Vergangene Woche erschien mit On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System das jüngste Album der Indie-Garage-Rocker THE BUG CLUB und Zugleich das Debüt auf Sub Pop. Exklusiv für Popmonitor haben alle involvierten Künstler*innen das ungewöhnliche Artwork kommentiert. Zunächst die Band selbst …

The last album we made, Rare Birds Hour Of Song, was a bit fancy and had lots of poems and stuff that we really enjoyed doing but for this new one we were in the mood for something simpler and less up our own arses. The music is a lot more straight to the point and probably more rock and the record is pretty short. One slightly intense mood in exchange for a small portion of a listener’s life, seems fair. Saying that we thought it would be funny to make the artwork and the whole package of the record even more posh and pretentious than the last one. The name was based on Darwin’s best seller as was the old timey book aesthetic. We wanted the whole thing to look very very clever and Dusty really nailed the mood on the layout and insert bits. We’ve loved Willem’s art for a long time and we knew he’d be perfect for the spookier mood we were after. We had a few scary pictures from a H.P.Lovecraft book in mind but wanted to leave it to the pro’s. We love how hard the cover looks, feels like we’re in Black Sabbath or something. We couldn’t be happier with how it’s all turned out and having Willem Hampson and Dusty Summers (this worlds two best artists aanndd people bar none) bring it all to life so beautifully makes us very happy.

Auch Designer WILLEM HAMPSON teilt seine Perspektive mit uns:

I’ve been following the Bug Club for years, having met Sam through his brother during my first year at university, and I’ve been a big fan ever since. So it was a no brainer when they approached me to make the art for their latest album. On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System has a slightly heavier sound than some of their previous albums, so we wanted to go with artwork that reflected that. Sam and Tilly came to me with images of Hammer horror style film posters, and artwork that surrounds the work of writers like Edgar Allen Poe and Lovecraft. They were keen to give me total freedom but those references were already very much up my street so I was happy to take them as a visual foundation. I also wanted the artwork to reflect the title that inspired the albums name; Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. That’s where the Beagle-esque ship came from. I wanted the image to be one that you might have to look at twice, before you register the ships destination as some unsettling dystopia. I used materials that I hoped would help achieve this, a limited palette, coloured pencil and layers of watered down gouache with the intention of not giving any one thing too much definitition. This was a deliberate step away from my more graphic pen and ink work. I’ve since made a tour poster for The Bug Club, which gave me an opportunity to jump back in and explore the album art further. Both in subject and with new materials. It’s been a lot of fun.

DUSTY SUMMERS, im Hause Sub Pop für Layout und Design verantwortlich, ergänzt – und zwar ausgesprochen ausführlich …

A blind date. That’s what it’s like when a new band is signed and it’s time to talk about art work. You’re hoping it’s a good fit, personality wise, interest wise, vision wise but you never know how you’re going to get on. That first call with Sam and Tilly felt like a pretty good first date. Their immediate idea was to riff off the album title, inspired by Darwin’s On the Origins of the Species. That conjures up a ton of ideas on victorian era type, specimen etchings, riffs on how books where produced in the mid 1800’s but I think we all wanted something that while hinting at that Darwinian inspiration also felt contemporary. That’s where the bands friend Willem Hampson comes in. That first call Sam and Tilly mentioned the idea of working with Willem, and right off the bat it felt like the perfect fit. Not only a personal relationship with the band, but interesting, bold evocative imagery as well. Usually at this point, bringing in an illustrator, the design is put on hold, wait until the illustration comes in and then design around it, react to it. But we had pretty tight timeline on this release and we didn’t have the luxury of waiting around. Since we already know we wanted to bring that Victorian book feel in I felt like it might be an interesting idea to just design the cover, almost as a template, not really even tell Willem how that art was going to be applied, so the kind of book plate label we used would just be smack in the center of the illustration. And whatever that book plate covers up would be repeated on the back. Our hope that it would create a weird tension, something different. You hire an illustrator and you expect that that illustration is the focal point and dominates the cover. I think we just wanted to try something that, though has this amazing illustration, kind of creates a tension, subverts expectations. The rest of the package doubles down on the victorian type tropes, riffing on the hierarchy of title pages from books of the era. I always think about this juxtaposition between cover and interior and in the case, I wanted to let the cover illustration live by itself, stand out, so the interior is strictly type save for a small image of Sam and Tilly. I think the only thing I wanted to try on the inside to make the type not so on the nose was to set the italic type in reverse… leaning left rather than right… No real reason here besides “that would be kinda cool” So, I was about to submit these notes, first date complete and successful. The band received their copies of the printed album, ready for release day in a week or two… and the title was wrong. Totally the designers fault, totally my fault. Worst nightmare stuff. This band that has been working on this album for a year, two years, torpedoed by a totally avoidable mistake. At this point, you’re contemplating your existence, your next career, begging for forgiveness, searching for synonyms for “im sorry”… Sam and Tilly where delivered lemons and made their lemonade. Their brilliant solution, ok if this album title is wrong, let’s double down. No reprints, no destroying of the jackets. Let’s make all the titles different. Every time this album will be repressed (we’re doing a second run in Europe later this summer) the title will change slightly. No two runs will be the same. Collect them all.

THE BUG CLUB
On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System
(Sub Pop / Cargo)
VÖ: 30.08.2024

The Bug Club auf Bandcamp | www.willemhampson.com