There’s more to releasing an album than making the music, and one key element is having a cover image – or even cover images in this case. I really enjoyed the days of LPs, where art was big and bold, and central to the experience. You’d stand it up where you could see it as you sit and listened, or even hold it, turning it over in your hands and looking for little easter eggs (as we’d call them these days) hidden the art. It was fantastic!
Equally fascinating is how the art is made, and artist Airyll has done a breakdown of the creation of the cover for “The Shadow Behind the Sun”. I actually sat in during the Twitch stream and saw one phase of it take shape before my eyes (while she played “Tursan” and my other singles to set the mood) – amazing to watch! With the release date of April 1st approach fast, I thought it a cool time to share that part of the creation process for the album!
From my side, I hadn’t envisaged space whales at all, it was what she saw in her mind’s eye on listening to the music, so that fed back into the music and I added the space whales in there and kept that visual in mind while doing the section called “The Depths”. Nice when there is a synergy like that!
And I did end up splitting the artwork into two pieces, a front and back cover, so that was cool too!
And while streaming services will only have the teeny pic of the front cover, you can see them here to enjoy the details, or better yet get large size versions included with the album at Bandcamp – that’s one thing I love about Bandcamp, that you can add more than just the music! While you can’t hold it and look at it (unless you print it I guess), at least you can set it up on your computer monitor of phone screen while you listen and get a decent sized version of the visuals to immerse yourself in along with the music!
As a note, I am heavily involved in 3D art too, but here I wanted something more organic, something that was drawn by hand, to reflect the fact that despite being electronic music, the guitars in the music turn it into something living and breathing.
To round it out, talking about album covers, art, and the creative process, here’s a video I spotted the other day, where Roger Dean chats with Neil Gaiman, two of the most creative, warm people I have seen, who talk about anything and everything (which is just how inspiration works!) including some favorite topics of mine such as the Isle of Skye 🙂
I am sure you’ll enjoy listening in to their chat as much as I did!
All the best,
Tom (Cu Sithe)