record sleeve for the sheffield-based band, 65daysofstatic.
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wild light is 65daysofstatic's sixth LP. presented with manifestos, poems, drawings, prints and transcripts of studio discussions about the concept of 'wild light', we set about producing a piece of work that we felt best encapsulated these ideas whilst also touching on how it felt to listen to the music itself. the result is something we're very proud of, and we hope is something that will change in meaning when you hear the music itself.
continuing the very fluid back and forth between us and jonathan bates, this the cover for the forthcoming BBDLP1 is our attempt at capturing the immensity that is this new record. whether you are listening to the lush love song that is 'capsize' or the vastness, heaving space trip that is 'BBD3', we wanted the cover to echo both the inner workings of jon's mind as well as the beautiful, dark recesses of the universe. no longer the man with his head exploding on the cover of mellowdrone's 'angry bear', we now step deeper inside that thinking and in doing so reach much further out into space as we get involved with his obsession with UFO folk-lore and his desire to be taken away from his planet by whatever means possible.
artwork for makeup and vanity set's EP, never let go.
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working with makeup and vanity set continues to be a very exciting, fluid and rewarding process. this time around, in terms of a brief, we were given the recordings themselves, informed that the release would be out on cassette only and asked that we try 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 eras, 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 cliche, but that would also feel a little like film credits.
you can read more about the making of the artwork here.
artwork for 65daysofstatic's fourth album, we were exploding anyway.
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another worthy collaboration with our good friends, 65daysofstatic. please read the full story on the making of the artwork here. all photography by matt sundin, except the heavy sky EP.
artwork for the protomen's second album, act 2 - the father of death
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everything about this record cover + poster had to be bigger and better. the moment we heard act 2 we knew the protomen had taken things far beyond anyone's imagining, and that we were under a huge amount of pressure now to produce artwork that echoed that through & through. we were aware of john delucca's work after collaborating with him on a previous poster for the band, and hired him once again to produce the fantastic 'streets of fire' inspired drawing you see above. we then took care of the sleeve + poster layouts and also put together the 24 page booklet that would detail the story behind the music on the album.
mellowdrone called us one evening in march wondering if we were at all interested in working with them on the artwork for the follow-up record to 'box', an album which we'd played into the ground obsessively for who knows how long. work began immediately with discussions about what the new record was saying and where the band were at now. turns out they were the same age as us and into all the same stuff (david lynch, fist of the north star etc.). we then toiled for a while on an idea and passed it over to them. it was the right direction. we then produced 2 more pieces in a similar vein that formed a narrative around the core concept and produced templates for both cd + vinyl. the vinyl doesn't contain the third and final panel of the artwork, but it does have a blue plastic disc and a nice design idea for navigating which side is which.
