Makeouts Get Singled Out

Swedish punk trio The Makeouts are due to release their second seven inch platter on Radio Obligato records.

Featuring the songs 'Street Tonight' and 'Still Love You,' I was asked to produce a cover to fit in with a raw 50's/60's flavour, with a scuzzed up look. The couples I chose seem to fit with each song title. A heavy use of an old black and white copier helped make this look all messed up. Thanks Jakob for using X~Ray Vision.

Iekk! Sounds To Release Lover!

Iekk! Sounds from Spain are about to put out this seven inch by Rich Crook's Lover! When I was contacted to work on this Mr Crook had a specific idea in mind for the sleeve, in his words "would you consider the artwork for one of the covers being a woman or small girl alone in the woods looking very scared with evil eyes in the bushes staring at her as if they want to kill her."

The black and white version will be for the limited edition single, the skull represents that something very nasty has happened in those deep, dark woods. Gulp!

Pretty scary stuff, I illustrated the background and gave it a moonlit glow, my friend Lucy Shaw provided illustrations of the gnarled leafless trees. The victorians provided the etchings. To date this is the most illustrated sleeve I've done and hopefully it has brought the nightmarish visions of Lover! to life!

Forbidden Tigers LP and CD Art

So here's the latest sleeve to come out of the busy X~Ray workshop. This one came via Dead Beat Records. The cover was started by someone else and featured the band on a plain yellow background, Tom at Dead Beat thought it looked too plain, I agreed and decided that some photocopied and much enlarged Letraset electronic symbols would help 'magnetic' this up a bit.

From originaly just being approached to adjust the front, this project turned into full LP and CD jacket, along with labels and on body CD print. I kinda like the way this turned out. The band let me get on with it and me and Tom traded a ton of e-mails until we both got the result you see here now! The Buzzcocks proved an inspiration for the hand lettered type on the front!

You can find out more about the Grand Island, Nebraskan Forbidden Tigers here.