Here’s a 2-color sleeve for a 7″ record by Generalissimo. I spent some time over the summer with General Zivkovich talking about their graphical presentation – something that should be first and foremost for any budding young fascist. He’s really run with it, and the fruits of that are rolling out, starting with the new logo used here and on their website.

For my part, I’ve been thinking a lot about the design overlaps between socialist/communist/fascist work from the 50s and the postwar design giddiness we had here in the US. They’re alarmingly similar – partially due to the tools available at the time, obviously, but also likely due to some sort of cultural seepage. Without doing anything too complex, I tried to steal a little from both camps for this sleeve. 2 colors, big shapes, and some fancy rubylith cutting (not actually executed with rubylith). The utilitarian chipboard gives it a certain prole charm.

You can listen to and then purchase this wee piece of vinyl here.

A few months ago, a group of people from the forum decided to put out a quarterly series of records featuring some of the bands who hang out there.

As with much of what comes out of there, these records are being done collectively. Money goes in the pot for manufacturing, one forum member handles the mastering, another does the artwork, another coordinates bringing the elements together and getting them to their respective manufacturers, and a group gets together to assemble the final product and get it in the mail. The participants are from around the world – the US, Uk, Brazil, Croatia, and Japan. The internet makes this sort of collaboration possible.

I volunteered to do artwork for the second quarterly slab o’ vinyl. Unfortunately, the deadline coincided with a bunch of other deadlines, and I was in the weeds. So I did what I often do when I need to work quickly: set aside 3 hours, grab interesting objects off the mantle, and start stacking them.

Here is the final cover image:

And here are a few of the other photos from that session:

You can hear the music of the bands involved on the bandcamp page, as well as see the excellent cover from the first record.

I’m happy with my contribution to this project, but it’s one small piece of a solid package. The records come with an obi and letterpressed inserts, both well designed and executed. The records feature 6 songs by 6 bands. Everyone involved has done their best, and their best turns out to be pretty damn good.

Here’s the front:

And here’s the back:

The cover unfolds into a nice big pin-up:

Here’s what the center of the record looks like:

And the CD:

I’ve been working with this process of layering halftones, usually working from dark to light and crude to fine. Here’s what that process looked like for this print:

I flew out to Minneapolis to film the recording sessions for their upcoming record, and put together this trailer:

Over the course of this summer I’ll be shooting live shows of Michael Yonkers as well as The Blind Shake and at least one where they play together.

I’m shooting with a Panasonic AG-AF100 and my Canon 5D. As usual, I’ll edit in Premier Pro and grade in After Effects. I’ve always been more oriented towards post-production, so this is going to be a bit of a leap for me – which is exciting.

There is a website coming for that film, and I’ll post updates there, but it seemed worth mentioning here.

You can also watch it on YouTube if Vimeo makes your computer stammer.

I haven’t posted here in quite a while, obviously, mostly because I’ve been insanely busy. Looks like things will start to lighten up in March, and I’ll be posting the slew of projects that I’m finishing up sometime around then.

Also available on YouTube if you prefer.

Nice thing about a band that wears the same uniforms all the time is that you can film several shows over the course of a year and have them look the same (although they did all get new patches in between 2 of these shows). It’s like the poor man’s multi-camera shoot.

I toyed with editing this to the version of the song off of the record, but I prefer the slightly inferior-sounding live recording. While I like the clean studio sound, it makes it look like they’re lip-syncing. Plus doing it this way meant one take was already perfectly synced with the audio.

In the Fall of 2009, my band Ovipositor went on a quick tour up the Pacific coast with our friends Generalissimo. I put together a press release, as well as posters for 3 of the shows.

Considering the number of press releases that show up at papers touting unknown rock bands on their way through town, it’s hard to stand out. This one needed to be unique: a one-sheet with a glossy photo and CDR wouldn’t cut it. It was also important to make something appropriate for Generalissimo’s highly conceptual presentation and our somewhat looser character as a band. I came up with doing an official-looking document bundle. When the string is removed, the 2 cardboard pieces separate to reveal a one sheet bio about both bands, an Ovipositor CD, and a Generalissimo Patch.

The color scheme is a nod to Generalissimo, as is the bold simplicity of the package. The distressed type and massively inconvenient packaging were a nod to Ovipositor. And I’m not kidding about it being massively inconvenient: The string coming through the back of the package is the only thing holding the CD in place, and once the 2 pieces are separated they’re nearly impossible put back together – the string has to be looped around itself in a very specific way. I wanted anyone who opened it to have it intrude into their life in a way that would make them remember it.

I think one can’t help but walk away with an impression of the sensibility of both bands, even if it isn’t obvious.

Because the context in which they’ll be viewed is very different (a dark club as opposed to a mail room), I took a different approach to the posters. The posters I’ve done for Ovipositor play by a different set of rules – esoteric and arbitrary rules I’ll discuss elsewhere. I’m not interested in making them grab you by the collar and shake you, but rather to seep into your consciousness. But for a tour through towns where we are unknown, I wanted to do something bolder. People showing up equals gas money. I’ve always loved the challenges of 2- and 3-color printing, and figured it was a good way to keep myself in check.

The weird Guy-Smiley-looking heads are actually dummies for dental students. They are made from the heads of unclaimed bodies at the morgue which are fitted into the supposedly less-creepy plastic heads. Yes, I agree – ew. But appropriate to the bands and the tour. As bold as the images are, there is a strange undercurrent in them (even if you don’t know the deal with the heads) that I’m very proud of.

My brother-in-law Steve started this band in 1976 and was an active part of the SF music scene. By all reasonable accounts, it was a pretty interesting time to be making music in the Bay Area (and, well, the rest of the world as well). Last time we saw him, I pulled out the camera to get a little history:

I have a hard time saying a band is “punk” or not, and frankly I don’t think the distinction is that interesting. They were active in the punk era and were inspired by punk bands, but so did Heart and the Climax Blues Band.

Fortunately, I will probably never make that documentary, so I hope this is enough for you:

PLAYBACK IS A BITCH Trailer on Vimeo. (Since some people have trouble playing back footage on Vimeo, it’s also available on YouTube, where it doesn’t look quite as good).

All shot with the Canon 5DmII, mostly with the cheap plastic 50mm lens. Mostly shot at New, Improved Recording, where we spent a day tracking under the watchful eye of Eli Crews. I might post more about that here at some point, but Max has already done a fine job of writing it up on his blog.

Pictures from an exhibitionist.