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in a rather touching turn of events the protomen’s 3rd and final album was announced by bandcamp last week as their most pre-ordered album of 2025. whilst completely unexpected, this felt like a just reward for the unique way in which we and the band handled the album’s artwork and preorder process.

thanks to bandcamp’s setup the protomen were able to reveal the album’s cover artwork, start the preorder and then release a song from the album each week like a TV episode. any fans who preordered or signed up to the band’s mailing list were notified of each episode’s release each week. each week they were then sent the song’s “single artwork”, which was created in the form of a film poster / comic book cover. inspired by the covers of the AKIRA manga by katsuhiro otomo seen below, john delucca did a drawing each week, and caspar took care of its colouring, typography, texturing and layout.

all of this perfectly suited the long-form narrative nature of the protomen’s music. every song on a protomen record is part of a larger story told chronologically and cinematically. therefore to miss a song or to listen to the songs in the wrong order, is akin to missing the beginning of a movie or reading the last chapter of a book first. this all might sound insane, but the protomen formed in the late 90s to tell one story as a rock ‘n’ roll opera, and to deliver that story in just three acts. the band released the first act in 2005, and here 20 years later is the last. if you’re new to the band we suggest, of course, that you start at the beginning.

below are four of the posters we made each week with the release of each new song.

hello again.

i’ve also listed a few of my favourite tracks from this month to check out.

so far this month:

richard skelton – grange
richard skelton – marking time – type records

richard skelton’s seminal ‘marking time’ finally gets a re-release on type records. this is an album of great, haunting beauty & has been a really effecting listen over the last year or so. richard’s music mainly consists of the interplay between bowed piano, strings, piano & location recording ambiance. richard runs his own label, sustain release, that put’s out bespoke cd packages to order for all his personal & side project releases. it’s worth checking out the packaging at his website, here. the thought that goes into the design is so spot on with the music he creates.

clint mansell – welcome to lunar industries (three year stretch….)
clint mansell – moon sountrack – black records

clint mansell’s soundtrack to film, moon has just come out here in the uk. the film however has not. bloody typical. same thing happened with darren aronofsky’s, the fountain. the only upshot of this was that i could fully immerse myself in the music before seeing the film & i felt this really helped with the emotional impact that the fountain managed to deliver. it’s also good that the others at the new york arm of version industries that have seen moon, are good at keeping spoilers to themselves!

floating points – j&w beat
floating points – j&w beat e.p – planet-mu

brand new signing to planet-mu, floating points has already been tearing things up with his ‘love me like this’ e.p from earlier in the year. this is an awesome two track e.p that weaves heavy melodic synth work into the already label established dubstep sound. tight drum work & a wicked hook on the first track made me pick this one as my last track of the month.

so that’s it for this month! next month they’ll be another bunch of other tracks that i think deserve some respect (i’m looking at you already, falty dl!)