The Impulse Int'l Get Go!

New Jersey power poppers, The Impulse Int'l, release double A dide on Derranged Records and housed in a suitable X~Ray sleeve to boot!

I thought I'd keep this sleeve quite simple, but I addded texture and offset colour craziness. I hand drew the girl and I liked the combination between the loose drawing and the use of band photo's. Thanks to Adam for hooking me up with the photo's.

The Hair Turning Japanese

These Leeds based youngsters have gone and recorded a full length CD! X~Ray Vision worked closely with Neil Clark, the bands keyboard player, to create this photomotage. I pushed for a colour scheme that included a silver litho, this enhances the shiny, disco element of the music. I guess you could say The Hair are West Yorkshire's answer to The Rapture, what with funk filled bass lines, jerky guitar spits and the odd clonk of a cowbell.

This is a Japanese only release on the Kurofune Records label. More info can be found on the bands website.

The Japanese have gone all out on the marketing, with in store displays in Tower Records! I guess this is my most polished and fancy shmancy work to date!

Manhattan Love Suicides Whip Out 3"

The MLS are busy at it again, this time releasing a three track 3" CD on the Cloudberry Records label, purveyors of the sound of jangly guitars and based in sunny Miami, Florida. Sounds lovely.

For this little project I enlisted the help of Kimberley Scott, she provided the initial illustration of the gun toting girl. I 'scuzzed' up the overall design with elements of ink rolled texture, comic book dots and the like.

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.

Demon's Claws/Coathangers Flyer

This flyer was created for the upcoming tour of the Demons Claws and Atlanta's all girl punk rock group the Coathangers. This job was orchastrated through Robs House Records. Who will be soon releasing the Coathangers debut LP!
Check out their myspace page for tour details plus record release info, they've put out plenty o' good swag!

I wanted this flyer to look kind of scary, the screaming mouth comes c/o the movie Suspiria, Dario Argento's 1977 horror meistervürk! Other elements include a spooky looking forest ( a reference to the 'back woods' element to describe the music of the demon's claws.) Yikes!

Print spec for this will be black on either a bright yellow or pink stock.