light up the night_short film
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we collaborated once again with john delucca on the poster design.
thanks for calling_music video
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you can read more about the making of the film on our blog here.
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MAVS charles park trilogy_record sleeve, poster + trailer
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john was sent a few paragraphs detailing the narrative behind each album. he then started to create a poster that we could divide into three halves, to represent the three parts of the story.
we were asked to create the logo, cover and overall packaging for the record. the logo we made is pretty self-explanatory, but the packaging was a subtler affair. utilizing the bokeh affect often seen in films when the camera is focussing on objects in the foreground, we realized we could represent each part of the trilogy with a different coloured circle. in this way the cover image could say a lot with very little, and each record within the packaging could be differentiated by its own red, blue or brown graphic.
joey was then sent the logo and proceeded to shoot the necessary footage to create the teaser trailer for the trilogy, this clip was the first promotional piece released to the general public. once released the limited edition box set sold out in 2 days, but you can still purchase the album digitally here.
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labyrinths_record sleeve, poster + music video
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the discussions for how to handle the artwork for the album started years before the record was even a twinkle in his eye. we'd talked at length for years about films, musics, books, games and designs that appeal to us for whatever reason. whether it be the books of jeff noon or the cassette loading games of sinclair ZX spectrum, there was an innate understanding of what this solo project would demand in terms of artwork the moment the demos started to come together.
the final artwork started with us coming up with a story that would capture paul's feelings about various things and how he wanted to translated those into a science fiction tale of some kind. the next step was padding that story out with various touchstone visual elements and then translating those into a series of panels that we could use for the album and any singles. the first image we put together turned out to be the album cover as it is now, and this went onto influence paul's approach to making the music. he then sent us more demos that inspired the creation of more panels, and so the back and forth went until we had enough to illustrate the story / world we had created.
the music video for the album's first single, stitches, was an attempt to bring back the feeling of using the sinclair ZX spectrum computer, whilst detailing some of the album's narrative elements. paul and caspar wrote the video's story, which expanded upon the lyrics jonathan bates from big black delta was singing on the song. john delucca then beautifully redrew and further illustrated the graphics caspar had made for the vinyl record's packaging in pixel art format, and josiah newbolt then animated those graphics.
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IFUCKINGLOVEYOU_music video, record sleeve + poster
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jonathan bates, better known for his part in the fantastic band mellowdrone, recently got back in touch with us regarding a 'new thing' he was working on. as luck would have it, it was some seriously rich and rewarding new music. the kind which fills the mind with images pretty fast. well, the next thing you know we're watching the thundercats intro in total awe, debating wallpapering our apartment walls with TRON screenshots, and obsessing over UFOs. how one thing lead to another is neither here nor there, but it turns out we were all down with this new thing ... and it was taking us places.
what then ensued was the constant, rapid exchange of music for artwork, much the way a choir does their psalms and responses. there's no question in our minds now that big black delta was the only name you could use to sum up the music, what inspired it and everything we'd ultimately made together from that point forward. cut then to just a few days ago. cut right to the moment when we slung the cover you see above onto the proverbial coffee table. cut to us all looking at each other like we knew it was time. yep, ufologists were about to get some melody in their google.
additionally we shot and edited a short film to accompany the release of the song IFUCKINGLOVEYOU. it was shot over a couple of days around independence day in los angeles. the idea was simply to capture everything we got up to in the short time we had, be that searching the night sky for flashing lights, watching dan akroyd talking about UFOs on youtube or jonathan bates making strange noises on his studio floor. we hope the end result, if nothing else, makes you feel like all these things are related. not forcibly, but maybe with a little serendipity.