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the above layout is a part of the latest in our ongoing collaborations with the protomen – it’s the inlay of the cassette single for their cover of roy orbison’s i drove all night. it’s been public knowledge for a while that the band have been working on a covers LP, and this marks the first release from that project. never a band to back down from going all the way in terms of developing a narrative around their releases, this covers record is going to be a very unique thing indeed. striving to be both the greatest covers record you’ve ever heard, it may also turn out to be the greatest soundtrack to a film you’ve never seen. either way we are yet again being pushed by the protomen to pull out the stops on creating the most immersive artwork experience we can in support of it.

the i drove all night cassette single, whilst just a teaser of what’s to come, provided a good warm-up to working on the larger release. you see for?the protomen?the process of selecting songs to cover?is a little more in depth than with most bands we’ve worked with.?i drove all night?was chosen not just because it’s a tough old jam that harks back sweatily to another time, but also because lyrically it echoes very strongly elements of the protomen’s own story. expanding upon this, what you see when you open the cassette up and turn over the inlay is this –

calling once again on the mighty talents of john delucca, we went back and forth on various different angles and layouts until we had in essence captured what we felt told the story best. once john had drawn in all the details we were after, he brushed in the colour and we took over with various aspects of post-production and layout work. all of this in order to bring it in line with the band’s reference-fueled vision for the overall package.

the cherry on top was of course including the name and logo for the film for which this covers album would be the soundtrack. aptly named?the cover up, we wanted with just a logo to give fans a little taste of what’s to come – what the story of the covers LP might be about and what sort of tone it might have.

only 1000 copies were printed of the cassette ?- you can grab a copy of it here whilst stocks last.

working with makeup and vanity set continues to be a very exciting, fluid and rewarding process. we will never take for granted the fact that we get to work so directly with such an exciting, cinematically driven collective of musicians down there in nashville, tennessee. MAVS and the protomen continue to challenge and inspire, and this project was no different.

that said, when MAVS first approached us for this project we had a lot going on and so he was forced to go elsewhere. however when that didn’t pan out as planned, he offered us another shot at it. by this point we’d had a chance to listen to the record a great deal and lament on the fact that the job was no longer ours. this of course meant that the moment we got given the reins again everything came together very quickly. the work was done in 2-3 days and proved to be a rather cathartic and emotional experience for all involved. both MAVS and i had been through intense personal experiences around this time and listening to the record now whilst looking at the cover, it clearly expresses both of our desires to keep searching for an answer no matter how dark things got.

beyond the obvious emotional understanding, we’d been informed that it was to be a cassette only release and that MAVS was keen to echo a visual from the VHS era of home entertainment. old enough to have lived through a great portion of the VHS and cassette era, we understood how this record would sound when fans heard it and very much where it was coming from in terms of cinematic narrative. the decision to in some way make it photographic and involve some sort of backlit misty scene came very quickly, and was undeniably influenced by our shared love for shows from that era like?twin peaks and the x-files. so it was then a matter of building that out with a combination of photographic elements and a series of photoshop brushes and textures. finally, the typography came about as a result of wanting something elegant and not too clich?, but that would also feel a little like film credits.

it goes without saying but we can’t express just how fantastic the music is on this record. it’s powerfully cinematic and takes you back into a world made mysterious by not just the technologies used to create and record it, but also by the melodies and the concepts behind them.

stream the record here and by all means buy a copy of if you dig it. it’s only $6 on mp3, or $15 if you want the cassette version.