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Scotch tape
Sep. 30th, 2004 11:24 pmOnce upon a time London was my home. Now it's my international airport hub, the place where I change planes (Berlin has no airport capable of handling direct flights from Japan or the US). But London has other uses. For instance, it also happens to be a world centre for graphic design.
I begin my day in London at Magma on Clerkenwell Road, buying magazines. Later, Suzy, my friend the i-D journalist, takes me on a quick trip to Mayfair to see the Sylvie Fleury show at Sketch and the new Comme des Garcons market on Dover Street. Sketch is very Analog Baroque and Comme is very Fake Folk, though rather let down by the presence of Elton John in the cafe. We drop in on Thomi Wroblewski, who designed my 'Tender Pervert' sleeve. I also take a look at Rick Poynor's exciting exhibition of independent British graphic design at the Barbican, Communicate.
The main excitement of the day, though, and the reason I'm here, is my first glimpse of the sleeve design James Goggin (represented in the Communicate show by his Wolfgang Tillmans poster) has made for 'Otto Spooky', my forthcoming album. It's an exhilarating moment. Within seconds of seeing what he's done, I know it's the right sleeve. It clicks, it works. James has been photographing cables, belts, tubes and hazard tape. The idea meshes perfectly with the lyrics of the song 'Lady Fancy Knickers':
I wish that I could say to you
The things I've got to say to you
Instead I find my head is filled for hours
With wooden sweets and sellotape
With scotch tape and electric tape
And insulating tape made out of flowers
The linked, snaky, clashing cable and tape patterns, photographed on the floor from a stepladder then rendered in Illustrator, remind me instantly of the sleeve for Wire's '154', which is a great reference for 'Otto Spooky' to be making. Wire were a 'disorienteering' group par excellence, interested in evoking lostness, in making maps of imaginary territories and going for walks with lines. The clashing patterns of the sleeve repeat the album's stylistic wanderings, and the hazard tape brings to mind orienteering, steeple-chasing, or the tethering post of a gondola. Inside, James has used a half-tone image of essayist Reyner Banham cycling through London on his trusty green Moulton bicycle, his full beard flapping in the wind. Just as Jacques Tati became the presiding spirit of 'Oskar Tennis Champion', Banham has come to preside over 'Otto' like a patron or mentor. A hero to James since his days at the Royal College of Art, and to me since I read his flamboyant book on LA while staying in LA a couple of years back, Banham is, in the title of his biography, 'the historian of the immediate future'. Who better qualified to be my new spooky hazard tape uncle?
Along with the fantastic Song Morphs John Talaga is making (we're up to ten now), James Goggin's wonderful sleeve design -- his first ever record sleeve, amazingly enough -- reassures me that Otto is going to be as strong visually as it is sonically. A record worth getting lost in.
I begin my day in London at Magma on Clerkenwell Road, buying magazines. Later, Suzy, my friend the i-D journalist, takes me on a quick trip to Mayfair to see the Sylvie Fleury show at Sketch and the new Comme des Garcons market on Dover Street. Sketch is very Analog Baroque and Comme is very Fake Folk, though rather let down by the presence of Elton John in the cafe. We drop in on Thomi Wroblewski, who designed my 'Tender Pervert' sleeve. I also take a look at Rick Poynor's exciting exhibition of independent British graphic design at the Barbican, Communicate.
The main excitement of the day, though, and the reason I'm here, is my first glimpse of the sleeve design James Goggin (represented in the Communicate show by his Wolfgang Tillmans poster) has made for 'Otto Spooky', my forthcoming album. It's an exhilarating moment. Within seconds of seeing what he's done, I know it's the right sleeve. It clicks, it works. James has been photographing cables, belts, tubes and hazard tape. The idea meshes perfectly with the lyrics of the song 'Lady Fancy Knickers':
I wish that I could say to you
The things I've got to say to you
Instead I find my head is filled for hours
With wooden sweets and sellotape
With scotch tape and electric tape
And insulating tape made out of flowers
The linked, snaky, clashing cable and tape patterns, photographed on the floor from a stepladder then rendered in Illustrator, remind me instantly of the sleeve for Wire's '154', which is a great reference for 'Otto Spooky' to be making. Wire were a 'disorienteering' group par excellence, interested in evoking lostness, in making maps of imaginary territories and going for walks with lines. The clashing patterns of the sleeve repeat the album's stylistic wanderings, and the hazard tape brings to mind orienteering, steeple-chasing, or the tethering post of a gondola. Inside, James has used a half-tone image of essayist Reyner Banham cycling through London on his trusty green Moulton bicycle, his full beard flapping in the wind. Just as Jacques Tati became the presiding spirit of 'Oskar Tennis Champion', Banham has come to preside over 'Otto' like a patron or mentor. A hero to James since his days at the Royal College of Art, and to me since I read his flamboyant book on LA while staying in LA a couple of years back, Banham is, in the title of his biography, 'the historian of the immediate future'. Who better qualified to be my new spooky hazard tape uncle?
Along with the fantastic Song Morphs John Talaga is making (we're up to ten now), James Goggin's wonderful sleeve design -- his first ever record sleeve, amazingly enough -- reassures me that Otto is going to be as strong visually as it is sonically. A record worth getting lost in.