This Saturday and Sunday Futurepast Zine will be streaming live via mixcloud (https://www.mixcloud.com/live/Futurepastzine/). There will be 11 shows in total, and the time table is as follows….
Saturday 16th March 2024
14:00-15:00 Neil Sherwood
15:00-16:00 Santos (High Key)
16:00-17:00 Nay Nay
17:00-18:00 Skin Teeth
18:00-18:15 C.E.O
Sunday 17th March 2024
12:00-13:00 Semper Supra x Analias
13:00-14:00 The Deviant
14:00-15:00 Something System Records
15:00-16:00 Justice
16:00-17:00 Anjin
17:00-18:00 Kim Cosmik
Many thanks to everyone involved! Also……
Nay Nay has very kindly put together a few words to accompany her show on Saturday:
“The artist’s visual elements give you such a real sense of the music, that you can’t help but stop and take a listen.” – Yaya Azirah Clarke
Whether you have an extensive record collection, a weighty library of CD’s or a hard drive chocca blocked with all your favourite digital tunes – your music has a face. It has colours and shapes and a story to be withheld even before you feel the vibrations within. I’ve set out to curate a show of sounds worth looking at. This is no ranking of the ten most iconic album covers… as always I hope to share some things you’ve not heard before. I’ve gone for things that are funny memorable, meaningful and strange. Enjoy.
1. Waila – Lil Jabb
From the album ‘Keep’ this record shows a mysterious toy figure with a sharp look in their eyes emerging from amidst a pile of dishevelled plastic wrappers. Lil Jabba is a visual artist as well as a music artist and made the cover himself.
“I took the photo in the grotto, it’s a denizen [Inhabitant] of my painting table keeping an eye out.” (Complex)
2. Murderers Dance Too – Fixate
This 2017 Exit Record release is covered with a vibrant and mysterious collage featuring a figure in opticians testing glasses giving a awe-filled and curious look into the distance with a landscape of desert mountains and looming planets behind.
3. LFO Special – Mark Pritchard
The cover art for this EP was made by Jonathan Zawada, a Los Angeles-based artist and designer known for his penchant for creating “tangible artifacts of transient, ephemeral virtual experiences in his work”. Describing the cover as “transient” is apt, as when you look at the image you see a series of transforming objects morphing into each other and altogether into the figure of a man.
More in the Creative Review – ‘Jonathan Zawada puts a twisted AI spin on Mark Pritchard’s cover art’.
4. Microdosing – African Head Charge
From the album ‘A Trip to Bolgatanga’, African Head Charge return from a 12 year hiatus. Described on Bandcamp as a “Long-running studio and live collaboration between master Jamaican percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah and English dub producer Adrian Sherwood, and a revolving cast of guest players.” – check out their artist page because the visuals really don’t miss for each and every one of their projects.
This one is a vibrant and energetic, Afro-futurist floating head. It does seem to be Bonjo’s characteristic grin masked with illustrations and surrounded with multi-colour stripes. The cover successfully conveys the experimental, psychedelic, high-energy and distinctly Ghanian sounds within the record.
5. Summer Sun – Koop
The cover shows the pair wearing golden tunics in a blurry image looking very serious. I really enjoy the way is juxtaposes against the upbeat and summery tune. Released in 2001, Waltz for Koop is the second studio album by the Swedish electronic music duo Koop. According to Discogs, this cover was designed by ‘Sichtbeton’.
6. Bellyboy (Instrumental) – Deft
Deft is one of my favourite producers. He’s has a knack for mastering every genre he tries his hand too, and the genres are many. For the cover of Bellyboy we have another somewhat disturbing portrait. Its an eerie figure shrouded in darkness which appears to have headphones on and there mouth inhumanly wide open. I cant find the artists for this one but it looks like a hand painting and the texture to the brushwork is thick and emotive and makes the face and eyes particularly feel like their piercing out of my screen at me.
7. Dance Before the Police Come – Shut up and Dance
Expert samplers and true genre innovators, Shut Up and Dance, began their musical journey making works that fit well with US Hip Hop of the time but they then went on to push the boundaries of the music they loved by ‘accelerating hip-hop breakbeats, and pouring the pain of bigotry and authoritarian rule into music’.
Check out this Guardian article which speaks to the duo and outlines the journey and legacy of their work. Talking about the Album ‘Dance Before the Police Come’ and giving a great gem of insight into the mindset behind the cover: “We were just dancing, for God’s sake, there was no one fighting, no one rowing, no one dying – nothing like that,” Smiley laments. “But Thatcher and her friends seemed to be hell-bent on stopping people from having a good time.”
8. Chimes – OTHERELiiNE
OTHERLiiNE is a musical partnership that began accidentally between George FitzGerald and Lil Silva. Chimes comes from their self-titled album and many of the songs from the album have ‘official audio’ videos on YouTube which being the graphic elements of the covers to life. Listen to ‘Chimes’ here and float thought the clouds while you do.
9. Brazinintime – Donsurf
North East based Freelance Designer set to work on Donsurf’s ‘Dance With Me’ EP in 2022 and came out with this punch, experimental and textured platter of doodle-ey feast for the eyes. It also comes in a few different colours.
10. My Weapon – Riffs
Riffs makes the ground shake with this track from the aptly titled ‘Quake’ EP. It’s fun and fitting to show a very passionate dog, howling over a fence with lightning bolts shining through the graphic lettering and hefty chains framing the image in cartoon colouring. I don’t know what is being conveyed, but someone had a lot of fun with this one. It certainly caught my eye and my ears.
11. DingDing! – Martin Jarl
Sticking with the animal theme – we’re looking now at a photograph from the Pulikali or Tiger Dance which is folk art forms displayed at cultural festival in Kerala, India.
“On the fourth day of Onam festival, artists paint their bodies like tigers with stripes of yellow, red and black and dance to the rhythm of traditional percussion instruments such as thakil, udukku and chenda.” I didn’t know this was on my bucket list, but it certainly is now.
12. Baddest Ruffest – Backyard Dog
If this big beat, ragga track doesn’t transport you back to the early 2000’s… you simply may not have been born. The cover shows a rainbow of light emerging from the mouth of a dog, giving the impression that this is the true vocalist of the song. Here’s a blurry copy of the music video for a high energy throwback.
13. Bodied – Dismantle
From the compilation album ‘Gutterfunk: All Subject to Vibes’, this cover shows a group of older ladies in black and white laughing as they pass around large boxes. What I initially suspected was a cheeky black market operation is actually a photograph of The Mothers’ Union in Bristol, packing an Aid container headed for a community centre in Uganda.
“The compilation is encapsulated by an archive photo from the legendary photographer Mark Simmons, reflecting the curveball nature of the album, whilst also paying homage to Bristol values of ignoring rules and tradition, which is embedded into GutterFunk’s DNA” (Data Transmission)
14. Dive into the Floor – Stones Taro
The ‘SPRAYDEPOT Vol 1’ compilation album, ‘consists of 5 tracks that have been influenced by the original UK club music scene and the Japanese UK bass music scene which shows its own excitement in Japan’. If you ever wanted to lead me into a trap, lay a trail of high energy global club music along the floor – I can’t get enough. This graphic cover displays a selection of colourful spray paint cans with different designs, each representing a track from the EP.
15. Viers – Running
“The artist’s visual elements give you such a real sense of the music, that you can’t help but stop and take a listen.” This is a quote from ‘It’s Nice That’ Staff Writer, Yaya Azirah Clarke’s article about Jay Vaz a London and Leeds-based graphic designer and music lover behind a dynamic range of vibrant, emotive and complex portfolio of multi-genre album artwork. Jay is the artist behind this work.
The ‘Summoning Salt’ album is a graphic platter for the eyes to bounce around with – snippets of nature, overlayed shapes, an alarm clock face about to hit zero and a gymnast doing a backflip along the bottom.
16. Azoroso – Wost
From the recent compilation album No Para Sigue Sigue from the Colombian, global club music label TraTraTrax. Julian Guzman is a Colombian designer and 3D artist who loves creating colourful and intricate visuals that explore chaos through messy shapes. His work connects South American culture to his designs with vibrant imagery. He draws inspiration from the bandeja paisa, a hearty Colombian dish filled with beans, rice, arepa, chorizo, plantain, chicharrón, avocado, and beef, symbolizing tradition and abundance. Julian’s art, blending mountains and chaotic lines, fits perfectly with the lively sounds of the album, offering a dynamic mix of visuals and music.
17. Monsoon – Ivy Lab
Rather than initially seeing the album cover short music video clips caught my eye on social media for this one. So, I’ve put that here rather than adding the cover to the collage. Dancer Lauren Scott masterfully interprets the spine-tingling sounds of the track.
18. Gold – Conducta
Conducta wares a golden windbreaker in a busy city centre. He’s in focus in the camera lens as people rush around him in shades of grey. He looks deep in thought and characteristic moisturised. To me the image is very nostalgic and very noughties – just like the snappy breakbeat loop with rings throughout the track.
19. Rave Casual – Anz
The cover reads: Hardcore has survived three decades. Will it ever die?
Answer: Not if Anz has anything to say about it.
20. Raw 4 Sure – We Kill Culture
Skin Teeth, Rawtrachs and Obsidian Wave collaborate for We Kill Culture and they really don’t miss with their boisterous, explosive, techno and breakbeat sounds. As well and working on the music side Skin Teeth is an excellent illustrator who has the album cover, covered with mischievous gobline-esque characters which capture how I feel when the music runs.
21. Pico – Proc Fiscal
“Proc Fiskal returns to Hyperdub with the six track EP ‘Shleekit Doss’; in his own words, “a kind of representation of the time I was running the club night of the same name in Edinburgh… These tunes represent the night’s ethos of genre-defiance and high-energy futuristic sets, ecstatic and transcendent while still being fun and stupid. I was getting my friends to play and I made all the posters on my phone – like this EP’s artwork.” (Bandcamp)
It’s hard to know where’s up and where’s down with this cover, similar to a good club night! But it looks and feels like a forbidden pathway to a heavy golden door thought which I would ascend. This song would be the perfect soundtrack to just that.
22. Worst Ever Contender – Rezzett
Rezzett never fails to produce a grainy textured, drummy atmospheric banger. The self-titled LP displays a scratchy pencil illustration with surprising watercolours of a goofy figure crawling along the ground out of the woods. Shaggy hair hangs over the characters face, which is a different colour to their hands.
This one makes me feel intrigued and slightly unsafe! We have The Trilogy Tapes label head Will Bankhead to thank for the visuals.
23. Romena – Khalil Epi
Farah Allegue creatively captures the bass heavy and hedonistic rhythms of Khalil Epi’s Romena EP with an abstract and expressive illustration of the body movements pushed by the sounds within the project. It also comes in many colour variations, which I love.
24. Been So Long – EQ Why
EQ Why is a super prolific experimental footwork producer. But no matter how many tunes he polishes off, his releases won’t fail to give you something colourful and abstract to look at. Here I think I see a figure strolling along a tree lined path in the park, but the image is obscured with the visual method of orange shards over a black background. So, you may be seeing something completely different… spooky…
25. She’s Gonna – Suzi Analogue
Last but not least. If you don’t know Suzi Analogue (DJ, Producer and Creator of Never Normal Records), today is the day. This RP Boo collab is an uplifting track which sounds both futuristic and nostalgic in its use of video game sounds and shimmy inducing footwork drums. Somehow the cover captures just that energy. Labelled ‘The Audio Visual Moodboard of Suzi Analogue’ the cover displays a light-hearted mash-up of throwback photography, clip art graphic text and wobbly simmering edited colours and lights filling any gaps in the space.
I might head off and make a moodboard of my own. Thanks for coming on the journey 🙂
Futurepast Zine 