alessandro cortini, who the vast majority will have seen singing backing vocals and playing guitars / synths for nine inch nails or muse, is of course a formidable musician in his own right. if you haven’t heard the song problem me by his band modwheelmood then you’re one jam short of a damn good mix. SONOIO is the name of his new project, and it’s a 9 track album created entirely on buchla modular synths.

a fan of our record sleeve and poster work for mellowdrone, alessandro got in touch with us with regards to creating artwork to accompany his new music. we say ‘artwork’ as opposed to ‘design work’ because he was particularly interested in the looser, more painterly / emotional elements of our work over some kind of cleaner, tighter design effort. modwheelmood had been heavy on the minimal design / die-cutting and this time, the record being much more personal to him, alessandro wanted a more cathartic, hand-made quality.

we talked for a while and decided that we should try to create something that had a european quality to it – something that harked back to alessandro’s roots. combining this with a visual device that we felt was most honest to the lyrical content on the record, we came up with the two matisse-esque characters you see on the cover, who are trying to cover up the holes in their chests. the colour choices were then informed in part by the colour of the buchla synth itself. the pencil marks are that of my father thomas newbolt, who’s drawings we cut up and relocated elements of for the sake of adding more movement / life to the collage.

it was a long process – many versions were created and many strong ideas hit the cutting room floor. after much deliberation we all agree that the cover you see above though is the most profound and succinct description of the record’s musical content that we could come up with. as ever we hope you can form your own interpretations of the artwork’s relationship to the music and can let it grow with you as you get to know the songs.

the album, prints and t-shirts are now available in multiple formats on the SONOIO website, which was created by crosshatch.

we just finished work on a short film to accompany the release of the next track from big black delta. it was shot over a couple of days around independence day in los angeles. the idea was simply to capture everything we got up to in the short time we had, be that searching the night sky for flashing lights, watching dan akroyd talking about UFOs on youtube or jonathan bates making strange noises on his studio floor. we hope the end result, if nothing else, makes you feel like all these things are related. not forcibly, but maybe with a little serendipity.

jonathan bates, better known for his part in the fantastic band mellowdrone, recently got back in touch with us regarding a ‘new thing’ he was working on. as luck would have it, it was  some seriously rich and rewarding new music. the kind which fills the mind with images pretty fast. well, the next thing you know we’re watching the thundercats intro in total awe, debating wallpapering our apartment walls with TRON screenshots, and obsessing over UFOs. how one thing lead to another is neither here nor there, but it turns out we were all down with this new thing … and it was taking us places.

what then ensued was the constant, rapid exchange of music for artwork, much the way a choir does their psalms and responses. there’s no question in our minds now that big black delta was the only name you could use to sum up the music, what inspired it and everything we’d ultimately made together from that point forward. cut then to just a few days ago. cut right to the moment when we slung the cover you see above onto the proverbial coffee table. cut to us all looking at each other like we knew it was time. yep, ufologists were about to get some melody in their google.

it’s been two days now since the first song was released and people seem to be really digging it. there’s more great material on its way and we only hope, as ever, that people enjoy the unity we’ve strived for between sound and vision.

after selling out of the $2 smaller editions of mellowdrone’s angry bear poster, we got together with the band and produced a limited edition, high quality, glossy, king-size run. the final edition is 24 x 37 inches in size, which is about as big as your average full size film poster. it’s not often our artwork gets printed so large, but it’s always something we’re very thankful for.

if you are in need of some fury on your walls, don’t hesitate to grab yourself an edition while stocks last -

http://mellowdrone.com/poster/

recently we decided to revisit one of our first websites and revamp it a bit. it’s a site that continues to attract people’s attention and represented, back then, our first truly experimental work. we were given carte blanche to make the site any way we wanted, and in our miserable, dank, little east-london bedrooms, it meant a great deal to us to finally be able to prove our worth.

that said, we believe hugely in the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ dogma and so have made the following respectful list of subtle changes to the site that we feel were only necessary to keep it breathing and satisfying its users.

1. actionscript 3 codebase
2. xml driven content
3. h264 video
4. additional ‘water colour’ interactive ‘sketch book’
5. full screen functionality
6. UI speed increase
7. new backdrop ‘studio photos’
8. higher quality exports of ‘day’ and ‘night’ short films

we hope, if you were a fan before, that you enjoy the upgrade. for those of you who’ve never seen the site before, we hope it finds a new and satisfied audience, and of course does a handsome job of introducing you to the artist’s work.

thomasnewbolt.com

we were recently asked to write an article about the artwork we created for 65daysofstatic’s new album, we were exploding anyway. the article has been included as part of a ‘takeover’ over on drowned in sound this week.

it’s not often we get to talk openly and at length about some of the inspiring relationships we’ve built with some of our collaborators. furthermore to be given this chance and to have everything we said posted up, unedited, was something we’re very grateful for.

we hope you enjoy the article. you can read it here.

what’s to say? there it is. the cover of 65daysofstatic’s fourth studio album, we were exploding anyway. simultaneously unlike anything we’ve done before and yet, we feel, very us. of course an LP cover can’t be entirely judged until you hear the music that goes with it, but know that it was made to try and walk both sides of that line. this is a record that will forever mean more to us than we can begin to put into words, so we hope pictures suffice.

album is out 26.04.10.

here’s the poster we just designed for the sonos smash up party in SXSW down in austin, TX next week. a big thank you to greenshoelace.com for the commission. we’re actually looking forward to finally getting down to the festival ourselves this year, rather than just being nominated for stuff from afar. of course we’re mostly there this time around because of our good friends the protomen playing not one but four shows throughout the music week. with that many performances it’d be impossible not to at least see one show, right? seriously though, be sure to say hi if you do come to one of their shows, as we’ll most likely be filming or photographing them in some capacity.

you can view the complete sets from each night here.

ioncinema.com, a webzine / blog website dedicated to american independent film, world cinema, documentary film and the world film festival scene, has just posted this article in praise of the HERE website. this is the site we built in collaboration with filmmaker braden king, to promote and provide information on his forthcoming feature film of the same name.

it’s also worth mentioning that the site was built using the ever more relevant ‘website-in-a-can’ setup offered for FREE over at wordpress.org. more than just a powerful piece of blogging software, it’s an extremely affordable, plug-in based solution for almost all your basic website needs these days. provided you’re happy to undertake the task of a little coding and skinning, you can build a very easy to update and maintain online platform to serve a variety of immediate needs.

worth a look.