Thursday 24 December 2009

Best of 2009 - The Records

The albums.

1. Samandtheplants - The Eft
2. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
3. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

A couple of outstanding and lovingly assembled reissues courtesy of Finders Keepers and Honest Jon's.

The Sound of Wonder - various
Sprigs of Time - various
The singles.

1. Special Benny - Air Filter

Wednesday 23 December 2009

Sunday 20 December 2009

'Toys' - Take Two

This was the second attempt at the Special Benny cover - it didn't work for a few reasons but I think the biggest problem is the scale. There's too many figures and too much detail and given the actual size of a cd cover by the time it's reduced in size it doesn't have a huge impact.

Friday 18 December 2009

'Strictly for the Birds'

'Strictly for the Birds' (aka 'no time to do new artwork and hope no-one notices the lack of ornithological themed songs') was my last minute contribution to the esteemed Very Good Plus annual Christmas mix swap. It's messy and all-over-the-shop starting off with a fuzz-driven pots and pans bashing Bollywood number before moving swiftly into the hippy-baiting pyschedelics then onto some filthy prog, before detouring through Kraut-lite rock, scratchy surf, beat, French prog-fuzz nonsense, whistley soundtracks, a touch of funk and soul, the obligatory spooked out Beatles cover before collapsing in a sweaty pool of slightly more contemporary stuff. Like I said it's a fucking mess. Ideally I would have had time to draw a cover that wasn't already destined for greater things and screen-print them but I was on the subs bench and only given the go-ahead in the dying stages.

Click on the pic to read the tracklisting.

Thursday 17 December 2009

'My Home is the Sea' alternative design

I just dug this up during a big mac clean up - it never saw the light of day as I decided to print each character separately but I'm still considering a small run of these. I can't make up my mind if I like it or not...

Friday 11 December 2009

Cardboard snails, paints, inks and a straight razor. That's my dream, it's my nightmare.

I had the fantastical idea of cutting out hundreds of wee toys and hanging them on tiny thread in a miniature cardboard set for the Special Benny cover. Unfortunately it took forever and when I scanned the initial figures the light watercolour wash I gave them got lost in the process. Then I realised I'd need proper lighting and a decent studio for it not to look hokey and shit.

It was basically my Apocalypse Now - "I was in my studio, there were too many ideas floating around my head, I had access to too much booze, too much card, too many sweets and little by little I went insane."

Part two didn't go a great deal better but more of that to come!