and hat cover her fish’s head. And the dress she wears covers her fish’s tail. The chain I wear is a sacred chain. Each year I change the disguise and fashion a new baby. In order to get inspiration I go to the place where the big beasts live and they instruct me how to do Mardi Gras. I have been doing this for 18 years. Before that I did another Mardi Gras call Patoko. This was a group of men who were dressed as women, with a nice dresses and high heeled shoes. We did a marriage between men and woman on the street. After that we had a group called the duck who carried brushes in their hands wearing blue trousers, white t-shirts, new sandles and a scarf around our waists. We swept the streets of Jacmel. I have always found a way of doing a Mardi Gras.

Kanaval will be on display for free at PHI Centre in Montreal (407, rue Saint-Pierre), from February 25th to April 27th, 2013. Opening night happens at 7:30pm on February 23rd, and its $175 ticket price (or a $400 VIP ticket) includes Haitian food, giveaways, and performances by Haitian dance groups, Haitian band Doody and Kami, and The Arcade Fire, who have a blog dedicated to their own trip to Haiti.

All proceeds will go towards KANPE, a non-profit “born of a desire to play an integral part in the fight to help Haiti break free from a vicious cycle of poverty”, through programs in health, education, agriculture, counseling, and other community services. Full event details can be seen at PopMontreal.

(12 IMAGES TOTAL)

Esklav Yo (The Slaves) 2001

Jij (Judge) 1995

Gordon’s introduction to her series, Kanaval:

“Haiti seems to be on a fault line of history. Whilst much of the rest of the world seems to have efficiently papered over any cracks where history could accidentally seep, bubble or explode with a veneer of consumerism and wage slavery. Haitian culture is a potent vessel for this history, continually transmitting, telling, retelling and reinterpreting Haitian history. Though school fees are excessive for the majority of the Haitian people, and the education standards poor, you will be hard pushed to find a Haitian who doesn’t know the vast and intimate details of their own history.

Haiti’s history is not an easy one, but it is a significant and important one. It is the history of the decimation of the indigenous Taino Indians by the Spanish invaders. Subsequently it is the history of the most profitable, and correspondingly brutal, French colonial plantation system in the Caribbean, which was fuelled by the Transatlantic slave trade. The intensity of French barbarity in the pursuit of profit, coupled with whispers and rumours of the French Revolution in Europe, led to the Haitian revolution. This was an uprising of African and Creole ¹ slaves against the white plantation owners. By the late 18th century dissent was rife amongst the slave population. In 1791 the dissent came to a head and turned into a rebellion which led to a 13 year struggle for the freedom from slavery and finally independence.

Vodou was both the inspiration and precipitation of the long fight for Haiti’s independence. On 23rd August 1791 ², a Vodou priest called Boukman performed a ceremony at Bwa Kayman, in the north of Haiti. Slaves and maroons ³ gathered from all over the region. Boukman sacrificed a black pig for the African ancestors, and in its blood wrote the words ‘liberty or death’. Inspired and invigorated the slaves returned to their plantations and spread the message of rebellion. Within days the fertile plains of cash crops were burning with a passion for freedom that did not dampen until independence in 1804.

May 1803, former slave and rebel leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines dramatically created the flag of the black insurgents at the Congress of Arcahaie. He took the French tricolour of blue, white and red, and ripping the white out of it, declared he was ripping the white man out of the country. The red and blue were stitched together, the initials RF (Republique Française) were replaced by Liberté ou la Mort, ‘Liberty or Death’, and Haiti’s flag was born. Time was finally running out for the French rulers.

The diffusion and transmission of Haitian history uses the drums, songs, dances and possessive ritual of the Vodou religion. It uses the improvisational songs of Twobadou groups and the collective melodies and rhythms of Rara bands. Haitian history uses the words and poems of its great literary tradition and the unique visions of its painters, sculptors and flag makers. Haitian history, and not only the revolutionary history, is also replayed through the masks, costumes and narratives of the carnival in Jacmel.

Each year, Jacmel, a coastal town in Southern Haiti, holds pre-Lenten Mardi Gras festivities. Troupes of performers act out mythological and political tales in a whorish theatre of the absurd that courses the streets, rarely shackled by traditional parade. Whatever the carnival lacks in glitz and spectacle, it makes up for in home-grown surrealism and poetic metaphor. The characters and costume partially betray their roots in medieval European carnival, but the Jacmellien masquerades are also a fusion of clandestine Vodou, ancestral memory, political satire and personal revelation. The lives of the indigenous Taino Indians, the slave’s revolt and more recently state corruption, are all played out using drama and costume on Jacmel’s streets. There have been many times that the future of Jacmel’s carnival has appeared unstable, but it continues to struggle and survive. Haitian culture is tough and resilient, as it needs to be. It is a vibrant, living avatar for not only Haitian history, but for all our histories. Carnival is dead, long live Kanaval.

***************************************************************************************

This introduction was written two weeks before the dreadful earthquake in Haiti. I have been haunted by the almost prophetic first line. I decided I didn’t want to change it. The suffering on the human level and devestation on the material level in Port au Prince is hard to contemplate. All the churches have fallen and all the morgues are still standing. Many of the houses have fallen but all the tombs in the cemetery are standing. It is as if Death has won its bet against Man and God. The beautiful old town of Jacmel, where all these photographs have been taken, has been decimated. As I numbly traipse along what remains of the historic Grand Rue in downtown Port au Prince I realise that architecture has always been another avatar for history. In Haiti the material was always transient and weak, and now feels almost none existent, but the imaginative and creative is fierce. If there is a positive side, perhaps it is this, that people will sit up finally and really take notice of Haiti’s creativity. Haiti has so much to give and we really should be grateful that such a genuinely unique place exists. Kanaval is not Dead. Long Live Kanaval

¹ Caribbean born of African descent.
² Named International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition by UNESCO.
³ Runaway slaves living in remote mountainous areas in close-knit communities.”

Kouvrefe (Curfew) 2009

Bounda Pa Bounda (Cheek by Arse) 2003

Chaloska (Charles Oscar) 1998

Chaloska (Charles Oscar)
Eugene Lamour a.k.a. Boss Cota, 61 years

The Chief Charles Oscar was a military commandant in charge of the police in Jacmel. He died here in 1912. He was tall and strong with big feet and teeth and feared by all. At a time when there was political instability in Port-au-Prince, when President Sam had just been assassinated, Charles Oscar took his chance to take 500 prisoners from the local jail and kill them all. There was so much blood it made a river of death. The population was so angry that that revolted and tore the police chief to pieces in the street and burned him down. He was killed in the same violent way that he had treated the people.

This story has always been very striking to me, and in 1962, I decided to create the character of Chaloska for Carnival. I designed the military uniform and made the big false teeth with bull’s teeth bought from the market. Each year I change the costume a little by designing a different hat for the group to wear.

When I created Chaloska I also wanted to create some other characters to go along with him. I created Master Richard and Doctor Calypso. Master Richard is a rich man with a big bag full of money and a huge fat stomach. He walks with the group of Chaloska buying justice and paying the judges. He represents the impunity and corruption that hides behind Chaloska and is the real chief of the city. Doctor Calypso is an old hunch back with a black suit and a stick in his hand. He works for Chaloska and checks on the health of the prisoners, always reporting that they are healthy when they are dying.

These characters are still here in Haitian society so it is good to parade them on the street. It is a message to all future Oscars that you will end up this way. The group goes to different places in town threatening the people. The boss Chaloska always finally dies, and the others call for mercy as they are cowards, but then another Chaloska immediately replaces him. This is to show the infinite replication of Chaloska which continue to produce the same system. There will be Chaloska until the end of the world. They started with the beginning and will not end until the end.

Pa Wowo (The Way of Wowo) 2004

Pa Wowo (The dance steps of Roro)
Edmond Paul, 30 years

Pa Wowo is a Mardi Gras that I’ve been doing for a long time. It is part playing around and part theatre on the streets of Jacmel. We try to create an ambiance of festivity. Pa Wowo has created a character, a role he plays scenes just like theatre, as it’s an ancient Mardi Gras. He has a pipe because in the past all peasants had pipes in their mouths. He has a skirt of leaves because it is part of his disguise. The skirt is a symbol and the skirt means everything. It is the best symbolic costume for the Pa Wowo because he doesn’t have any family, he doesn’t have any thing, no-one to help him, not even the possibility of his own clothes to wear. So Pa Wowo represents someone who has nothing, no-one, nowhere to stay and no money. Truly people understand my message, which is if you have something you must help those with nothing. I have done this Mardi Gras for 15 years. I decided to do it to give continuity when the last person that used to do it died. I’m not sure it will continue after I am gone but I am always fighting to do it whilst I still can. Over the years Mardi Gras has a lot of sections missing and I’m doing Pa Wowo to make sure that carnival has a good power and to make sure that Jacmel shows a good face to the world. Because firstly I am a Jacmellian. But you know exactly if we keep trying perhaps Jacmel carnival is the best in the world. We feel that carnival in Jacmel is important for the face of Haiti in the world but it is always a fight as the government never supports us.

Zèl Maturin (The Wings of Maturin) 1995

Zel Maturin (The Wings of Mathurin: character from the St. Michel Mardi Gras)
Ronald Bellevue, 40 years

We did not invent this story. It came from older people, but we are keeping the tradition going. As a child I was scared to death of the Zel Maturin but the very next thing I wanted to see was to see them again. My favorite Zel Maturin is the red devil as he is always the strongest, most resistant and goes on until the end of the play.

The play is a fight between good and evil. The first scene has people with suits, ties, tuille masks and bibles all kneeling and praying. In the second scene St Michel the Archangel come from heaven to give them protection. With him are other angels in pink satin dresses and a small angel in blue and white. Then the Zel Maturin arrive to steal the angels.

There is a long procession of Zel Maturin but St Michel kills them by using his mighty sword. The strongest devil, the red devil, myself, arrives. This devil fights much harder but after a long struggle he is finally killed. All the devils lie dead on the street conquered by St Michel the Archangel. But then the black devil arrives. He is bigger than the others and wearing chains. He is chained mystically because his mystic powers are so strong that he must be restrained. He carries a skull and presents it to the four cardinal points and hits the red devil three times. Once the red devil is revived all the other devils leap awake. The black devil is a Vodou devil whereas the other devils are just Christian devils. The Vodou devil has greater forces than the Christian devils. As you can see from the masks on the wall I am not exactly a bible person, well you don’t play the part if you don’t like the part.

Gason Bo Kote Lanmè-a (Boy by the Sea) 2000

Nèg ak Konk (Man with Conch Shell Horn) 2001

Fantonm (The Phantom) 2009

All photographs are shot on black and white film on a Roleiicord 2 ¼ sq camera and are 95cm sq Giclee Prints on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper mounted onto di-bond aluminium.

Gordon’s book, Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti is also available for purchase on Amazon.

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Leah Gordon’s Kanaval Takes A Photographic Look At Haiti’s Carnival Via Mythology, History & Oral Traditions

Saya Woolfalk‘s Hallucinatory Chimeras: The Empathics

Vivian Hua — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 01:55:53 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Saya Woolfalk‘s Hallucinatory Chimeras: The Empathics

Multi-faceted artist Saya Woolfalk is burning hallucinatory fires up and down both coasts the beginning of 2013, with dual shows in NYC and Portland. Three-dimensional or two-dimensional, still structure or moving image, Woolfalk navigates it all like a Play-Doh wizard gone haywire or a visionary artist on acid.

Her latest solo show, Chimera, is a full-bodied, multi-disciplinary exploration of Woolfalk’s fictional species of Empathics, who are genetic chimeras comprised of two or more genetically-distinct tissues. The series is sci-fi-inspired, with an underlying commentary about the transformation of identities through biological hybridization. Though these issues may seem foreign and otherwordly — especially when tackled in the visually-striking way that Woolfalk has — they may indeed have increasing relevance in our world in the face of scientific progress.

Stay tuned for Woolfalk’s in-depth interview with REDEFINE this upcoming month, and view the full post for more information on Woolfalk’s shows and the Empathics.

(7 IMAGES TOTAL)

Chimera is now on display at Third Streaming in NYC’s Soho neighborhood (10 Greene street, Second floor), where all of the works below can be seen alongside multimedia works, installations, and paintings. Come March 2012, Disjecta in Portland (8371 N Interstate Avenue) will be hosting a similar show of Woolfalk’s work. The show at Third Streaming runs through April 25th, 2013.

As described by the Montclair Art Museum about Woolfalk’s work:

“Blending fantasy, humor, and play, Woolfalk’s art draws on anthropology, mythology, and fashion to present a fantastical world that encourages us to consider our most pressing societal issues, particularly concerning cultural difference, in a new light. The titular Empathics are a fictional group of women who, the artist imagines, blend racial and ethnic identities as they metamorphose, taking on characteristics of both humans and plants. In the exhibition, the Empathics’ story unfolds in the form of a fictitious ethnographic display—yet with kaleidoscopic colors, patterns, and textures unique to Woolfalk’s extraordinary vision. Woolfalk’s colorful installation includes human-scale, fabric-based sculptures, some of which double as costumes in her innovative performances; intricate paintings; thought-provoking videos; and interactive web technologies.”

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Saya Woolfalk‘s Hallucinatory Chimeras: The Empathics

2012 Album Covers of the Year

Vivian Hua — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 21:22:41 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

2012 Album Covers of the Year

In our 2012 Album Covers of the Year feature, we once again get our hands on everyone we can. Through interviews with designers, musicians, labels, and plenty of others, we take a close look at just how many hands are in the pot when it comes to the album artwork process.

Inside this feature are 98 album covers spanning a wide array of sonic and visual styles, each selected for its own unique contribution to the world. They are not ranked; instead, they are broken down into sections based on conceptual underpinnings or artistic mediums, and then are displayed on spectrums.

Get started by navigating into any of these six sections:
Geometric & Pattern-Based
Classically-Influenced
Narrative & Symbolic
Photography & Manipulations
Painting & Illustration
College, Sculpture & Mixed Media
Painting & Illustration

You can also see last year’s at 2011 Year-End Respect For Album Cover Art

SIMPLE || GEOMETRIC

COMPLEX || PATTERN-BASED

Ancestors – In Dreams And Time // AU – Both Lights // Believers – Self-Titled // Ben Vida – Esstends-Esstends-Esstends // Cloudkicker – Fade // DVA – The Fly Juice // Goat – World Music // Hecker – Chimerization // Ital – Hive Mind // Laurie Spiegel – Expanding Universe // A Lull – Meat Mountain EP // Magic Touch x Sapphire Slows – Just Wanna Feel // Man Forever – Pansophical-Cataract // Mike Shiflet – Merciless // Olafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm – Stare // Pangaea – Release // Peace – Delicious // Stephan Mathieu & Sylvain Chauveau – Palimpsest // Swahili – Swahili // Vessel – Order Of Noise // Wild Nothing – Nocturne // The xx – coexist

A series of album covers thumbnailed from top to bottom from simple and geometric to complex and pattern-based. Please be patient when waiting for materials to load!

ALL CATEGORIES:

Ancestors – In Dreams And Time (Tee Pee Records)

Artist unknown.

This record was featured in our Psychoactive Soundscapes: Top 20 Mind-Bending Albums For 2012 article.

“Crazy lace agate is between 65 and 90 million years old!” – Adam Heathcott of Hometapes

AU Hometapes Portland Musicians

AU – Both Lights (Hometapes)

ARTWORK & DESIGN BY HOMETAPES – home-tapes.com
CONCEPTUAL HELP FROM SHAWN BRACKBILL – shawnbrackbill.com – AND SADEK BAZARAA – sadekbazaraa.com

“When Luke [Wyland of AU] came to us with the album name Both Lights, he also gave us this little info nugget: ‘the light that is emanated/given and the light that is reflected/received.’ I internalized that to mean looking out and looking in. I started thinking about the classic, Eames’ Powers of Ten film. We exist on a plane that we can believe in and see, yet as we look into the night sky or start to examine the dirt beneath our feet, it just keeps going further and further. The real magic happens when we start to see the same patterns in the small as we do in the big and vice versa. Luke’s music has always worked that way for me: chaotic moments of maximalist, exultant sound, juxtaposed with close, minimal sounds and raw emotions so close you can feel your pulse adjusting to match. We all live somewhere on that spectrum of ups and downs.” - Adam Heathcott of Hometapes

“Sara (from Hometapes) and I both collected rocks as kids. Thirty plus years in, we’re still looking down. In the past year, we come across a few slices of Mexican crazy lace agate. They appeared to have entire solar systems living within them. I threw them on a scanner and upped the resolution as high as my computer would allow, then spent time viewing them at high magnification uncovering more textures and shapes. (Fast forward through huge amounts of color adjustment to make them look as close as possible to the real thing.) What you end up with are two sections (front and back cover) of the agate that were originally not much larger than a penny. Up close, you can just live in them. We knew we wanted to take a chance with the print production and decided to print the images on top of foil board. This added more dimension to the agate, and creates an interactive experience for the person holding the record as their reflection becomes part of the cover. Looking out. Looking in.” – Adam Heathcott of Hometapes

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“From what I can remember, it was definitely a back and forth process that found us going through several ideas. I would send over words and abstract thoughts on where I was coming from with the music/album, and [Adam and Sara would] find interesting visual representations of some the things I was expressing. Both of them are quite brilliant at creating rather magical artwork/packaging for all of their releases. Definitely worth going back and looking through their entire catalog.” – Luke Wyland of AU

Believers – Believers (Self-Released)

COLLAGE BY WESLEY POWELL OF BELIEVERS
LAYOUT & WEBSITE BY TYLER POWELL
PRINTING BY ALEX DURLAK OF STANDARD FORM – standardform.org

“I tend to become overwhelmed by the infinities that open up when working in any medium, be it musical, visual, linguistic, or otherwise; it’s difficult for me to move forward and make a choice knowing that any choice I make is ultimately arbitrary…

I’m crippled by open-endedness, so in order to maintain a level of sanity and allow myself to complete anything, I try to limit the choices I’m able to make. As the rule for the collages on/in our record, I limited the source material to just one book or one photograph within said book. Working with fractions of an image teaches me to see and appreciate the unnoticed [things] I wouldn’t in a more passive viewing. Textures. Geometries. Absences. Whatever. For me, it’s a meditative process and I like to extend that kind of vision/perception beyond my time holding a Stanley and scissors.” – Wesley Powell of Believers

Ben Vida – Esstends-Esstends-Esstends (Pan)

DESIGN BY BILL KOULIGAS & KATHRYN POLITIS

Artist could not be reached for comment.

Fade by Cloudkicker

Cloudkicker – Fade (Self-Released)

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN BY CHARLIE WAGERS FOR THREE BEARS DESIGN – charliewagers.com

“Nostalgia, the resonance of ideas and memories through time.” - Ben Sharp of Cloudkicker

“The title, Fade, is a reference to how memories work and how that ties into nostalgia. Ben was hugely inspired by this Alan Watts quote:

‘There is evidence around — monumental evidence — of a past, of vibrations which have been evoked before, of age-old hills and ancient buildings. Yet these very remains and memories are being reiterated and structured from the vibrations in the present.’

Basically meaning that the past isn’t really the past because it’s still resonating in the present. All of our ideas of what the past was like still come out of artifacts or ideas that we construct in the present, so it’s not really the past at all. With that, I wanted to create this crazy abstract image, that partially represents the dynamics of the audio itself, but also those vibrations, and the encompassing cycle of the past resonating to the present.

[The] Alan Watts quote was originally going to be typed into the album artwork. But Ben ended up scrapping that idea because he encoded the text into audio, which he then hid in the digital download version of the record. That way some listeners would recognize the way it was encrypted, and then they could translate it back to the text. Pretty cool, huh?” – Charlie Wagers

DVA – The Fly Juice EP (Hyperdub)

DESIGN BY OPTIGRAM – optigram.net

Artist could not be reached for comment.

Goat – World Music (Rocket Recordings)

DESIGN BY CHRIS REEDER OF ROCKET RECORDINGS

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“The idea I had in my head was to use an African pattern [and] make it psychedelic, but also contemporary and modern as well. First, I hunted out some patterns in bookshops and online, found one I liked, and copied it. Then I tried lots of different colourways, as wanted it to have a bright, in-your-face but modern feel. Then I was playing with the album title and the ‘WM’ motif just happened… The idea of the die-cut and contrasting the coloured patterns came from the exploration with a sleeve that messed with the eyes!!” – Chris Reeder

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
[The] album sleeve was born out of circumstance. We had commissioned two ‘already existing’ photos to be used on the front and back of the sleeve. Then a week before we were sending the record to manufacture, the photographer called us and said they had changed their mind and we couldn’t use them!! At the time, we were really disappointed by this — but in hindsight, it was an absolute blessing as the sleeve we ended up with (which we had five days to come up with, design, artwork, and get to the printer) is so much better and unique than the photos we were gonna use.

At first, I thought it would be too expensive to make but our amazing manufacturers, Breed, were able to find a way of doing it within our budget, and we are so chuffed we did as the die-cut sleeve looks amazing on the record racks in shops. By all accounts, it has become a bit of an iconic sleeve already!!” – Chris Reeder

Hecker – Chimerization (Editions Mego)

DESIGN BY NORM – norm.to

“For ‘Chimerization’ Hecker invited the Iranian writer and philosopher Reza Negarestani, to contribute an experimental libretto, ‘The Snake, the Goat and the Ladder (A board game for playing chimera)’ a script that has been recited by a group of speakers and recorded by Hecker in anechoic and sound-attenuated chambers – rooms designed to minimize the reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves.

Hecker characterizes ‘Chimerization’ as a concept derived from psychoacoustic investigations on difficult-to-define areas between language and non-language, a process focusing on the decomposition of sound and synthesizing incompatible modalities, surpassing their respective particularities without fusing them, in order to obtain a narration beyond immediate comprehension, which may be deciphered through repeated, ‘active’ listening.

‘Chimerization’ is released in the following languages – English (eMEGO 153), German (eMEGO 154), the mother tongue of the artist and Farsi (eMEGO 155), the orginal language of the writer.” – Editions Mego

Ital – Hive Mind (Planet Mu)

ARTWORK & DESIGN BY SAM CHIRNSIDE – samchirnside.com

Artist could not be reached for comment.

Laurie Spiegel – The Expanding Universe Reissue (Unseen Worlds)

CONCEPT AND DESIGN BY LAURIE SPIEGEL
ADDITIONAL DESIGN AND LAYOUT BY TOM MCCUTCHON AND UNKNOWN

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“First I should mention that the CD album cover was based on the 1980 LP cover, so I’ll be talking mainly about that… I love color and texture. I wrote the notes on my Apple II, and it had a Imagewriter I dot matrix. In 1980, printing shops didn’t have any way yet to accept and print from computer data or to print digital images. So I had the idea of creating a texture with the dot matrix printout that could be superimposed (actually masked out of) straight color fields. For the text, I interviewed myself, keeping in mind the kinds of comments and questions my then-quite-unusual music so often elicited, and I wrote enough to be able to fill up both sides of the LP jacket with texture.” – Laurie Spiegel

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“For the recent CD and LP release, Tommy did a wonderful job of recreating the original design, and also of keeping me in the design loop. We worked closely together in doing the CD design, because it included various elements not present in the original LP album. On-disk printing, the tray card, the 24-page booklet, the UPC sticker — these were all additions Tommy made to the LP design he was recreating, and we coordinated our preferences and thoughts with each other closely on each of those, sending feedback and files back and forth quite a number of times.” – Laurie Spiegel

THE EXTRAS
“They said there was budget for only “1 color”, but in fact that meant only 1 pass of the press. I very much wanted full color, to reflect the aesthetic of the music, to capture a sense of the music. So I suggested, and the printer agreed to do, a split fountain of cyan, magenta and yellow. The colors were all a bit on the darkish side to make the white “print” readable, it having not been print at all but just absence of ink (to avoid another printing pass).

In the original LP edition, as the print run ran through, with the inks in the 3 areas of the trough mixing and blending more and more from the start to the finish of the edition, the colors blended more broadly. At the start of the press run, the 3 areas of color were relatively distinct, but by the end of the run, they were considerably mixed. So, although the jackets looked roughly the same, each was, to some slightly degree, unique. This continual variation of color blending was not duplicated in the re-issue, for obvious reasons.” – Laurie Spiegel

A Lull – Meat Mountain EP (Lujo Records)

SCAN & DESIGN BY NIGEL EVAN DENIS OF A LULL – nigelevandennis.com + electricheat.org

“I’ve been told that the album cover is so grotesque and intense that its hard to look at. I’m never a fan of shock for the sake of shock, so thankfully that’s not what we were going for. Although we feel we’ve created a very striking album cover.” - Nigel Evan Dennis of A Lull

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“We had come up with the idea for the album a bit from an inside joke. It was something said a couple years ago and when we started writing for the EP it was a bit of a working title that stuck. I think the album cover is much more interesting than the concept. I bought a chuck-eye steak and threw it on the scanner. That’s about it. Ha. Everything ended up digital of course, but it is literally the most raw medium I’ve worked with.” – Nigel Evan Dennis of A Lull

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“Being an artist and a musician is like a dream come true. The creative process remains completely internal and completely interactive almost as much so as recording the music. The fun part about this band is that when i’m developing the art, i don’t consider my personal style or commercial portfolio. It makes every piece of art I do for the band almost always and entirely conceptual and experimental. It’s another extension of my art and I think it’s a totally fulfilling outlet. We collaborated on the back cover with Chicago artist Bill Connors for some wild illustration. He is a great artist and when I was starting to think about the back cover, it just felt right to show one of his pieces. Really great stuff.” – Nigel Evan Dennis of A Lull

Magic Touch x Sapphire Slows – Just Wanna Feel (100% Silk)

DESIGN & ARTWORK BY BOBBY HOULIHAN – bobbyhoulihan.com

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“Sapphire Slows released an album a while ago on Not Not Fun, and it was that record sleeve which served as my main inspiration. [Label owners] Amanda [Brown] and Britt [Brown] designed that sleeve using English and Japanese text, and I thought that was a good idea. The record is a collaboration, so the visual concept was to take the title Just Wanna Feel and create a block of text on both the front and the back that was composed of a roughly 50/50 ratio of English and Japanese. The only way to get this ratio somewhat balanced was to translate the Japanese phonetically. Had we done a more literal translation, the Japanese characters would have outweighed their English counterparts, and it would have been really wonky, which the record is not. The tracks are really clean and balanced. Very clear. Very positive. Nothing too complicated. I hope that is reflected in the art. I think it is.” – Bobby Houlihan

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“Damon was cool with my idea of the text right away. He would send my work over to Kinuko in Japan,and she would okay the translations and make any corrections. She was very helpful in that regard.” – Bobby Houlihan

Man Forever – Pansophical-Cataract (Thrill Jockey Records / Northern Spy Records)

DESIGN BY DAN SCHECHTER – danschechter.com

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“The album is an exploration of the sounds created by overlapping rhythms. The core of the performance is two drummers playing drum rolls simultaneously on a single drum. What results is a drone molded by the rhythms coming in and out of phase. It has the effect of creating sounds within sounds. I wanted to capture that unexpected sensation and reference some of that logic. I also wanted to build on the moon theme that has featured prominently in several Man Forever designs. The moon cube on the cover references both this structural process as well as the simple sensation of something so recognizable, distorted.” – Dan Schechter

“I just sent the record to Dan and asked him to come up with something cool. I think I told him I wanted it to really pop and be different from the typical cover… that’s it.” – John Colpitts of Man Forever

THE EXTRAS
“The type on the back cover is comprised of every weight of the typeface DIN overlaid atop one another. ‘Din’ has several meanings. A word meaning “awkward sound or racket” for us English speakers, it’s also a common Arabic term for faith, or more specifically, the way you live your life through faith. For Germans, it’s an acronym for their national board of standards and shorthand for the famous type endorsed by that board for their license plates. If you put all that together, we think it’s an apt metaphor for this project. The visual effect of superimposing the various weights is reminiscent of the overlapping rhythms in the music.” – Dan Schechter

Mike Shiflet – Merciless (Type Records)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE SHIFLET – michaelshiflet.com
ART DIRECTION BY JOHN TWELLS OF TYPE RECORDS – typerecords.com

“At one point in the process, John referred to the images as ‘body horror’, which was never my intent, but seems pretty apt in retrospect. Something about the way he said it has definitely stuck with me.” - Mike Shiftlet

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“The album is the second in a series focused on the idea of the world as a machine, indifferent to humanity (see Hurricane Sandy for a recent example), and our attempts to exist within such a structure. The palm photos attempted to address several subplots in that narrative. Primarily the difference between how we see ourselves inside the construct of a world we’ve created and our actual existence.” – Mike Shiftlet

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“I took the photos myself, but I took some outside direction as the photographer. John Twells from the label (Type Records) offered a lot of great advice after I presented my original ideas to him.” – Mike Shiftlet

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“I’ve been using videos in live performances for the past few years. The images are similar to those on the Merciless and Sufferers covers, with a lot of macro photography involved.” – Mike Shiftlet

Olafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm – Stare (Erased Tapes)

DESIGN BY TORSTEN POSSELT OF FELD – feld.is

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“The dot in the middle is actually a famous optical illusion. Stare at it long enough and you will figure it out — hence the title.” – Ólafur Arnalds

“The wonderful thing about working with Torsten Posselt on artwork is that you just give him the title, and he [can] just come up with an idea like this.” – Nils Frahm

“Listening to the release for the first time, I found myself staring at a little dark spot on the opposite wall. The longer I stared, the more surreal the spot became; it seemed to grow a halo, even if I knew that this was just my mind playing a little trick on me. So I started looking into some collections of probes into the moment-by-moment workings of our brain, trying to understand this phenomenon. At any given time, the brain is collecting, filtering, and analyzing information and, in response, performing countless intricate processes, some of which are automatic, some voluntary, some conscious, and some unconscious. The designed artwork functions as such a mind hack. By staring at the radial gradient, your mind tells you that it grows a brighter halo around it even though it is not there.” – Torsten Posselt

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“It is truly a great pleasure to work together with Nils [Frahm] and Ólafur [Arnalds], and I think we complement each other in a really nice way. When I approached Nils with the idea and some test prints, he instantly felt in love with it, and we spent some hours just staring at the little dark spot in the center of the gradient. I highly recommend doing that as well if you happen to have a physical copy of the release.

During the production we ended up staring at dozens of test prints of various gradient sizes, just like wolves staring at the moon.” – Torsten Posselt

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“I think Ólafur and I are very picky about visual aspects. We also work with light and stage designs, seeing that it [all] adds to the overall experience. If we could manipulate even the smell of our music, I am sure we would even design that. This is what control freaks tend to do.” – Nils Frahm

Pangaea – Release (Hessel Audio)

Artist unknown.

Peace – Delicious (Columbia Records)

DESIGN BY SAM COLDY STUDIO – samcoldy.com
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ELLIS SCOTT – ellis-scott.com

Artist could not be reached for comment. Alternate version created by Coldy which was not used:

Stephan Mathieu & Sylvain Chauveau – Palimpsest (Schwebung)

DESIGN BY CARO MIKALEF FOR CABINA – espaciocabina.com.ar

“After some general talks with Stephan [Mathieu] about the album as a whole and being embedded with its music and lyrics… the album became a “lover’s discourse” and [possessed] a feeling of [looseness,] with an apocalyptic yet quiet introspective frame… Creating a totemic field [in which] the self could go to practice a devotional or grieving ritual, Palimpsest‘s cover represents this space.” - Caro Mikalef

“The two stones, as the lovers, also resembled to me a heart shape when I was composing them, in the funny random way images inspire meanings. But all these meanings were [the] essence of the design choices with no intention to become literal; there was no need [for] everybody [to] understand them in a linear way.” – Caro Mikalef

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“We work very closely with Stephan [Mathieau, and it] was important for me to receive his input regarding the album, have a platform of thoughts about the direction he wanted to give to the album and to his label Schwebung, and also to try to interpret his ways of conceiving the visual, aesthetic, etc. He is very active and creative regarding the design of his covers, and his mind is full of interesting visual ideas to be explored. The first instances of a design process were very open; we took them as visual thinking tanks that opened visual directions we both wanted to explore. Then with the chosen options, the design process got more and more fitting to specific expectations and needs. Feedback for me can be as interesting as exhausting sometimes; you realize how arbitrary things can be regarding the visual perception and you test the reception by others. I also had the feedback of my studio partner in Cabina, Coni, which is a valuable reference to me in graphic terms, but mainly what I need to point out is that the design process was very open and mediated by testing several instances and [was] not only my personal isolated work. We both had an interesting dialectic until we got to the final cover.” – Caro Mikalef

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“In general, I don’t use live visuals for my shows; ideally, they are performed on a great sound system in a pitch dark space. I’m using visual aspects in my installation work though, i.e. 16mm projection. Caro and I also built a large kinetic object made from optical lenses, filters and mirrors for a project.” – Stephan Mathieu

Swahili Portland Musicians

Swahili – Swahili (Translinguistic Other)

ARTWORK BY XUA OF SWAHILI – www.facebook.com/XUAsound

“The cover of our record is one of my freak mandalas built upon around a Catholic stained glass church window. The story arc of the record deals with the transformation of a modern reality-based mind into a post-modern multiverse-based nervous system. We are never capable of truly shedding our old mind without losing sanity; like building the mandala upon a pre-existing structure, our minds must always grow out from where we have been to create our new self.” - XUA of Swahili

THE EXTRAS
“The piece was actually around for almost two years as we recorded and re-recorded the record. It was never intended to be the cover, but as we approached finishing the album, it became clear that this piece was closely tied to the material the whole time. I believe the original basis of the cover is a Christmas album of hymns featuring George Beverly Shea.” – XUA of Swahili

Vessel – Order Of Noise (Tri Angle Records)

Artist unknown.

Wild Nothing – Nocturne (Captured Tracks)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SHAWN BRACKBILL – shawnbrackbill.com
LAYOUT BY RYAN MCCARDLE – ryanmccardle.com

“Jack Tatum (Wild Nothing) and I worked hand in hand on this release from the get-go. We went through various stages, starting with collage then going to photography until eventually ending up with this marbled paper idea. We liked what these marbled papers provoked emotionally. I like to think it represented a somewhat “nostalgia in motion.” The die-cut packaging, coupled with the multiple marbled papers, gives the listener a choice of what their cover will be. My hope was that they could place a visual connection with their audible experiences, especially since everyone will pull their own meanings and personal connections from Nocturne.” – Ryan McCardle

THE ALBUM COVER FOR THE XX’S 2009 RELEASE, XX

The xx – Coexist (Young Turks Records)

ARTWORK BY THE XX

Aaradhna – Treble & Reverb // Best Coast – The Only Place // Black To Comm – Earth // David Byrne & St. Vincent – Love // Debruit – From The Horizon // Horrid Red – Celestial Joy // Hospitality – The Drift / Monkey // Om – Advaitic Songs // Para One – Passion // Peaking Lights – Lucifer // Steve Moore & Majeure – Brainstorm // Will Stratton – Post Empire // Xiu Xiu – The Air Force

A series of album covers drawing inspiration from artists and writers of the past. Please be patient when waiting for materials to load!

ALL CATEGORIES:

Aaradhna – Treble & Reverb (Dirty)

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN BY SPECIAL PROBLEMS – specialproblems.com
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TROY GOODALL

“I really wanted a bold powerful portrait of Aaradhna to be on the cover. I love the matter of fact cover portraits of artists like John Cale, Bob Dylan and Alice Coltrane. Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda is a favourite for me. So I guess we were trying to do a modern take on that. A classic portrait of the singer/artist. Aaradhna has a beauty and power as a person and singer that we thought shouldn’t be ignored. We played around with a bit of hand-tinting parts of the photo afterwards, it helped push the photo into something a little more painterly.

For the typography and other vector patterns that appear throughout that album packaging, I wanted it to look like the kind of patterns you’d see on a Morton Subotnik record or [that of] some other early Electronic music pioneer. These were touch points in our thinking — elements to consider without falling into a recreation or something pastiche. It’s a modern take on something classic, like the album itself. You could maybe go as far as saying the warmth and organic nature of the photography contrasted against the hard vector shapes is our Treble & Reverb. The cover was about creating a new look for Aaradhna — one that was equally her and her personality but a side of her that her audience hadn’t seen before.” – Joel Kefali of Special Problems

Best Coast – The Only Place (Mexican Summer / Wichita Recordings)

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN BY DAN SCHECHTER – danschechter.com
IN-STUDIO PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID BLACK
LANDSCAPE ILLUSTRATION BY JESS ROTTER
BOOKLET LIVE PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER DOVGAN
BOOKLET 3D PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX MARKS

“Obviously, Best Coast is all about California. Everything from their name to their sound is influenced by the state. This album is no exception. The state is a backdrop behind all of the songs. Sometimes it’s a character. Sometimes it’s an ideal. Other times it’s a sweet and safe hiding place.

We wanted the album designs to capture this love for California… I found the illustration on the cover of a 1913 songbook for the state song of California, “I Love you California.” Even though the bear is the state animal of California, I was pretty surprised when I first saw it. The humor and sweetness of illustration seemed ahead of its time. I knew we had to include it somewhere on the album. Initially, it was on the back cover as a smaller illustration. Everybody was so drawn to it, though, that we eventually decided it would be perfect as the centerpiece of the cover. We redrew the bear and updated some details of the state. We wanted it to feel a bit more evocative of the golden age of California and [to] fit more in line with the bands previous artwork. It’s half-mascot, half-protector, and (humbly), kind of perfect.” – Dan Schechter

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“The design was really a collaboration between Jess Rotter and myself. Jess works at the band’s label Mexican Summer, but is also a close friend of the band. [She's an] incredible artist and illustrator in her own right[, and] we worked pretty closely on the concepts. She added an illustration of Highway 101 to the back cover and LP sleeve, and coordinated the photography for the back cover and the booklet included in the first run of LPs.” – Dan Schechter

MORE IMAGES ON DANSCHECHTER.COM

Black To Comm – Earth (De Stijl)

LAYOUT & DESIGN BY MARC RICHTER OF BLACK TO COMM
FILM STILL FROM HO TZU NYEN

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“The Earth album contains studio versions of a live soundtrack we did for Singapore artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s film of the same name, so obviously we used images from the film for the album artwork. All the conceptual ideas had been realized musically (or in Nyen’s case, in the making of the film); doing the sleeve artwork was kind of a no-brainer. We were considering doing (fake) painted versions of the stills, but it wasn’t really necessary, since the whole film already looks like a huge classical painting.” – Marc Richter of Black To Comm

“This was a film still from a 42-minute film called EARTH, which I made. The film can be described as three continuous long takes that move in and out of a tableau vivant of 50 actors oscillating between sleep and consciousness. This particular film still that Black to Comm chose for the cover reveals the entire set — which is the site of an unknown catastrophe. In the next minute or so, golden light will permeate the scene and all 50 actors will come alive, and stare straight out at us. EARTH is my attempt to work through my obsession with the light and compositions of painters such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Girodet and Géricault.” – Ho Tzu Nyen

THE EXTRAS
“The layout was then done by myself, partly inspired by the origin of the name of the De Stijl record label where the LP and CD has been released, so the lettering is very much influenced by the original De Stijl magazine from the 1920s… We only had very low resolution stills at hand that you wouldn’t normally use, but the fuzziness actually added to the mysterious quality of the images.” – Marc Richter of Black To Comm

David Bryne & St. Vincent – Love This Giant (4AD / Todo Mundo)

The album cover is a play on Beauty and the Beast, and a strangely appropriate interview with The Daily Beast reveals more:

Debruit – From The Horizon (Civil Music)

ARTWORK BY MARKUS HOFKO RAINBOW MONKEY – rainbowmonkey.de

“In the first place, it was just about creating a surreal landscape which would relate to the abstract elements of [Debruit's] three preceding EP covers. Débruit asked for some sort of African influence in the design since his album is strongly based around West African music. The idea to do a homage to [Rene] Magritte’s The False Mirror came later in the process and locked the image concept in.” – Markus Hofko

RENE MAGRITTE – THE FALSE MIRROR

THE EXTRAS
“The first press of the vinyl version included golden records, which added to the already spectacular make up.” – Markus Hofko

CELESTIAL JOY LP by HORRID RED

Horrid Red – Celestial Joy (HOLIDAYS)

DESIGN BY EDMUND XAVIER
PAINTING BY ALEKSANDRA EKSTER – wikipedia.org/wiki/aleksandra_ekster

“Co-opting found art for post-punk graphics has roots in the late ’70s heyday, but you can trace the thread back through hippie & before that Dada. We are consciously casting fine art down into the pit with our low art music & lifestyle choices. We took this bacchanalian image to represent the urge to create music, our reason for living… We celebrate it with gentle vandalism.” - Edmund Xavier

Hospitality – The Drift / Monkey (Merge Records)

DESIGN BY MAGGIE FOST
ADDITIONAL CONCEPT BY NATHAN MICHEL OF HOSPITALITY

“Our main idea was to combine two very different design ideas: the painting of Katherine of Aragon, which is from around 1525 and the design for the Santa Cruz Duane Peters Skateboard, from the early ’80s. Maggie Fost, the designer, made those two elements work beautifully… We wanted something that would really stand out, even in thumbnail form. I think this one does that for sure. Also, I own a Duane Peters skateboard. I’ve had it since I was a kid.” – Nathan Michel of Hospitality

Om – Advaitic Songs (Drag City)

COVER ART BY UNKNOWN
INTERIOR CREST BY DAVID V. DANDREA – dvdandrea.com

The band declined to comment on the album artwork and would like to keep it open to interpretation.

A note from David V. Dandrea states that the cover is a traditional Greek Icon painting, though he is uncertain whether it is a contemporary interpretation or a vintage original.

This record was featured on our Psychoactive Soundscapes: Top 20 Mind-Bending Albums For 2012 article.

Para One – Passion (Marble Music)

DESIGN BY MUSEUM STUDIO – museumstudio.se

Artists could not be reached for comment.

“The colors are slightly different on the US pressing, and if you look closely the first press cover is all matte except for the center of the font is glossy. We borrowed that idea from ’80s Polydor dance sleeves, particularly this Yoko Ono Walking On Thin Ice EP.” – Peaking Lights

Peaking Lights – Lucifer (Mexican Summer / Weird World)

ARTWORK BY ROBERT BEATTY – remainsstreet.com
INSIDE ARTWORK BY LEIF PODHAJSKY – leifpodhajsky.com

“The band came to me with a very crude sketch of the word ‘Lucifer’ as a neon sign plugged into the wall. They wanted to remove any Satanic connotations from the word and wanted it to evoke its original meaning of ‘Bringer of Light’.” - Robert Beatty

“A rule of thumb for us is that we always try to make something slightly reflective of the past. We drew from Cluster and Isley Brothers particularly in the final decision with the font. One other rule of thumb is that we make sure there is no bar code on the front or back, and Mexican Summer and Weird World were cool enough to let us approach the cover as pure artistic expression in itself.” – Peaking Lights

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“[We] pretty much knew we wanted to have Robert Beatty do the cover of a record at some point; his art is amazing (so are his bands). I sent him a very loose sketch which had the Lucifer plugged In to a wall socket. He did a mock up and it was fine, but then we were really just vibin on the font he made; we thought it was stronger just as that. That was pretty much it — [plus] some loose stuff with size and color, but Robert is so good at what he does you can kind of let him run with it.” – Peaking Lights

THE EXTRAS
The insert was done by Leif Podhajsky — also an insane artist! He did our remix record on Domino’s cover [also]. With the insert, we had less of a clear idea of what we wanted, so that made it harder; there were a lot of revisions… but that was mainly us not being as clear in idea outside of wanting some sort of mandala.” – Peaking Lights

Steve Moore & Majeure – Brainstorm (Temporary Residence Ltd)

DRAWING & MANIPULATIONS BY ALEXANDER BURKART OF THE ZONDERS

“I had a half-baked idea that I wanted the artwork to look sort of like the cover of a ’70s-edition Carlos Castaneda book, specifically The Second Ring of Power. Part sci-fi, part fantasy, part earthly, part spiritual. Bright colors, striking imagery. Alex had recently finished the artwork for my Lovelock album, and I thought he’d do a great job with this project as well.” - Steve Moore

“Alex is very easy and fun to work with. I remember seeing him post a photo of the Mano del Desierto, a large sculpture of a hand reaching out of the Atacama Dessert in Chile. I mentioned to him that this could be a cool basis for the cover art and a few days later he was finished. Nailed it on the first attempt.” – Steve Moore

Post-Empire by Will Stratton

Will Stratton – Post Empire (Talitres Records)

ARTWORK BY JARED RAGLAND – jaredragland.com
LAYOUT BY WILL STRATTON

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“Once I had decided that the title was going to be Post-Empire, I gave Jared free reign with that information in mind, and he came up with a few different images, all of which had sort of palimpsestic qualities that appealed to me in other work that he has done. I chose the image of the rider because it seemed the most singularly focused of the things he made, and it was vaguely nationalistic, which I liked. So, from my perspective, it was a process of elimination.” – Will Stratton

“I can’t make work without some set of rules or parameters, so each of my collages are created within certain conceptual boundaries and employ images from specific image archives. The collage used for Post-Empire comes from a series of works I made a few years ago that were inspired by Alfred Tennyson’s poem, ‘Charge of the Light Brigade,’ and primarily built from photographs made by Roger Fenton during the Crimean War (a war that – much like our own recent ones – was largely unpopular and highly criticized).” – Jared Ragland

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“Originally the cover image was a little more complicated, with a bird on the rider’s head and I think some other elements that I asked Jared to pare down. And I ended up messing with the hue of the image so that the background and foreground were different colors; it started out sepia. Aside from that, the image was entirely Jared’s.” – Will Stratton

“Will sent two early demos of the album so I could respond to what he’d recorded. His music is really intricate and beautiful, so I initially wanted to make something that could visually represent that beauty. And honestly, my initial attempts were complete failures. Fortunately though, Will’s music is more than just pretty melodies, and this particular set of songs is full of allegory and metaphor from which I could draw ideas. At some point during the process, Will announced that the record would be called Post-Empire, and I immediately thought of this collage from the ‘Light Brigade’ series. I rearranged a few things, sent it to Will, and he thought it was right for the record.” – Jared Ragland

2006 ORIGINAL

Xiu Xiu – The Air Force Reissue (Polyvinyl Records)

DESIGN BY JOE STEWART
PAINTING BY UNKNOWN (1600S PAINTER – “I saw at an art exhibit in Torino in 2005 called HELL.” – Jamie Stewart)

“The record is called The Air Force. It is about how the air force murders the most people in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but the murderers are the least accountable emotionally and morally for what they have done. They just press a button, cum in their pants and an entire village is erased. There is a bizarre link between the military and Christianity. Some of the greatest horrors in humanity are committed by people who claim to be devote believers in Jesus. The cover is about how Jesus must feel about this.” - Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu

“My brother designs of our record covers. This is a reissue so we wanted a different cover, but I still wanted to use the central image. This was all I told him and just went for it. Blacker than black was the answer. I love that I can put it in his hands and he always makes something wonderful that I would never have thought of.” – Jamie Stewart of Xiu Xiu

Baroness – Yellow & Green // Coheed & Cambria – Ascension // The Dandy Warhols – This Machine // Dawnbringer – Into The Lair Of The Sun God // Dragged Into Sunlight – Widowmaker // EARTH – Angels of Darkness & Demons of Light II // The Fall of Every Season – Amends // The Fixx – Beautiful Friction // Guardian Alien – See the World Given to a One Love Entity (Part 1) // mewithoutYou – Ten Stories // Murder Construct – Results // Shackleton – Music For The Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs // Sigh – In Somniphobia // Sleep – Dopesmoker

This series of album covers is not only visually-striking but possesses intrinsic narrative qualities, whether they be filled with symbolic references or residing in deeply-constructed mythological worlds. Please be patient when waiting for materials to load!

ALL CATEGORIES:

“Normally, I would find the literal reinterpretation of themes heavy-handed and problematic; however, since I make the art for Baroness as well as play the music, I am able to keep our visual and sonic aesthetics quite close, often running directly parallel. The tricky obstacle is capturing the right atmosphere and tenor of our music, through color, tone and visual metaphor. What is the color or shape of reflection? Of anxiety? Of struggle?” – John Dyer Baizley of Baroness

Baroness – Yellow & Green (Relapse Records)

ARTWORK & ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN DYER BAIZLEY OF BARONESS

“I tried to accomplish a great deal making the Y&G cover artwork. It has always been important that I make album covers for Baroness that the other guys in the band can relate to. Each of our record covers have bits and pieces of stories that we can each relate to, [like] inside stories and jokes which only we can figure out. Additionally, the visual themes must syncopate with the song [and] album themes… I try to embed themes within the art that stand independent of the music, in order to hint at the larger project, which will become apparent only when looking at all the albums together in the future. I’ve found that the best way to tackle a visual project of this girth is to drape everything in heavy symbolism. My artistic tendency towards allegory has permitted me to work outside-but-close-to the boundaries of figurative, realistic work without (hopefully) verging on fantasy. It’s a visual filter that suits my artwork well.” - John Dyer Baizley of Baroness

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“I spend a fair amount of time researching my concepts, in order to visually interpret them in a compelling, if somewhat obscured way. If I am too direct, the work suffers from over-explanation; if I am too obtuse, from being too fantastic. I often make reference to classical works and well-established paradigms so that I might offer a compositional foundation which the viewer feels a connection with — from which they may dredge out some new perspective or a deeper, more idiosyncratic understanding. The rest of the band is kept in-the-loop with this process. After all, they have to feel the same way about the art that I do. These records are part of our legacy, and we should all feel connected to the project. Devotion to the full-scope of our creativity is important to our survival and development.” – John Dyer Baizley of Baroness

THE EXTRAS
“Color is a tricky device for me to wrestle with. I don’t have any natural aptitude for it. Like all of my perceived weaknesses, it has become the focus of my artistic battle. Thusly, we have based entire record titles on color, and there is an abundance of time spent developing the right chromatic look for each album cover. More often than not, I use my creative muscle to attack my own shortcomings rather than developing my proven strengths. It is unsurprising, with respect to the fact that I am an artist, that so much of Baroness’ lyrical themes refer to colors and tones; that seems like an inevitability. However, I will take the stance now that future Baroness records will no longer have chromatic titles. That idea has run its course.” – John Dyer Baizley of Baroness

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“We’ve been considering adding a visual component to our live show for some time now, though we haven’t actually seen any of our ideas come to light. Look for something new in our live production soon.” – John Dyer Baizley of Baroness

Coheed & Cambria – Ascension (Hundred Handed / Everything Evil)

COVER ART BY HEIIDI TAILLEFER – heiditaillefer.com
BOOKLET ACRYLIC PAINTINGS BY NATHAN SPOOR – nathanspoor.com
GRAPHICS & PACKAGE DESIGN BY BILL SCOVILLE – scov.com

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“The story is like an epic tale of a man (called Afterman) who heads into space to explore an energy band fueled by souls. Among these souls, he incorporates five into his suit, which fuel himself as well. Each of these souls — four men and one woman; three negative and two good — have personality traits unto themselves. One of them was once bad and turned to the good in the afterworld, so to speak. This Afterman heads up for a time that escapes him, since I guess interdimensionally, time ceases to be perceived, and after he comes back, he finds that his wife is deceased. He was so caught up in his explorations that he neglected her utterly and feels this huge pang of remorse and regret.” – Heiidi Taillefer

“There are lots of philosophical and thematic elements in Claudio [Sanchez of Coheed & Cambria]‘s series of narratives. It’s pretty complex, but if you follow the band and what Claudio has been doing, it’ll make a lot of sense. He told me about the concept and about what each song would mean or should include before I heard any of the music. Between recording sessions, we would talk about the ideas since I would keep sending over drawings of what he might be looking for. Once we got even a part of something right, I would then keep doing new pictures until we got the final idea approved. Some of them were really quick and some others we went through dozens of drawings until we got there.” – Nathan Spoor

The Dandy Warhols – This Machine (Beat The World / The End Records)

COVER PRODUCTION BY STEVEN BIRCH
DESIGN, LAYOUT & PHOTOGRAPHY BY SEAN GOTHMAN – seangothman.com
COVER PAINTING BY HICKORY MERTSCHING – hickorymertsching.com
COVER PAINTING PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN KIVITKA – kivitkaphotography.com

“Peter Holmstrom and Courtney Taylor-Taylor [of The Dandy Warhols] each expressed certain elements they wanted to see in the painting,specifically their guitar displayed on a stump. Courtney Taylor-Taylor sketched out a doodle of the rough layout on a envelope, and we discussed trying to create a very regional Northwest landscape with a woodsy feel as the backdrop. Also, with Mt. St. Helens in the far distance. The antlers represent the by-product/refuse of This Machine; the guitar is the tool which creates the means to the end, and the ruffed grouse, which is found in the foothills of the Cascades and Coastal Range, makes a drumming sound with its wing movement; it symbolizes the music by taking flight into the aural senses and audio.” – Hickory Mertsching

Dawnbringer – Into the Lair of the Sun God (Profound Lore)

Artist unknown.

“We are very particular about our sound and whilst Widowmaker was a very relaxed process. We recorded at least three drum versions, at least three guitar versions and three bass tracks, in the end we double tracked the bass, it needed to sound like molten lava. A lot of drugs and a lot of fucking insanity. The album was recorded between our trips out to Portugal for SWR Fest, Holland for Roadburn and Maryland for Deathfest, as well as a month long US tour. There are vast portions of the recording that no one actually remembers, a lot of getting fucked up on places, boats and in the back of vans, but that’s what this is about for us. A total exorcism, the music is a reflection of the chaos that unfolds wherever we go. We also recorded a live backing track for the entire record inside the [Sedlec] Ossuary in Czech Republic.” – T of Dragged Into Sunlight

Dragged Into Sunlight – Widowmaker (Prosthetic Records)

ARTWORK BY SINDRE FOSS SKANCKE – sindrefossskancke.com

“Dragged Into Sunlight works with like-minded individuals on everything we do. The minds out there who share a very rare commonality with the raw components behind our sound [are] a very niche mindset. Sindre really delivered what we had expected and without any direction, other than the music.” - T of Dragged Into Sunlight

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“For me, as the artist who visualizes the music, it is of course important to get to know the ideas behind the music. We had lots of conversations before I started the physical work, and I of course listened to the album a lot. It was special working with Widowmaker; all of the visuals were done in an intense month isolated in my cabin. The ideas behind the album and the music corresponded well with my isolation at that point… I tried to nail the images that got into my head while listening to the album over and over, scraped down into whatever media that felt right for visualising the reality.” – Sindre Foss Skancke

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“I got a lot of information before I started, then I would go to the city once a week and email my progress. I do not really work as a designer, so if I am going to work with a band, it has to be a band with both music and a vision that interests me. Good music needs custom visuals, and seeing this slice of music as a conceptual piece of sound, it would also need something that fits well visually, but also challenges it. I think we managed that.” – Sindre Foss Skancke

“We worked very closely together on an intellectual level and allowed an unspoken bond to grow. It comes from a creative drive innate with in both Dragged Into Sunlight and Sindre as an artist. When you are that passionate about a common vision, it’s almost telepathic, and the vision becomes a reality.” – T of Dragged Into Sunlight

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“Widowmaker has a 40-minute video which has not yet been released. It is produced by Dwid Hellion [of] Integrity. Integrity are as much of an influence as Eyehategod and all of the other raw to the bone artists out there. It has been our honor to work with so many great artists on Widowmaker. Only time can tell us what Widowmaker will look like; just like it has a sound and vision, it also has a form.” – T of Dragged Into Sunlight

EARTH – Angels of Darkness & Demons of Light II (Southern Lord Records)

ARTWORK & ILLUSTRATION BY STACEY ROZICH

A visual continuation of Angels of Darkness & Demons of Light I. You can also read our interview with artist Stacey Rozich.

The Fall of Every Season – Amends (Grau)

ARTWORK BY ROBERT HOYEM – attheends.com
BACK COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIM KVALHEIM – kimvalheim.no

“This is actually the third shot at making the cover for the Amends. I’ve heard snippets and songs of the album over the last five years, so the album has been in the oven for quite some time. The initial ideas for the cover can be found on my blog, but after some time I decided to recreate the entire artwork — both to better reflect the music and lyrics and give the album a fresh boost. The artwork in its entirety is actually quite direct, and illustrates different aspects of the lyrics without any interpretation, more or less as an experiment to see how this kind of a cover would look in a more old school, illustrative approach.” – Robert Hoyem

“I feel that the grand scope of the album’s sound was reflected particularly well in the end result. It’s huge. Lyrically, the album contains a lot of very visual metaphors that work well as direct illustrations in the art.” – Marius Strand of The Fall Of Every Season

The Fixx – Beautiful Friction (Kirtland Records)

PAINTING BY GEORGE UNDERWOOD – georgeunderwood.com
ART DIRECTION BY TOMMY MOORE

“When The Fixx asked me to create an image for the cover, I had just finished working on a big painting called ‘I Talk With The Spirits’. I was really pleased they asked me because I had a good working relationship with them from the past with Reach The Beach, Phantoms, and Calm Animals. With the painting, the thought process was: lost civilisation, island of the dead, spiritual beings being visited or observed by another generation as if they were witnessing a religious experience [or] phenomenon. Then they said it was going to be called Beautiful Friction, and I realised that my painting could be interpreted exactly into that title. So I cropped it down until I thought it worked as a record sleeve.” – George Underwood

Guardian Alien – See the World Given to a One Love Entity (Part 1) (Thrill Jockey Records)

PAINTING BY TURNER WILLIAMS OF GUARDIAN ALIEN – turnerwilliamsjr.com
CONCEPT BY GREG FOX

“I was most interested in interpreting [Greg's] dream in my way. It was a new sort of collaboration for me.” - Turner Williams of Guardian Alien

“I was approached by the guy on the record cover; he showed me the album title and the art, which was him showing me the album title and the art. The idea was to basically just follow those instructions and not think about it too much otherwise. It was not a dream. I was fully awake when it happened. It is important to me that this is made clear. Calling it a dream suggests somehow that it didn’t really happen, and discounts it as not being as genuine of an experience as what we consider regular real life or whatever. I was fully conscious and completely stupefied by the experience, and to this day, I’m not completely sure what happened, mostly because I’m not sure how I feel about the whole alien phenomena in general.” – Greg Fox of Guardian Alien

MORE IMAGES AT CHARLIEWAGERS.COM

mewithoutYou – Ten Stories (Pine Street)

LAYOUT & DESIGN BY CHARLIE WAGERS OF THREE BEARS DESIGN – charliewagers.com
PAINTINGS BY VASILY KAFANOV, COMMISSIONED BY MEWITHOUTYOU – kafanov.com
ART DIRECTION BY AARON WEISS AND MIKE ALMQUIST – lookingiswrong.com

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“The album artwork is meant to directly follow the storyline of the music contained in the album. The album is about a 19th century circus train that crashes in the mountains in Montana, and some of the animals escape. Each “story” is about the animals, where they go and what they do. For the artwork, Vasily Kafanov was commissioned to make a painting for each song, and another for the cover. The album artwork ties each painting to the songs, in such a way that it feels like an old, worn-out storybook from the same era.” – Charlie Wagers

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“I love working with mewithoutYou because they are unlike any other band when it comes to artwork. They are always very involved in the artwork process. I would talk to Aaron Weiss (the band’s singer) or Michael Almquist (manager) at least once a day to check-in on the process. It’s great working with a band that is this involved; they are very critical, which is always pushing things to look their best. They also were consistently providing me with great ideas.” – Charlie Wagers

THE EXTRAS
“Vasily made 14 paintings, while I handled all other mediums. I did a lot of scanning old books and paper, to get the proper textures and little flourishes to add to the pages. I also spent a lot of time with the typography; namely the typefaces Mrs. Eaves & Dunelm, slightly distressing the letters to have the appearance that they were printed on an old printing press…”

“This was definitely a non-conventional album to create the packaging for. We did three different versions: a deluxe box-set that contained a double LP’s, a gatefold-packaged 7″, 18-page storybook and alternate-art CD. As well as a gatefold “standard” edition LP on colored vinyl, and a CD, both which came with a 12-page lyric booklet. And also an accompanying 7″ single for February 1878, with the b-side Four Fires… My favorite part of this package was the etching on the D-side of the deluxe-edition vinyl. It was my first chance to tackle illustrating for a vinyl etching, and I wanted it to follow the contours of a round record. The result was several of the stories’ animals, strung along in a circle around the record.” – Charlie Wagers

Murder Construct – Results (Relapse Records)

DESIGN BY ORION LANDAU – orionlandau.tumblr.com

“The title Results was based on Capitalism’s need to be constantly be expanding or it collapses in on itself [and its] need to show a quarterly profit to shareholders at the expense of long-term growth and human welfare. We settled on the decayed Eye Of Province as a symbol of the collapses due to the current systems of conducting business. It was really fun making this Masonic symbol that we all see daily into this decayed rotting pile of corpses!” - Orion Landau

“Orion kept us in the loop every step of the way. We initially had some other ideas for the artwork which weren’t fully fleshed out, and when Orion showed us what he was working on, we knew we were looking at what I would consider to be cover art of the year, haha.” – Leon of Murder Construct

The box set contains three 12″s, one CD, and one 12″ x 12″ booklet of artwork from Clough.

Shackleton – Music For The Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs (Woe To The Septic Heart)

ARTWORK BY ZEKE CLOUGH – zekeclough.com

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“It was partly inspired by the text by Tenfold Vengeance that was included in the release, by a conversation with Sam about the nature of a possible future apocalypse and by [his] own thoughts on time… The time aspect’s represented by the characters marching through the lens of the present. This was meant to show time as a way of defining the possible permutations of the past, (would have, should have, could have) and the potential of the future — pretty much my frustration that the potential of a lifespan is inevitably defined by the passage through time.” – Zeke Clough

“[The passage by Tenfold Vengeance] concerned a letter to his granddaughter who lives in the year 2065. Zeke told me that he had been working on themes which seem to overlap with the basic concept. We thought that it would be good to try to tie this all together with one package. From this early foundation, Zeke had free range but had input from Vengeance Tenfold’s words to interpret as he felt fitting… I do not really have a rule when it comes to Zeke’s stuff as he has his own fertile imagination and great ability. His sensibilities tie in with my own, pretty much. The only thing that I am a stickler for is aesthetic consistency for each series. This means that the artwork for this release needed to be stylistically connected to the previous Woe To The Septic Heart release and that these releases in turn needed to be stylistically different again from the Skull Disco releases.” – Sam Shackleton of Shackleton

THE EXTRAS
“There was also a vague story about charactors escaping a churning, primordial landscape by travelling into the bottom of a volcano. In the bottom of the volcano is relative tranquility and they are confronted by the time-defining gate/lens.” – Zeke Clough

Sigh – In Somniphobia (Candlelight Records)

ARTWORK & CONCEPT BY ELIRAN KANTOR – elirankantor.com

“Music-wise, it’s quite a surreal record with its main focus being nightmares, and I think each listener will end up with an entirely different experience so it would be a shame to ruin all the mystique with giving my own perspective of it and what led to it. The plot is quite simple to figure out anyway. I’ve read some great theories online from Sigh fans, weaving various political conspiracies and secret meanings. And these things will be in the back of their minds when listening to the record, which is fantastic.” - Eliran Kantor

“All I did was to tell Eliran that the album concept was nightmare and to give him some demo tracks and the lyrics. I really did not think I had to give him further instruction or anything, as I 100% trusted him as an artist and I was completely sure that he would understand what kind of visions I had in my mind. We worked together for the previous album, Scenes from Hell, so I knew leaving almost everything to him would generate the best result.” – Mirai Kawashima of Sigh

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“Visuals are always very important live. We use a lot of fire and blood gimmicks and it’s not the same old pyro machine or anything. Most of those gimmicks are handmade by us, and I’m sure people have never seen a show like ours before.” – Mirai Kawashima of Sigh

THE EXTRAS
“All I’m willing to give out is a small silly trivia detail: in a classic Kind Diamond-like manner, the pregnant queen is based on my grandma. Nightmarish enough?” – Eliran Kantor

Sleep – Dopesmoker Reissue (Southern Lord Records Records)

ARTWORK BY ARIK ROPER – arikroper.com

“The goal was to accurately portray in visual terms the imagery from the lyrics of Dopesmoker. The song is an epic musical masterpiece and the lyrics tell an epic story. It’s science fiction in a sense, but more than that, it’s also a spiritual journey, a meditative journey of sound. Though I’d done two previous covers for different versions of this album, this is the definitive one, the one conceived by the band and myself. It serves as a visual map for the music, a window into that universe. The rest of the world can be viewed with eyes closed and headphones on.” - Arik Roper

UNMANIPULATED PHOTOGRAPHY

MANIPULATED PHOTOGRAPHY

Acid Pauli – mst // Anberlin – Vital // The Antlers – Undersea // Bat For Lashes – The Haunted Man // Bomber Jackets – Centurion Travel 7″ // Callers – Reviver // Chromatics – Kill For Love // Clock Opera – Ways To Forget // Crystal Castles – III // Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes // Miniature Tigers – Mia Pharoah // Naomi Punk – The Feeling // Paloma Faith – Fall to Grace // Ponderosa – Pool Party // Raime – Quarter Turns Over A Living Line // Savior Adore – Our Nature // Scissor Sisters – Magic Hour // Sleigh Bells – Reign of Terror

All photography-related album covers are thumbnailed from least manipulated to most manipulated. Please be patient when waiting for materials to load!

ALL CATEGORIES:

Acid Pauli – mst (Clown & Sunset)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CAPERO
DESIGN BY STEFAN BOGNER

“I was looking through photos with Capero, and we selected some that we might wanna use for the artwork. This one instantly touched me in a strong way, and I felt there was some kind of connection between the picture and the music. Nevertheless, we sent all the pics we selected to [label co-owner Nicolas Jaar]. Guess what? He chose the same picture to be his favorite. So I sent it to my friend Stefan Bogner who is an amazing designer — one of those hard-to-find creatives who really know how to reduce to the maximum. He made some drafts, and we all liked the one which is upside down, [with] the little picture reversed, so that you don’t really get it at first sight. For me that’s a graphical synonym of what I try to make with music as well.” – Acid Pauli

Anberlin – Vital (Universal Republic)

LAYOUT, DESIGN, ART DIRECTION, COLLAGES BY JORDAN BUTCHER – workofself.com
ART DIRECTION BY NATE YOUNG OF ANBERLIN
CUSTOM TYPOGRAPHY BY DARREN BOOTH – darrenbooth.com
COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON FEAVER – feaverishphotography.com
BAND PHOTOGRAPHY BY BLISS BRAOUDAKIS – blisskatherine.com

“Visuals are almost just as important to me as the music. Videos to stage production, it all has to create a vibe that fits the music.” - Nate Young of Anberlin

“Nate and I are like two peas in a pod on the artwork, usually. Our working relationship has grown to be a little direction up front, and then I’m sort of let loose. Usually when we disagree, we make fun of each other a bunch and then the outcome is much better. We have a unique kind of deal to be friends first and work on stuff like this when the time arises, so it’s actually a lot more fun for me than a usual package, and I tend to get a little more invested in Anberlin releases. For better or worse.” – Jordan Butcher

THE EXTRAS
“All the [interior] collage photos are the same girl. The gradients and color blocks happened by accident during the layout process… But I ended up letting them be the (in my opinion) main piece of the art… They kind of differentiate the different versions of the record that are out there.” – Jordan Butcher

“We only pressed the album on two 10″ instead of the standard 12″, and side D is fully smooth, with no etching. I’ve personally never seen that done. I’m not saying it’s groundbreaking, but it’s close. Ha.” – Nate Young

The Antlers – Undersea EP (ANTI-/Transgressive Records)

Artist unknown.

Bat For Lashes – The Haunted Man (Parlophone)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN MCGINLEY – ryanmcginley.com

Artist could not be reached for comment.

Bomber Jackets – Centurion Travel 7″ (Night School)

ARTWORK BY BILL KOULIGAS

Artist could not be reached for comment.

Callers – Reviver (Partisan Records)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DERRICK BELCHAM – astorytoldwell.com
DESIGN BY SARA LUCAS, RYAN SEATON & LAUREN WOLFF

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“Our last album cover for Life of Love in 2010 was a 4×4 foot colorful oil painting done by our friend Douglas McQueen, an artist living in Brooklyn. We really love how that turned out as it was very appropriate for that record — but for Reviver, we went in the complete opposite direction. With the photograph we chose, we wanted to present the album as something extremely personal and close to the skin. When creating the artwork for our albums, we’re not driven by branding and we want the album that we created to dictate the visual aesthetics, not necessarily the personality of the band or its members. This might backfire for us as we know that branding and icons sell these days. But since branding does not drive our sound or our writing, it’s not going to dictate our cover art either. Oops…” – Sara Lucas of Callers

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“Initially, we had a very different idea of what the cover was going to look like and spent a very long time ruminating over it. The day before the artwork was due for the record, we realized that our initial idea wasn’t going to work. We called up Derrick Belcham and told him what we wanted. We went to his house after working all day, and he spent an hour getting the shot. It was very simple in the end and was finished in only a matter of hours. A friend of ours who is a designer, Lauren Wolff, helped us out with the type and placement afterwards. The cover was put together in one day… All I can say is you can spend months thinking about a cover and trying to execute it, totally fail and then spontaneously make it happen in a matter of hours.” – Sara Lucas of Callers

Chromatics – Kill For Love (Italians Do It Better)

DESIGN BY JOHNNY JEWEL OF CHROMATICS – facebook.com/chromaticsband

The band declined to comment and would prefer to keep the album artwork open to interpretation.

Clock Opera – Ways To Forget (Moshi Moshi / Island Records)

ART DIRECTION BY RICHARD ROBINSON – richardrobinsondesign.co.uk
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MADS PERCH – mads-perch.com

“[Me] and Mads Perch had an extensive meeting with the band [to discuss] directions for the campaign. They had a clear idea of how they wanted the record to feel — not so much of a finished visual, more the message they wanted to convey. They had references of Picasso paintings, distorted screens, vibrant colours and movement.

We took this on board and were really interested in the movement aspect, and particularly the work of Gjon Mili. Having experimented with multiple exposure techniques before, it was a great opportunity to push it further. The band are friends of a group of dancers called The New Movement Collective, and they were happy to come along and let us shoot them for the project. We had four dancers in total and over a day-long shoot, had them perform routines [we captured] as we went. Once we’d done the shoot, the band felt that it needed more emotion and colour, so I worked extensively processing the images to create a more layered, textured piece that had more of a painted quality, which ultimately reflected the music more accurately.” – Richard Robinson

Crystal Castles – III (Fiction Records / Polydor Records)

ORIGINAL COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY BY SAMUEL ARANDA – samuelaranda.net

The main image used on this album cover was manipulated for III, but a description of the original image is as follows:

“Fatima al-Qaws cradles her son Zayed (18), who is suffering from the effects of tear gas after participating in a street demonstration, in Sanaa, Yemen, on 15 October. Ongoing protests against the 33-year-long regime of authoritarian President Ali Abdullah Saleh escalated that day. Witnesses said that thousands marched down Zubairy Street, a main city thoroughfare, and were fired on when they reached a government checkpoint near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Some demonstrators retreated, others carried on and were shot at again. At least 12 people were killed and some 30 injured. Ms. Qaws—who was herself involved in resistance to the regime—found her son after a second visit to look for him, among the wounded at a mosque that was being used as a temporary field hospital. Zayed remained in a coma for two days after the incident. He was injured on two further occasions, as demonstrations continued. On 23 November, President Saleh flew to Saudi Arabia, and signed an agreement transferring power to his deputy, Abdurabu Mansur Hadi. Saleh’s rule ended formally when Hadi was sworn in as president, following an election, on 25 February 2012.”

Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes (Warp Records)

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN BY STEPHEN SERRATO OF B+ – sserrato.info
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN KITCHENS

Artists could not be reached for comment.

Miniature Tigers – Mia Pharoah (Modern Art)

Artist unknown.

Naomi Punk – The Feeling (Captured Tracks)

ARTWORK BY NAOMI PUNK

Artists could not be reached for comment.

Paloma Faith – Fall To Grace (Epic Records)

DESIGN & LAYOUT BY CHRISTOPHER J. PORTER – iseesea.co.uk
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVID STANDISH – davidstandish.co.uk

Artists could not be reached for comment.

Ponderosa – Pool Party (New West Records)

ARTWORK by ROB CARMICHAEL OF SEEN STUDIO – seenstudio.com
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEXANDER SEMENOV – clione.ru

“We wanted the music to drive the visual concept, so a psychedelic image for the album cover seemed fitting. However, we wanted to stay away from anything created in Photoshop. We felt that there was enough of that type of album art out there and didn’t want to do something that was already overdone. JT discovered the work of oceanographer and marine biologist, Alexander Semenov, specifically the jellyfish image and he was really passionate about using it as the cover. The rest of the band loved it. It was psychedelia in nature, it was a no-brainer. Fortunately Alexander is an awesome dude and granted us permission to use the image.

This species is the lion’s mane jellyfish and was photographed in the White Sea.” – Jeremiah Romo of Ponderosa

Raime – Quarter Turns Over A Living Line (Blackest Ever Black)

Artist unknown.

Savior Adore – Our Nature (Popular Recordings)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LEAH ECKLIND
DIGITAL PAINTING BY DOUG OLSEN – dougolsen.com
DESIGN, LAYOUT & TYPOGRAPHY BY JULIAN BIALOWAS – julianbialowas.com

“The album has a very specific focus on human nature, or the fabric of any being for that matter — specifically a narrative between a girl and a supernatural monster. The arc of the story develops as our two characters meet, interact, eventually coexist and then chaos ensues as they see too much of one another. We found the original photograph re-blogged on a friend’s website, and it immediately struck us that it was a perfect fit. It took the focus of the two characters but framed it in a supernatural sense so perfectly. From there, we built upon the particle nature of the environment for the rest of the album art as well.” - Savior Adore

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“The creation of the artwork was pretty complex for a few reasons, so we ended up working very closely with the artist(s) throughout the process. Unfortunately, there was no high res version of the photograph anymore, so it had to be re-enhanced and painted digitally. The cover is not simply a photograph, and wouldn’t have been possible without the work of three artists. It’s a digital painting of a photograph and then the typography and “circle frame” were created by a graphic designer. Leah Ecklind is the photographer, Doug Olsen is the painter, and Julian Bialowas was the graphic designer. We worked pretty closely with them, but for the most part, they perfectly captured what we were hoping for at each step.” – Savior Adore

THE EXTRAS
“We just found it so interesting and inspiring that we found the art and the artists we worked with all online. First we stumbled across the photograph on a friends page, then it took two weeks to track down the photographer, Leah (also would not have been possible without social networking), and then we ended up asking Julian to do the graphic design (we had followed his Tumblr page all year).” – Savior Adore

“I really wanted to focus on the lyrics and typography for this album. So often, lyrics are tucked away in books and miss out on the action, typically being set in standard 12-point, left-aligned format. With this layout. it’s the first thing listeners see before they even get to the disc… each and every line you see in the interior panels was 100% hand set, line by line, word by word, letter by letter. And believe it or not, it was done twice! (The original final designs were lost in a hard drive failure so the entire layout had to be redone by hand.) [It] was an insanely tedious process but so very worth it; the lyrics most definitely deserve the attention they got.” – Julian Bialowas

Scissor Sisters – Magic Hour (Polydor Records)

PHOTOGRAPHY & ARTWORK BY NEIL KRUG – neilkrug.com
DESIGN BY TREVOR TARCZYNSKI – studiodestro.com

“The main goal was to generate something surreal that would sequentially flow with the band’s previous album sleeves. I wanted the image to have an exuberant quality and at the same time look like a scene from a sci-fi film.” - Neil Krug

“[Collaboration was] pretty close, in particular with Scott Hoffman (Babydaddy) from the band. He and I spoke almost everyday about ideas and new designs. Since the project was based in 3D, the options for perspective were endless, so it took us a moment to dial in what we were after.” – Neil Krug

“The story I love to tell is about the cover. They had a different idea that they were passionate about but wasn’t going to be addressed right away, so I hired Joe Garrad to shoot these objects that Derek [Miller] and Alexis [Krauss] collected. If my memory serves me correct, they weren’t sold on their own idea of showing bloody Keds in the booklet. (Keds is an icon that represents Alexis since that’s pretty much all she wears. [with] blood to show pain and aggression which is very much within the songs themselves.) I said, ‘Let’s just shoot it; if we use it, we use it. If not, no harm done.’ After going back and looking at all the shots with Joe, I decided to put everything on a cream background to make it feel more like a considered piece of art, and the shoes JUMPED off the page. In our next meeting, I said something along the lines of, ‘Guys, I know you love your cover idea, but here’s your real cover’ (I probably didn’t come off as smooth and confident as that, but let’s just go with it) and showed them the Keds. Alexis and Will, the manager, immediately loved it. Derek liked it and said he wanted to live with it for a night and called me up the next day saying we nailed it. The decision to take the type off of the cover came a little later when it just felt like Joe’s photo was so much more powerful with no typography to share the attention.” – Steve Attardo

Sleigh Bells – Reign Of Terror (Mom & Pop)

DESIGN & LAYOUT BY STEVE ATTARDO – stevenattardo.com
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOE GARRAD – joegarrad.com
ART DIRECTION BY DEREK MILLER OF SLEIGH BELLS

“Sleigh Bells felt that this album had much more emotional depth in the writing, so from the start, they knew they wanted the design to reflect that. The idea was to take all of these seemingly unrelated objects and display them in an overly appreciative way to show that despite their range and obscurity, there was a sentimental connection to all of it. There’s Derek’s grandfather’s Purple Heart and also one of his favorite distortion pedals. There was a speaker head and his grandfather’s canteen (with the entrance and exit holes from a bullet).” - Steve Attardo

ADDITIONAL IMAGES AT STEVENATTARDO.COM

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“This was a 100% collaboration. Sleigh Bells came to me with a pretty clear vision and passion for how they wanted to be perceived, what they wanted to include, and the story (though confusing and non-linear) they wanted to tell. From there, I felt it was my job to take it all in and show them which ideas were working, which weren’t, and how to show it in a considered / better way — how to make it really speak. We were working with a pretty simple and clean aesthetic from the start, so it really became about art direction and details.” – Steve Attardo

2D MIXED MEDIA

3D MIXED MEDIA

A Place To Bury Strangers – Worship // Alice Cohen – Pink Keys // Battles – Dross Glop Series // Bear in Heaven – I Love You, It’s Cool // Clown & Sunset – Don’t Break My Love // The Darkness – Hot Cakes // Dog Shredder – Brass Tactics // How To Dress Well – Total Loss // Tin Can Radio – Open Ears, Open Minds // Sun Airway – Soft Fall // Turbo Fruits – Butter // White Lung – Sorry // Woods – Bend Beyond // Young Magic – Melt

Collaged and mixed media works, running from the 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional and sculptural works. Please be patient when waiting for materials to load!

ALL CATEGORIES:

A Place To Bury Strangers – Worship (Secretly Canadian)

DESIGN BY DANIEL MURPHY OF SECRETLY CANADIAN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DION LUNADON OF A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS

“The photo is of one of the new World Trade Towers in New York. It is disgusting that America really loves to fight. Our album cover, I feel, shows the beauty of the design of the lines in structure of such a stark and strange scene. - Oliver Ackermann of A Place To Bury Strangers

“I took this picture while driving around Manhattan, and it sparked the idea to take photos in that area. Dion [Lunadon of A Place To Bury Strangers] shot the photo on one of our jaunts downtown, and then it was reworked by Daniel Murphy at Secretly Canadian.” – Oliver Ackermann of A Place To Bury Strangers

“The artwork is a combination of original photos taken by the band, along with some found photos, that have been collaged and heavily manipulated to push the colors in a more confrontational direction. We were hoping to invoke a sense of disorientation and vertigo with the design – to give the viewer the sense of moving at a great speed without being sure whether they’re going up or down. It felt like a good visual representation of the intensity of the music, without really being as visually dark as much of their previous album artwork. It’s an attempt to achieve “heaviness” with a lighter touch.” – Daniel Murphy

Pink Keys by alice cohen

The photo on the insert for Pink Keys came from an old French film magazine, from the late ’60s, and is a still from the 1969 film Le Grand Meaulnes (pictured). The scene is called La Fete Etrange, and contains people dressed in colorful and bizarrely fantastical costumes. That image was an inspiration for the song “La Fete Etrange” and really piqued my curiosity, conjuring scenes of parades and processions of strangely dressed characters. – Alice Cohen

Alice Cohen – Pink Keys (Olde English Spelling Bee)

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN BY ALICE COHEN – alicecohen.bandcamp.com – AND TODD LEDFORD – oesbee.blogspot.com

“The art which became the cover for Pink Keys was found accidentally before the creation of the music, and was the first impetus and catalyst for the entire album.” - Alice Cohen

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“I came across the illustration of the keys in an old encyclopedia from 1938. The illustration was square, as an album cover is, and was basically used “as is” for the album art… something about the color scheme, and the design just grabbed me completely, and I said, “That is my next album cover”. I showed it to Todd from Olde English Spelling Bee Records, and for the following year after finding this picture, we called the concept and the album “Pink Keys”, based on the muted pink background color of the illustration. From that, I got into the symbolic ideas of “keys” and locking/unlocking as psychological/mystical concepts, which inspired me throughout the creation of the album. The color “pink” tied into this as well… so the one original image of the two keys on the pink background unlocked an entire world of ideas and metaphors that I could play with lyrically, musically and conceptually. – Alice Cohen

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“[Todd and I] had worked together in the past on album art, and knew how each other work and what we were going for. We are both very particular about everything, including fonts, and we don’t like to use computer fonts at all…the lettering for the album was hand-done with colored pencil and stencils. We made an alphabet, scanned it, and put it together letter-by-letter. Both Todd and I like the artwork to be a sort of experimental and magical process – personal and done our “own way”, cohesive, and a very crucial part of the entire package – as important as the music, actually, and able to contain the same vibe as the music. We would pay a lot of attention to detail, and try a lot of things with lettering, lay-out, color, texture of paper etc – and all the details matter, no matter how minor they might seem. – Alice Cohen

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“As an animator, and video artist, I have performed live with my animations projected behind me. It makes for a really immersive performance, where the audience sees how my mind works visually as well as musically, and there’s usually a lot of connection between the two; even if I don’t plan it out, the audience can make connections between the two forms of expression.” – Alice Cohen

Battles – Dross Glop Singles Series (Warp Records)

A glorious extension from 2011′s full-length release, Gloss Drop, which similarly made our 2012 for its sculpturally satisfying bubblegum looks. See it on our 2011 Year-End Respect For Album Cover Art.

“I really enjoyed working on the tees which also had many variations — 3 colorways for the black body, a hypercolor version with inks that change in the sun, a floral print and a remix of the eyes from Beast Rest Forth Mouth. The initial feedback on the album art was pretty exciting as it was incredibly polarized. There were a lot of haters for sure… I was psyched that that many people took the time to discuss it at all, as it’s pretty hard to get any kind of reaction these days. I was actually hoping for Vice Magazine’s worst cover of the month slot although I’m not sure if they even do that any more.” – Sadek Bazaraa

Bear in Heaven – I Love You, It’s Cool (Dead Oceans)

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN BY SADEK BAZARAA – sadekbazaraa.com
MOTION DESIGN ON WEBSITE BY ADAM WILLS OF BEAR IN HEAVEN
WEBSITE DESIGN BY NATE UTESCH – nthnl.com

“The conceptual framework was simply an effort to capture the album’s multi-layered and nuanced pop and psychedelic sensibilities. I really wanted to draw attention to the vibrant nature of I Love You, It’s Cool as compared to its more austere predecessor. In more abstract terms, I sort of consider Beast Rest Forth Mouth ‘of the moon’ and ILYIC to be ‘of the sun’. In the spirit of solar processes, I worked with sweaty flowers and slippery type, melting together through the steamy haze of the sun.” - Sadek Bazaraa

“I’m sure Sadek had some grand plan. We were so focused on making the music that we left the artwork in his hands. Hometapes is also a big force in all of our artwork. They’re willing to push things to a new and fantastic levels.” – John Philpot of Bear In Heaven

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“We’ve always worked closely on the album designs. The previous albums had a bit more interaction in that regard as I was still a performing member of the band. Removed from the rigors of practice, songwriting and touring, I was able to put more time and focus into the art direction of ILYIC. I put some mood boards together to get initial impressions from the gang and hit the ground running from there… There was a barrage of both analog and digital processes explored — scanner manipulations, Photoshop filters, photography, etc. I’m usually very process-oriented and generally most excited about experimenting with new juxtapositions and techniques to see what emerges. Perhaps ‘process’ would be considered the primary technique in and of itself.” – Sadek Bazaraa

“Sadek was in the band for years, so we’re comfortable communicating about creating something. He would listen to demos and generate ideas… I think we met up three times; in each meeting, he would take us on a visual journey. By the end of it, we would have made a few choices and had a few beers.” – John Philpot of Bear In Heaven

THE EXTRAS
“Sadek named the record by accident. He was in our practice space listening to demos and left me a note. It said, “Dear Jon, I love you, it’s cool.” – Jon Philpot of Bear In Heaven

Clown & Sunset – Don’t Break My Love (Clown & Sunset)

ARTWORK & PACKAGING DESIGNED BY NIKITA QUASIM

“The prism is an aluminum cube, small enough to fit in your palm. It was designed by Jaar as a new medium for releasing music. This first release — CSA001 — features twelve (mostly) unreleased songs from Jaar and other Clown & Sunset collaborators.

The prism is a piece of art in and of itself; its contents beg to be shared. Twin headphone outlets encourage connections to the object and between the two listeners. The prism tries to restore physicality to the listening experience.

The medium and the method are as important as the music itself. The prism makes you consider how the music is being heard, the way the object feels in your hands, and its potential to foster intimacy between listeners.

When the prism is unplugged, a beam of light passes through the empty center, revealing a void. Someone is missing.” – Clown & Sunset

The Darkness – Hot Cakes (Canary Dwarf Records)

CONCEPT BY THOM LESSNER
PAINTING BY DIEGO GRAVINESE – diegogravinese.com
LAYOUT & DESIGN BY TOURIST – wearetourist.com

“Tourist put forward style boards for various props including gold bikinis, sunglasses, etc., the look of the models from magazine reference as well as how we wanted the syrup to drip off the pancakes… We sent all the style books to the band to approve before the shoot commenced. The band’s brief was to create ‘an unapologetically mainstream 70′s porn, kitsch Linda Lovelace vs Raquel Welch vibe’ with big, bold retro looking typography.

Trying to find a 3D-modeling company in London to build three giant 8-foot pancakes within the budget was impossible, so we had everything created in Argentina for the shoot… Diego was let loose to transform it into a retro looking piece of art after a considerable amount of retouching on the final photo to get the syrup looking just right. The album is out on CD Deluxe and gatefold LP mushroom vinyl on August 20.” – Rob Chenery of TOURIST, via DiegoGuevera.com

MORE PROCESS PHOTOS CAN BE SEEN AT DiegoGuevera.com

Brass Tactics by Dog Shredder

Dog Shredder – Brass Tactics (Good To Die Records)

ARTWORK & DESIGN BY JOHN OVERLY

Artist could not be reached for comment.

How To Dress Well – Total Loss (Acephale)

DESIGN BY JOSH CLANCY, TRAVIS STEARNS, AND PATRICK NORTH
ARTWORK BY MILE ERROR OF 3D

“After a lot of image sharing the reference we circled around was to the antique tradition of the death mask because it is a sculptural object, a memorial object, inextricably akin to it’s master. The masks are a powerful, indexical sign that suggests the suspension of time while also foreshadowing new growth and life. We felt this concept related so much to the way in which Tom was sculpting a sonic space for mourning and loving remembrance. So the mask is cast not to crystallize his corporeal being, but this particular moment of emotional stillness.” - Joshua Clancy

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“Since we were working remotely from each other, it was too difficult to sculpt a real mask from Tom’s face and get it photographed just right. So instead, we opted to hire a 3D artist, Mile Error. We chose to render Tom in 3D because it allows for the control and construction of another, hyperreal world that is achievable with a relatively low production cost.” – Joshua Clancy

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“I incorporate visuals created by my long time friend, Nicky Reed. The visual element is paramount for the live show as it really brings home the affect of each song. The visual aspect of the show helps create an effective ambiance in which my songs can really take root and make a deep experience, for me and for the audience, truly possible.” – Tom Krell of How To Dress Well

Sun Airway – Soft Fall (Dead Oceans)

This album cover artwork was featured in an in-depth interview with Japanese art collective NAM and Jon Barthmus of Sun Airway, in the article Soft Fall Album Cover: The Music of Sun Airway & The Art of Japan’s NAM.

“At the early stage Jon gave us the keyword for the album, ‘vegetation’. The ‘vegetation’ motif holds together the whole fantastique ambience that makes up this project’s visuals. We assembled the visuals of a world with that word as the foundation… Our aim was to perfectly match the world of Sun Airway’s music and take that world of sound and enlarge its image visually. I believe that the music and the cover visuals that go with the creation of an album have an extremely intimate relationship. Music and visuals have the power to overcome country and language to convey a message. Creating something so intimate between the US and Japan was an incredible experience, and most of all it was fun! ” - Takayuki Nakazawa of NAM

Open Ears Open Minds by Tin Can Radio

Tin Can Radio – Open Ears, Open Minds (Self-Released)

ARTWORK & DESIGN BY SAM CHIRNSIDE – samchirnside.com

Artist could not be reached for comment.

“Closer to the album release VICE Noisey gave away the original clay sculpture to promote the record. I thought it would be cool for a fan to have it. It’s the kind of thing I’d value if I was a fan of a band.” – Matt Hearn of Turbo Fruits

Turbo Fruits – Butter (Serpents And Snakes)

SCULPTURE BY MATT HEARN OF TURBO FRUITS W/ HELP FROM RUBY ROGERS
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC ENGLAND

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“We wanted an album name & album art that was striking but not loaded. We’re not a controversial or political band. We’re a rock n’ roll band with a lot of ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s rock influence, so we wanted an image that had the vibe of that era. Jonas and I worked together on the record art. Jonas came up with the name, Butter, and the idea of having a stick of butter with lettering on it. I saw what I wanted and started creating mockups out of yellow paper at the printing company I used to work at. I then worked with Ruby Rogers of the Black Belles to figure out how to carve the lettering out of clay so the negative space would have a lot of depth. I wanted it to look epic, like a miniature Stonehenge or something… I used clay to continue the medium used for the Echo Kid record cover and the hand-made feel of all the Turbo Fruits LPs. We wanted it to be something tangible & real but kind of surreal at the same time.” – Matt Hearn of Turbo Fruits

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“Once the clay sculpture (http://turbofruits.com/08/2012/win-pot-butter-vinyl-1100-the-butter-sculpture-from-the-album-art/) was ready we met up with photographer Eric England (http://www.ericengland.net/) who I had photograph the sculpture from the same vantage point as a real stick of butter on a dish from Jonas’ parents’ house. After that, it was just a little Photoshop magic to get the sculpture to mesh with the background image.” – Matt Hearn of Turbo Fruits

White Lung – Sorry (Deranged Records)

DESIGN BY RYAN DYCK
COVER ARTWORK BY JUSTIN GRADIN – justingradin.com

Artists could not be reached for comment.

Woods – Bend Beyond (Woodsist)

Artists unknown.

Young Magic – Melt (Carpark Records)

ARTWORK & CREATIVE DIRECTION BY LEIF PODHAJSKY – leifpodhajsky.com

“I wanted to bend or Melt what we see as reality.” - Leif Podhajsky

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“I think it was a product of resonance. Resonance in ideas and long talks. Leif had sent us this image before the album was completed, and it immediately spoke to us. Sometimes an image just jumps off the page and commands you to spend more time with it, to participate and engage with it. It symbolised the same palette of feelings we were exploring on this record; it too was sending out little tentacles into the world, seeing who it would touch. It amplified a lot of ideas Leif and I were discussing at the time. The beauty, colour and blur beyond the mundane. Breaking open the head. The intrinsic holographic equilibrium.

I’d eventually see the cover figure as existing in one level of these subtler levels of reality — don’t ask me which one — perfectly equanimous, although the image seemed to change shape every day I looked at it. It was as if someone had managed to sneak a photograph of the holographic world in its raw state, when all the concrete and tangible levels of reality had been surpassed and dissolved, leaving just the essence. A flick of the thumb, a peacock feather, a figure. It was all the same thing. The image was dense, complicated and very simple at once, like the music on Melt. – Isaac Immanuel of Young Magic

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“I know [Young Magic's] music and ideas well. I had free reign; it was a pretty organic process and one of the first pieces I did. It actually started out as an artwork for a side project, but once I created it, I knew there was something special about it. I got that feeling.” – Leif Podhajsky

“It was Leif’s concept, entirely and completely. Both 7″ covers before Melt had been monochromatic, so we were definitely searching for color. He sent us a near finished version, and all we did was drag out the process, umming and ahhing on details, getting the colors right for weeks, until the deadline approached and we had to get real. Haa.” – Isaac Immanuel of Young Magic

CALM

CHAOTIC

Altar Eagle – Nightrunners // Decimus – 11 // Dustin Wong – Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadows Lead // Father John Misty – Fear Fun // Fergus & Geronimo – Funky Was The State of Affairs // Generationals – Lucky Numbers // Lord Huron – Lonesome Dreams // Machinedrum – SXLND // Matt Carlson – All Moments // Matthew Dear – Beams // Swans – The Seer // Laurel Halo – Quarantine // Moon Duo – Circles // Of Montreal – Daughter of Cloud // Samantha Glass – Mysteries From The Palomino Skyliner // Spires That In The Sunset Rise – Ancient Patience Wills It Again Part II // Three Legged Race – Persuasive Barrier // Tilly & The Wall – Heavy Mood // Torche – Harmonicraft // Ty Segall Band – Slaughterhouse

Illustrative and painted works that descend more and more into chaos. Please be patient when waiting for materials to load!

ALL CATEGORIES:

Nightrunners by Altar Eagle

Altar Eagle – Nightrunners (Digitalis)

PAINTING BY RADEK DRUTIS – www.radekdrutis.com

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
It might have been inspired by some things I was interested in at the time, like some vintage Killed By Death 45′s, The Nubs’ “I Don’t Need You”, for example, this old UK comp called Back Stage Pass with Manufactured Romance on it, and a lot of ’60s-’80s Polish cinema. – Radek Drutis

With Nightrunners, we had actually already decided on a totally different cover, and I was working with Radek on art for something else. When Radek sent through his ideas for that and I saw the cover we settled on for Nightrunners, I immediately knew it was perfect. The 10 songs on the album are all different stories about different characters (in their own, vague way), and I felt like this artwork reflected that incredibly well. Add in that Radek’s cover work has been some of my favorite through the years (his cover for Madlib’s Miles Away album is honestly my favorite album cover of the last 10 years), it was a no brainer. – Brad Rose, of Altar Eagle

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“Another band I used to play in, Ajilvsga, always had projections during our live performances that were an important component of those shows. I’m also very interested in doing videos for my music and trying to translate the ideas behind the work into something visual (or, even more interestingly, turning it over to someone else without any input and seeing how they interpret it.)” – Brad Rose, of Altar Eagle

Decimus – 11 (Digitalis)

ARTWORK BY DYLAN MCCONNELL OF TINY LITTLE HAMMERS – tinylittlehammers.com

“When it came time for Brad [Rose, from Digitalis] and I to discuss the art for this LP, I didn’t have any real fleshed out ideas. Part of why I was very excited to work with Digitalis was because of the labels consistently amazing visual aesthetic, so I was very open to Brad’s suggestion. The first thing he sent me was the art we used. I immediately loved it and saw how it related meaningfully to the music. They “belonged” together. I had nothing to do what its inception and its creation was unrelated to the music on the record. In general, I believe that one of the more powerful aspects of the psychedelic experience is the serendipitously meaningful relationship of unrelated stimuli.” – Pat Murano of Decimus

“Honestly I don’t recall – I do remember sending out 4-5 ideas, and this is the one he picked. I had a couple Decimus albums and just kinda riffed by extrapolating… I never actually talked to him but worked through Digitalis.” – Dylan McConnell

“Film is something I studied for a couple of years in college; it’s a very important medium for me. “Diagonally Talking Echo” and “Pink Diamond” were both [music videos] I made this year. I would love to do a narrative for the next one! I’ve played a couple of shows this year with a live video feed, showing my feet and pedals, just so it would make things more transparent to what I’m actually doing on stage. Some people see me up there and just wonder what I’m doing near my feet; some people even think I’m not even playing the guitar.” – Dustin Wong

Dustin Wong – Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadows Lead (Thrill Jockey Records)

ARTWORK BY DUSTIN WONG

“The drawing for the album was actually based on a photograph of me floating in a reservoir in Maryland called Pretty Boy. I liked the image because it almost felt like the figure itself floated up from the bottom of the reservoir. After being with it for a while, I’ve been interpreting it as a dream floating up to the surface of our subconscious. The figure looks like he’s sleeping, so we are also kind of seeing this dream within a dream idea too. I see it as a representation of a dream emerging, and dreaming itself. [I] tried using the photo for the actual cover, but it felt a bit too raw, since I was in the nude.” – Dustin Wong

Father John Misty – Fear Fun (Sub Pop Records)

ILLUSTRATION BY DIMITRI DRJUNCHIN – dimitri-drjuchin.com
DESIGN BY JEFF KLEINSMITH
ADDITIONAL DESIGN BY SASHA BARR – thisisthenewyear.com

“The idea that was originally given to me by Josh [Tillman of Father John Misty] was ‘Sunset Strip Sleeze’, which I think is there on some level. But eventually it became more of an abstract idea rather then a direct depiction. My approach was to try to stay within my own style of working, since that’s what made Josh ask me to do the cover, and try to depict aspects of his songs.

“Most of the characters on the cover are a representation of a lyric on the album. You can make a game of it when listening. A drinking game even… if you’re inclined.” – Dimitri Drjuchin

Fergus & Geronimo – Funky Was The State of Affairs (Hardly Art)

ARTWORK BY ANDREW SAVAGE OF FERGUS & GERONIMO

Choice wise words about the album artwork and creative process:
“FUNKY” and “I mean, I always try to look my best.” – Andrew Savage of Fergus & Geronimo

Generationals – Lucky Numbers (Park The Van)

ARTWORK BY SCOTT CAMPBELL – scttcmpbll.com

PROCESS & COLLABORATION
“When working with Scott, the vision really comes from him… I’m wanting him to give us his take on what it should be. Sometimes our starting point might be something that he has made in the past, and we’ll say, ‘Hey, we liked this thing you did. Can you give us another take on that idea?’ Of course at some point there is a back and forth of ideas and we sort of nudge things here or there. But its usually like more minor changes for practical reasons. He is always the source for the larger picture idea.” – Ted Joyner of The Generationals

“The band liked a piece I had done that featured an eye within a hand, so I just set out to do a fresh take on that idea.” – Scott Campbell

AUDIO-VISUAL COMPONENTS
“For this past tour, we took the eye part of Scott’s design and blew it up really big and backlit it. We also built these triangular light boxes that we had onstage that were inspired by the geometry of Scott’s design. Its cool to me to sometimes have a sort of thematic connection between our album art and the visual of our live set up when we are out touring and playing those songs.” – Ted Joyner of The Generationals

Laurel Halo – Quarantine (Hyperdub)

DESIGN BY OPTIGRAM – optigram.net
ARTWORK BY MAKOTO AIDA – mizuma-art.co.jp

Artists could not be reached for comment.

Lord Huron – Lonesome Dreams (IAMSOUND)

DESIGN BY BEN SCHNEIDER OF LORD HURON

“The visuals for Lonesome Dreams were created concurrently with the music, and the processes informed each other. Sometimes I’d find something out about a song by working on an image and vice-versa. This image seemed to best represent the themes as well as the sounds of the record. The hope is that it sets the scene and gives the listener a sense of space and place before they enter the world of the record.” - Ben Schneider, lead singer of Lord Huron

“I like to ask [musicians] not just their ideas about how they visualise the music, but also echoes of how they worked to produce the music. For instance, with Travis [Stewart] (Machinedrum)’s album sleeve for Room(s), I made sure the sleeve was started and finished within the time it took him to produce a song — just two hours. It made the work feel as considered and vital and as the music.” – Dominic Sum Flannigan

Machinedrum – SXLND (LuckyMe)

DESIGN BY DOMINIC SUM FLANNIGAN OF LUCKYME – thisisluckyme.com

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“Working from the title SXLND (pronounced ‘SEXLAND’), I had a pretty funny starting point to work from — on top of the notion that we wanted to present these quite varied house-inspired songs [as though they] existed in their own world together. I drew upon the print and illustration of the Japanese geisha, presented as a decorative paper doll to evoke a time when sex and gender politics butted up against high society and ceremony. It was [a] rich visual world of beautiful delicate illustration, but it was suitably heavy and dark. We added a paper doll mannequin to a card insert, and if people chose, they could destroy the outer sleeve to dress the doll.” – Dominic Sum Flannigan

Matt Carlson – All Moments (NNA Tapes)

ARTWORK BY JASON TRAEGER – jasontraeger.com
LAYOUT & DESIGN BY MATT MAYER

“I’ve known Jason Traeger for several years now as a friend and collaborator in Oregon Painting Society, and I’ve long admired his playfully surreal, mystical oil paintings. When sequencing the tracks for All Moments, it became apparent [to me] that the mood and feel of these pieces was very different from my last LP, Particle Language, which had a kind of grey-void machine language vibe. These tracks were colorful dream worlds, playful and fun. Jason’s paintings were the first and only idea I had for the artwork. The paintings already existed, so no direction was given to him by me, but he has his own elaborate artistic philosophy and vision, which you can ask him about. Visuals are usually the last thing I think of with my work and I often have a hard time with it; I’ve usually just relied on artist friends of mine to take care of it for me.” – Matt Carlson

“There are little hints and clues that inform the design. Like if you look at the LP label on the side a song is on, the song title and the color palettes line up on the back cover of the LP. There are etched messages on each side of the vinyl.” – Michael Cina

Matthew Dear – Beams (Ghostly International)

ART DIRECTION BY MICHAEL CINA AND MATTHEW DEAR
ARTWORK & DESIGN BY MICHAEL GINA – cinaart.com

THEMATIC ELEMENTS
“The album artwork started with a 15-minute call between Matthew Dear and myself, and we just talked. In that short time, we came up with an idea that I was going to paint him live in NYC in front of a camera with things happening around us. That “Beams Story” video came from that conversation, and ultimately, the cover… I really thought about the album like form and colors after hearing the LP. I had a color palette picked out, and that is what ultimately lead the project for me. We knew there was four singles as well, so that was always present on how the project “unfolded” through each single. Matthew Dear was an important part of the process. I don’t know how to describe it, but we just had this understanding of what it was we were going for. He would offer comments here and there but he gave me space to do my thing. I think that is really the best way to direct a project, but both parties have to be on the same page.” – Michael Cina

Moon Duo – Circles (Souterrain Transmissions / Sacred Bones)

ARTWORK BY WILLIAM SWEENEY – alakazamlabel.com

“Ripley & Sanae [of Moon Duo] told me that the album was inspired by a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay, which discusses cosmic themes, centered around the notion of circles. This was a starting point for the artwork.” - William Sweeney

“There were no specific rules – their brief was very open and I got the sense that they wanted something vibrant and psychedelic, I showed them some old alchemical engravings which I wanted to base the composition on, and they seemed to like them. I also wanted to incorporate some Georges Méliès inspired moon people and give it a sort of lunar rave feel – I think Moon Duo’s music is very danceable and wanted to reflect that a bit. So it was a real mixture of things and a nice collaboration.” – William Sweeney

THE EXTRAS
“I had actually created an illustration for Moon Duo before, without them knowing it was me who did it, for a compilation LP called Menagerie. It was complete coincidence that they contacted me to do the art for Circles; I like to think that mysterious cosmic forces brought us together again.” – William Sweeney

Of Montreal – Daughter Of Cloud (Polyvinyl Records)

ARTWORK BY DAVID BARNES

“I asked David Barnes to imagine that the album was a living creature, and then to draw the face of the only creature capable of truly loving that entity, and that’s the cover image.” - Kevin Barnes of of Montreal

Laurel Halo – Quarantine (Hyperdub)

DESIGN BY OPTIGRAM – optigram.net
ARTWORK BY MAKOTO AIDA – mizuma-art.co.jp

Artists could not be reached for comment.

Samantha Glass – Mysteries From The Palomino Skyliner (Not Not Fun)

ARTWORK BY RYO KURAMOTO – crooked-tapes.com

“Beau [Devereaux of Samantha Glass] had already had a great vision of this album. I hope I helped to visualize a part of his beauty.

All the stuff I drop [has] total DIY processes. Screen-printing, papercuts, and folding…. That’s why each artwork has different paper and ink. It’s kind of hard work for one guy [in a] small space, especially [since] Samantha Glass covers are massive. I made more than 500 copies. Each has 2 or 3 colors… maybe I’m trying to getting over DIY’s limitations.

Oh, and [I] always need tons of weed [during the] whole the process.” – Ryo Kuramoto

PART 1

Spires That In The Sunset Rise – Ancient Patience Wills It Again Part II (Hairy Spider Legs)

PAINTINGS BY TURNER WILLIAMS – turnerwilliamsjr.com

“When Spires asked me about doing the cover, things were very relaxed and there was a lot of time. No deadline, label or direction. The project floated in the ether for over a year. I feel like that sense of space and time is in the music and the art. Tapping into something that moves or evolves so slowly that it seems timelessness or eternal or even static. The power of slow natural processes. Old growth.” - Turner Williams

“With Part 1, I had themes flying out my ass; one was this apocalyptic vision of a war-torn beachfront with this old lady rocking in a rocker as fireworks exploded overhead. So I had this very narrative idea for the art, which is why I contacted Turner, whose prints and paintings I loved and thought was capable of creating the details of these nuanced visions.” – Kathleen Baird

COLLABORATION
“Spires originally sent me 80 minutes of music. It was a really dense listening experience, and I started breaking the disc up into shorter albums… I got to know the tunes backwards and forwards after that year. Later, when they said they were going to release the music as two separate volumes, I wasn’t surprised. However, when they sent me the tracklistings, I was amazed to find their choices were really similar to mine! Maybe I tapped into some secret logic within those tunes from hanging out in Spires’ territory too long…” – Turner Williams

“It always starts with sending the artist the music. With Part 1, I started vomiting off all of these visions for Turner, giving him very detailed things to go off on…. we had many exchanges, a few missteps, and eventually we fell upon the bizarreness of Part 1. With Part 2, I decided that I didn’t want to give Turner any guidelines or directions; I wanted to give him complete artistic license without the paranoia of trying to please me — and that worked like a gem. I completely trust him.” – Kathleen Baird

Swans – The Seer (Young God Records)

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN BY MICHAEL GIRA OF SWANS
PAINTING & PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIMON HENWOOD – simonhenwood.com

“My dear best friend Simon Henwood, the artist… had this little tempera painting of a wolf-like thing, and I asked him to develop it. He put my teeth in without telling me. Then I asked him: “Why don’t you put this sort of exploding… posterior.” [laughs] It just seemed to fit. I don’t know how it ties in content-wise. It can’t answer the questions; it shouldn’t answer the questions. It should create more questions. I think it does.” - Michael Gira, in Pitchfork Interview

(Editor’s note: There is an additional image that looks like an exploding fuzzy posterior.)

Three Legged Race – Persuasive Barrier (Editions Mego)

ARTWORK BY ROBERT BEATTY – remainsstreet.com

“The album is a very personal album that I worked on for several years, so I have spent much time focusing on what the cover should be over the course of the 5 years I worked on the music for this record. I’d rather not go into it too much, but the heart of it is about communication breakdown in relationships and the isolation that comes from that… It’s actually hard doing artwork for my own releases, because I want to set it apart from the other work I do and also have so many things I want to represent in one image.” - Robert Beatty

Tilly And The Wall – Heavy Mood (Team Love)

Artist unknown.

Torche – Harmonicraft (Volcom Entertainment)

ARTWORK BY JON SANTOS – eyebleedink.blogspot.de

“I wanted a fantasy landscape similar to Roger Dean covers, but with a fun twist. The rest was all Santos. He’s a genius… Without hearing the album, Santos still nailed what we were trying to achieve with the art.” - Steve Brooks of Torche

“A few of the cities on the backs of the Harmon creatures are Atlanta, Miami, Seattle which represent our homes (including Santos who lives in Seattle). The ice cream box packaging has a Rick Smith cone on the front. You can find little things that represent who we are on the sleeve.” – Steve Brooks of Torche

Ty Segall Band – Slaughterhouse (In The Red)

ARTWORK BY TATIANA KARTOMTEN – tatianakartomten.com

Artist was not contacted in time for commenting.

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

2012 Album Covers of the Year

Soft Fall Album Cover: The Music of Sun Airway & The Art of Japan’s NAM

Vivian Hua — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 22:54:55 +0000

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Soft Fall Album Cover: The Music of Sun Airway & The Art of Japan’s NAM

Dead Oceans’ Sun Airway, comprised of Philadelphia’s Jon Barthmus and Patrick Marsceill, is are not only indie pop extraordinaires, but are musicians with an understanding of aural-visual relationships. The choices they make in selecting collaborators result in visuals richly sympathetic to their musical output and evoke the same sense of wonder and romance that their music does. The album cover for Sun Airway’s 2012 release, Soft Fall, is adorned with a beautiful woman caught beneath a stringed web of falling flowers, porcelain china, and fine silver. It was painstakingly crafted by Japanese art collective NAM.

In the bi-lingual Japanese and English interview and feature below, Barthmus and NAM’s art director and designer Takayuki Nakazawa offer their perspectives on the creative process, as we further explore the work of both parties.

JAPANESE TO ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS BY MORGAN HARKNESS

Takayuki Nakazawa (NAM):
Our aim was to perfectly match the world of Sun Airway’s music and take that world of sound and enlarge its image visually. I believe that the music and the cover visuals that go with the creation of an album have an extremely intimate relationship. Music and visuals have the power to overcome country and language to convey a message. Creating something so intimate between the US and Japan was an incredible experience, and most of all it was fun! We would like to take this opportunity to extend our appreciation to Jon Barthmus for inviting us to this wonderful project.

私達が今回目指したのはSun Airwayの音楽の世界と完全にマッチし、さらに音の世界をビジュアルによってイメージの視覚的拡大をする事でした。アルバム制作における音楽とカバービジュアルは本来とても密接な関係性をもっているものだと思います。音楽やビジュアルは言語や国境を超えて伝達していく力があり、今回、日本とアメリカの間で密な相互関係をもって制作が行われた事は、私達にとって大変良い経験で、なによりも楽しかった！このような素敵なプロジェクトに私達を誘ってくれたJon Barthmusさんに、この場をお借りして感謝をしたいと思います。

Sun Airway – Soft Fall Album Cover “Making Of”

Jon Barthmus of Sun Airway wrote you because he was inspired by “Panic Room” and wanted to recreate it for the cover of Soft Fall.¹ In this version, the scene is much softer, with flowers and delicate furniture. How closely did you collaborate on deciding upon the items and visual style?

初期の段階にJonさんから今回のアルバムのキーワードとして「植物」が出されました。この「植物」と言うモチーフは、今回のビジュアルの全体のファンタジックな雰囲気を占めています。そのキーワードを元に、私達はビジュアルの世界観を組み立てていきました。

　私がまず思ったのは、自然光を利用して前作よりも、よりリアリティのあるビジュアルにしたら良いと考えました。そこに植物や食器やガラス工芸品等を配置し、絵画的な構成を持った画面にしたら面白いと思ったんです。ミレーの描いたオフィーリアのような…。また他には、少しだけエロティックな要素を隠し味のように入れました。これらはファンタジー的な世界に少し深みを持たせたいと考えたからです。

　基本的にビジュアルのディティールに対してJonさんは大きな自由を私達に与えてくれました。仕上がったビジュアルを彼に送ったところ、そのビジュアルを見てタイトルを『Soft Fall』に決めたという連絡が来ました。

Takayuki Nakazawa (NAM):
At the early stage Jon gave us the keyword for the album, “vegetation”. The “vegetation” motif holds together the whole fantastique ambience that makes up this project’s visuals. We assembled the visuals of a world with that word as the foundation.

My first idea was that instead of using natural light as we did in our previous work, it would be better to create an even more realistic visual. I thought it would be interesting to organize a scene with a picturesque arrangement of vegetation, tableware, and glassware. Similar to how Millais depicted Ophelia¹… We also added just a little erotic element as a sort of secret ingredient. I thought these things would bring some depth to the fantasy-like world we were creating.

For the most part, Jon gave us an incredible amount of freedom with the details. After we sent him the finished visuals, he contacted us to let us know that he had decided on the title Soft Fall after seeing them.

“I saw the Panic Room image in it’s nice that magazine and it just had such a strong visual impact. It’s also so confusing at first; you don’t know which way is up and what’s going on with the suspended objects. The whole thing had this feeling of weightlessness and fantasy but is also strangely peaceful. There was so much about it that related to the music I was working on.” - Jon Barthmus, Sun Airway

¹ Panic Room was one of NAM’s earliest pieces in this series of work.

² Ophelia is a painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais, completed between 1851 and 1852. Ophelia is a character from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, who is depicted here singing before she drowns in a river in Denmark.

The process took thirty minutes, which seems extremely short. How much was the composition mapped out beforehand? How much was improvised?

まずセットアップにかかった時間ですが30分ではありません。30時間です。徹夜で作業をしました。とてもハードな作業です。でも、これは私達にしてはコンパクトなセットアップの方です。もっと緻密で大規模のセットの場合だと、10数人かかりで4日～5日かけることもあります。

　リメイクの為、天地をひっくり返すという大きな構図は既に出来ています。プロップスの配置については現場で即興的に重力の力を意識して、世界が反転した様なプロップスの落下／浮遊する動きの演出をして画面を組み立てて行きました。実際に手を動かしていく事によって面白い構成や演出が浮かんでくるので、それらを柔軟に取り入れた方が、私の場合は事前に構成を決め込むよりも複雑で動きのある緻密な画面に到達しやすい気がしています。

　スタジオの選定、モデルの選定などにおいては多くの候補を挙げ、その中から選びました。またプロップスの収集は、ひとつひとつ自分たちで世界観に合うものを探して収集しました。これらのプリプロダクションは世界観を決定するものなので、かなり時間をかけて慎重に行います。

Takayuki Nakazawa (NAM):
Well actually the time we took to set up — it wasn’t 30 minutes; it was 30 hours. We worked through the night. It’s very difficult work. Even so, this was on the compact side of our usual set up time. For more delicate and large-scale sets, we can use around ten people and take four to five days.

For the remake, we already had the big composition ready for creating a world that had been knocked over. To assemble the scene, we arranged the props by improvising with gravity in mind, directing them in ways the objects would fall and float in the pull of gravity if the world was turned upside down. By actually moving them with our hands we would be inspired with interesting configurations and direction. By being flexible and taking in those ideas, it was easier for me to attain a delicate scene with both complexity and movement than deciding it in advance.

We came up with many different candidates for the studio and model selection, and chose one from that list. For the collection of the props, we individually selected each object one by one to fit our made up world. This kind of pre-production decides the appearance of the world we create, so we take considerable time and discretion to carry it out.

In this version, the scene is much softer, with flowers and delicate furniture. How closely did you and NAM work together on deciding upon the items and visual style?

Jon Barthmus (Sun Airway): Well as much as I loved that image and whole series of images, there was still a lot about it that I didn’t think worked exactly with the music. These were all a little too dark in tone. When I initially approached NAM, I mentioned that my dream would be to create this type of situation in a brightly lit palace type setting. Unfortunately locations like that are pretty hard to come by in Japan and were completely out of any budget we might be working with. But in the end I think the simple setting that was created was pretty perfect for the music.

There was a problem with the flowers wilting too quickly in the humidity of the room. How did you fix this problem, and what were some of the other challenges?

水を含ませたティッシュペーパーをアルミホイルで根に巻て水分を与えたり色々対策しましたが、それでも枯れてきたものは結局捨てまた付け替えました。写真をみると少し弱っているものもありますね（笑）。生きている物を吊るのは、今回初めてでした。花は非常にデリケートで苦労しましたね。葉は事前に枯れにくい葉を調べてそちらを用意して行きました。

　撮影時に特に大きな問題はなかったのですが、私個人で言いますと画面内におけるプロップスの量の追加をどこでやめるか？という事に少し悩みました。いつもこの点は悩みます。実は、床や空中にはもっと沢山の草花を配置してみたりもしたのですが、試しにモデルにセットに入ってもらった状態を見て、量を少なくしました。荘厳で奇麗でしたが、それではあまりにオーバーで画面がファンタジーに寄り過ぎ、空間のリアリティーを損ねる気がしたからです。セットアップが午後の光を受け、とても静かな撮影現場だったのが今回印象的でした。少し夢の中にいる様な感じでしたね。

Takayuki Nakazawa (NAM):
We took different counter-measures such as wrapping the stems in wet tissue paper with aluminum foil, and ended up throwing the ones away that continued to wilt and replacing them. If you look at the picture, there are some that are a little weak looking [laughs]. This was our first time suspending living objects. Flowers are extremely delicate so we had some trouble. As for the leaves, we researched and arranged in advance for ones that don’t wilt easily.

There weren’t any big problems when we started shooting, but I myself was a bit troubled over when to stop adding more props to the frame. I always agonize over this part. To be honest, we tried adding many more flowers to the floor and ceiling, but when we saw what it looked like with the model in the set we ended up taking some out. It was impressive and beautiful, but it was a little overboard and the scene became too fantastical, taking away from the realistic feeling. During set up we had the afternoon light, and it was a very quiet. This left an impression on me. It had the feeling of being inside a dream.

When did NAM begin work on their series of carefully measured and strung scenes of chaos and movement? How did the idea first develop, and how has it grown from its beginning to the end?

2006年から、グラフィックデザインの視点に写真を癒合させた表現を出来ないかと思い、フォトグラファーの間仲宇と一緒に制作を始め、現在まで作り続けています。私達にはいくつかのスタイルがあり、これらの日常にある物を実際に吊るスタイルはその一つです。

最初はいわゆるテクノロジーを多用したCG表現のちょっとした反動みたいな気分から産まれました。制作しているうちにビジュアル表現におけるリアルとフェイクの曖昧な関係性に興味をもち、この無重力状態をテグスを使って手作業で再構成すると言う手法で、それらが違和感無くフィットするファンタジックな世界観のセットアップで規模や複雑さを増していきました。ファンタジックで奇妙な世界観ですが実際にリアルな空間がそこに存在する事は、シンプルで強い説得力があると思います。よく「何故人や物がよく浮くような作品が多いのか？」と質問されたりもしますが、それは実は自分でもよくわかりません。そのような世界観の中にいる時、すこしだけ自由になるような気がします。そして、この手法でまだまだ制作出来る世界観の余地がある気もしています。

Takayuki Nakazawa (NAM):
It started in 2006 with the idea to merge the point of view of graphic design and photography, and the photographer Hiroshi Manaka and I began working together ever since. We have many different styles, and one of them is to take everyday objects and hang them.

At first it was born from a kind of reaction to the heavy use of CG for expression. As we were creating, we became interested in the relationship between the real and the fake in visual expression. Reconstructing weightlessness by hand with nylon thread, we were able to increase scope and complexity by setting up a fantastical world that fit without creating a feeling of discomfort for the observer. Even though it’s a fantastic and strange world, there is actually realism to it and that has a simple but strong persuasive power. I’m often asked, “Why do you do so much with people and objects floating?”, but I really don’t even know myself. When I am inside that kind of world, I feel like I might be a little more free. I also feel there is still a lot of room to create different worlds with this technique.

During your creation process, does your music take on a visual relationship? Can you tell us a little bit about what that’s like?

Jon Barthmus (Sun Airway): I’ve always been very influenced by the visual. Lyrically, I try to paint something that the listener can actually see and feel. I relate it to looking at a giant Rothko piece where you walk into the room and the weight of it just hits you. You’re immediately immersed in this thing/feeling. Lyrically, I’m always most influenced by films and visual art, in addition to being a graphic designer and artist myself.

Sun Airway – “Close” Music Video

Produced and directed by Ewan MacLeod, the music video for Sun Airway’s “Close” crosses terrains far and wide to end in foggy and inexplicable elation. Again, like the album cover and the music, everything is beautiful upfront, but the mystery lies deeper than surface level.

There is a close relationship here between the ethereal nature of the music and the visuals. There are a series of words on the back cover of Soft Fall. Who were these created by? Before or after the installation project?

この文章はJon Barthmusさんが書かれたものです。想像力が膨らむ素敵な文章です。『Soft Fall』は音楽とビジュアルの関係のみならず、テキストにまで関係性があり、トータルにひとつのビジョンが貫かれた特別なアルバムだと再確認しました。ちなみに、このアルバムのグラフィックデザインもJon Barthmusさんが担当しています。こちらもとても素敵な仕上がりですね。

Takayuki Nakazawa (NAM):
That was written by Jon Barthmus. It’s a lovely composition that swells with the power of imagination. On top of the music and visuals, there is a relationship with the text that pierces through the entire vision, and this reaffirmed to me what a special album Soft Fall is. By the way, Jon Barthmus is also responsible for the graphic design for the album. This was also a very beautiful finish.

“These were created by me. This was more in reference to a lyrical inspiration, the stream of conscioussness writing of Andre Breton and the footnote style was a nod to David Foster Wallace. It’s meant to create a rough impression and put the listener in the right frame of mind for the album. It’s not related to the visuals in particular, but they serve the same purpose and inadvertently work together.” - Jon Barthmus, Sun Airway

Sun Airway Sound Gallery

Directed by Ricardo Rivera.

NAM Art Gallery

www.sunairway.com
www.n-a-m.org

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Soft Fall Album Cover: The Music of Sun Airway & The Art of Japan’s NAM

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine » Art

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www.staceyrozich.com
www.roqlaruegallery.com

Saya Woolfalk Artist Interview: The Possibility Of All Kinds Of Mixing

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview: Saying YES To Raw Honesty

www.amandacharchian.com

Botanica By MOMIX Live Dance Performance Review

Christopher Mir Makes Chicken Scratch Enticing.

Dana Popa Artist Interview: Uncovering The Intimate Details of Sex Trafficking

Leah Gordon’s Kanaval Takes A Photographic Look At Haiti’s Carnival Via Mythology, History & Oral Traditions

Madanm Lasiren
Andre Ferner, 59 years

Chaloska (Charles Oscar)
Eugene Lamour a.k.a. Boss Cota, 61 years

Pa Wowo (The dance steps of Roro)
Edmond Paul, 30 years

Zel Maturin (The Wings of Mathurin: character from the St. Michel Mardi Gras)
Ronald Bellevue, 40 years

Saya Woolfalk‘s Hallucinatory Chimeras: The Empathics

2012 Album Covers of the Year

Soft Fall Album Cover: The Music of Sun Airway & The Art of Japan’s NAM

Sun Airway Sound Gallery

NAM Art Gallery

www.sunairway.com
www.n-a-m.org

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine » Art

Stacey Rozich’s Within Without Me & Roq La Rue Gallery’s New Space!

www.staceyrozich.com www.roqlaruegallery.com

Saya Woolfalk Artist Interview: The Possibility Of All Kinds Of Mixing

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview: Saying YES To Raw Honesty

www.amandacharchian.com

Botanica By MOMIX Live Dance Performance Review

Christopher Mir Makes Chicken Scratch Enticing.

Dana Popa Artist Interview: Uncovering The Intimate Details of Sex Trafficking

Leah Gordon’s Kanaval Takes A Photographic Look At Haiti’s Carnival Via Mythology, History & Oral Traditions

Madanm Lasiren Andre Ferner, 59 years

Chaloska (Charles Oscar) Eugene Lamour a.k.a. Boss Cota, 61 years

Pa Wowo (The dance steps of Roro) Edmond Paul, 30 years

Zel Maturin (The Wings of Mathurin: character from the St. Michel Mardi Gras) Ronald Bellevue, 40 years

Saya Woolfalk‘s Hallucinatory Chimeras: The Empathics

2012 Album Covers of the Year

Soft Fall Album Cover: The Music of Sun Airway & The Art of Japan’s NAM

Sun Airway Sound Gallery

NAM Art Gallery

www.sunairway.com www.n-a-m.org

www.staceyrozich.com
www.roqlaruegallery.com

Madanm Lasiren
Andre Ferner, 59 years

Chaloska (Charles Oscar)
Eugene Lamour a.k.a. Boss Cota, 61 years

Pa Wowo (The dance steps of Roro)
Edmond Paul, 30 years

Zel Maturin (The Wings of Mathurin: character from the St. Michel Mardi Gras)
Ronald Bellevue, 40 years

www.sunairway.com
www.n-a-m.org