DJ Food ‘The Shape Of Things That Hum’ EP

front cover detail

back cover detail

Promo CD on body

RELEASED: 30 Nov 2009
FORMAT: 12″ / DL / CD promo
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN12252 / ZENDNLS252 / ZENCDS252P
DESIGN: Openmind / Henry Flint
PHOTOGRAPHY: Alice Ceresole
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: 12″ A2 double sided poster cover + full colour inner sleeve. DL and CD promo contains three exclusive bonus remixes by Mr P (PC) unavailable on the vinyl.
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Part 2 of the trilogy – a 5 track 12″ housed in a full colour inner sleeve, wrapped in an A2 double-sided poster cover, another of Henry Flint’s amazing illustrations – done specially for this release. He only provides the line work though and I colour each image in Photoshop using a combination of photos, transparency and colour balancing.

It’s a painstaking process involving many layers, minute mouse work and multiple options and variations. I did several screen shots of the work in progress as I went this time (see animated gif in gallery) and I’d estimate it took roughly 2 weeks of intense work. It wasn’t helped by Photoshop bugs flattening the image for no reason after saving. I’d wake up the next morning to find a whole session had been lost and had to use Time Machine to go back a stage to un-flatten the thing. Another setback was ‘the orange juice incident‘ where one of my sons managed to knock a whole glass of juice over the laptop – effectively frying the logic board – after a weeks work on it …

King Cannibal ‘So… Embrace The Minimum’ / ‘Dirt’

RELEASED: Oct 2009
FORMAT: CD / CD Promo
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT NO.: ZENCD151 / ZENCD151P
DESIGN: Openmind
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

A straight crop of the center of the album cover, although no one had seen the full image at the time, see the ‘Let The Night Roar’ entry for a full explanation. I finally got the KC logo how I wanted it with this release too, lining up the diagonal lines on the ‘n’s with the blades to form a sharper look.

Looking for typefaces for the album I’d found a fantastic Brazilian custom font designer called Marcio Hirosse on the web who I’d bought several typefaces from for the project, namely one called DESTROYER which seemed to be apt for Dylan’s music. This was a bit too much on its own so I combined it with another font to make it more readable.

King Cannibal ‘Let The Night Roar’

CD booklet spread

CD tray inside

Promo CD with early title type

Promo CD cover graphic

RELEASED: Oct 2009
FORMAT: CD / CD Promo
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT NO.: ZENCD151 / ZENCD151P
DESIGN: Openmind
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: spot Dylan in the cover image
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

I definitely bit off more than I could chew with this cover (no pun intended). The initial image idea had been to create a mass of intertwined bodies, all covered in latex, gas masks, bondage gear and the like (made for some interesting ‘research’). Whilst putting all this together I came to the conclusion that this needed something more and sitting at the table casually talking with my wife about seemingly unrelated events, I got a vision and knew how I could make the image better. Two outer rings of machines and photos of the Earth from above would encircle the latex bodies like a darker, industrial take on Mati Klarwien’s painting ‘A Grain of Sand’.

Now that this vision had manifest itself in my mind the only thing to do was go back to the drawing board and start adding to the artwork at hand. I often find this happening, something is adequate but a flash of inspiration can make it better or even brilliant and I am helpless to ignore it and go for the easy option. A week later and I’m sitting at the computer at 3am, literally falling asleep at the mouse, with a 1.4GB image file comprised of 180 layers and the machine is seriously struggling to do what I’m asking it. The picture ended up …

King Cannibal ‘Virgo’ / ‘Murder Us’

alternate early cover layout

unused early cover design

RELEASED: May 2009
FORMAT: 12″ / CD Promo
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT NO.: ZEN12233 / ZENCD233P
DESIGN: Openmind
PHOTOGRAPHY: Openmind
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

This one had plenty of people guessing with various explanations of blood, entrails, worms, paint and the like. It was actually old fabric paint dropped in water which made it curl into worm-like shapes briefly before dissipating into a brown cloud. I got one decent shot of it at the start and all subsequent attempts didn’t capture the same effect. See the interview on the Keep Up! website for more details.

I also did some experimenting with altering waveform images from an audio restoration program where it showed the sound more in terms of colour than spikes. Several versions of this concept were produced but we both agreed that the paint was stronger. I’ve included various different placements of the image with alternate type treatments along the way before I arrived at the final version.

The Herbaliser ‘Session 1 & 2’

Session 1&2 double pack with O card

Session 1 Promo CD cover

CD 1 back cover

CD 2 back cover

early unused cover design

RELEASED: Aug 2009
FORMAT: CD / Ltd 2xCD
LABEL: !K7
CAT No.: !K7245CD / !K7245CDLtd
DESIGN: Openmind / Ollie Teeba
PHOTOGRAPHY: Jake Wherry
EXTRA ZEN:!K7 page / BUY

If you’re not familiar with the ‘Session 1’ album there is good reason as it was recorded nearly 10 years before this one and not released on Ninja Tune but on the Herbs’ own Dept H label which was distributed by the now defunct Beechwood Music. This was a live album of various cuts from their first three long players in the form they’d been playing as a full touring band and was fairly limited at the time, going on to command high prices. Now the band have recorded a follow up with material from the last three albums and !K7 have reissued the first volume in a special double CD pack as well as the regular, singular ‘Session 2’.

Having done all their artwork since the first album with the exception of ‘Session 1’ and the last LP ‘Same As It Never Was’ (other work commitments) I was delighted to go back and fill a space in the catalogue. I completely redesigned the first volume and paired it with a new look for the second from an initial idea by Ollie Teeba – a simple but classic pair of sleeves focusing on large 1 and 2 numerals containing photos from various recording sessions. I ran with this and produced an array of designs in a kind of library music style with …

DJ Food ‘One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World’

Centre poster image

Promo CD on body

Promo CD on body, the design was printed in spot varnish on black

RELEASED: 6 July 2009
FORMAT: 12″ / DL / CD promo
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN12232 / ZENDNL232 / ZENCD232P
DESIGN: Openmind / Henry Flint
PHOTOGRAPHY: Alice Ceresole
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: 12″ A2 double sided poster cover. CD promo contains an exclusive bonus remix by Bundy K Brown different from the one available on the download version of the EP.
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

How to go about dressing you own record? A blank canvas but the thing that the public will associate the music with first. I did something I didn’t think I’d ever do, I let someone else have a big hand in it. I’ve been a fan of comic artist Henry Flint’s work for ages, accruing tens of pages of it over the years firstly from dealers and then from him personally. For me he embodies the perfect collision of old school 2000ad artist with contemporary comic illustrator, someone who can adapt and ape a number of styles with apparent ease and can draw robots, cities, spacecraft, humans and aliens with equal success. After purchasing some art from him he included a number of postcards of his personal work. They completely blew my mind and I asked if he was selling any of it as it was perfect for the artwork I had in mind on a forthcoming record.

They weren’t for sale but he had some more and kindly sent me a CDR of over 30, all different but mostly insanely detailed, flights …

The Dragons ‘B.F.I.’

RELEASED: August 2007
FORMAT: LP / CD
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN135 / ZENCD135
DESIGN: Openmind
PHOTOGRAPHY: Don Landee
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

One of the greatest things to come out of the ‘Now, Listen Again’ mix CD was the connection with Dennis Dragon of west coast band The Dragons. We licensed their track ‘Food For My Soul’ from the surf soundtrack ‘A Sea For Yourself’ directly from him and he sent us a whole album of unreleased tracks from the same sessions which Ninja eagerly snapped up for release. Not only did Dennis have tracks from the time, he had over 30 photos taken during the sessions and a wealth of sleeve notes from reminisces to lyrics to technical data. This all helped to flesh out a package and set it firmly in the time it originated.

The one element they were missing was a logo for the band so I set about crafting one taking west coast artists like Wes Wilson, Rick Griffin and Victor Moscoso as inspiration. I’ve long been a fan of psychedelic art and remember making my own screen printed De La Soul T-shirt for 3 Feet High & Rising back in art college in the 80’s where I drew my own typography in a west coast style. I decided to make a circular logo that had the letters make up the body of a Dragon with the wings framing them, a dragons head centre and a winding tail falling down below. This …

Osymyso ‘Fruit From Fifty’ project

RELEASED: September 2006
FORMAT: 12″
LABEL: NOODLES DISCOTHEQUE
CAT No.: NOODOON101 / NOODOON202
DESIGN: Openmind
ILLUSTRATION: Douglas Pledger
EXTRA ZEN: Batch 1 / Batch 2 / Osymyso Soundcloud

I was doing a gig in Nottingham in late November 2004 with Osymyso and we got talking about albums, the internet and how to get people interested in what you were doing and keep them interested. I had taken part in Otis Fodder’s 365 Days project the year before, posting an mp3 a day for free and Mark decided that his next album would take on a similar form.

Because he is constantly thinking about palindromes he had come up with the idea of doing 50 songs in 05 – roughly one a week – and then compiling them together to form an album at the end. When I suggested that he turn the ‘S’ in Osymyso to a ‘5’ the deal was sealed and we resolved to make it happen. He would handle the music and I would handle the design of it with his friend taking care of the website where the songs would be posted.

Alas, despite good intentions, a track a week is pretty hard going unless you have a stockpile beforehand and he managed 14 (I think). These were later released on Si Begg’s Noodles Discotheque imprint as two EPs with Douglas Pledger illustrations. Somewhere I have the designs for the other three records, I’ll have to dig them out.

Bonobo ‘Live Sessions’ EP

CD tray inlay

CD back (sans barcode)

RELEASED: Sept 2005
FORMAT: CD
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZENCDS170
DESIGN: Openmind
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

Simon Green (Bonobo) wanted an EP of new and live tracks to sell as merch on his US and Canadian tour so i was asked to come up with some simple but covetable as a tour exclusive. He had 6 tracks plus the previously released Four Tet remix of ‘Pick Up’ and my idea was to do a partially silvered CD with part of the artwork showing through and no booklet so that the disc became the cover graphic. For this you need a maximum of 35 minutes of music and ‘Pick Up’ was a nine minute epic which had to be edited down to fit on the allotted time.

This was one of the easiest jobs I had done in a while as Simon loved the first design i showed him! The Bonobo logo starts on the underlying tray and is then printed across the CD disc, reappearing through the centre spindle hole and then off on to the disc again so you have to turn the disc at the correct angle so that the letters match up. The back cover imagery of the London Planetarium was taken from an old book on telescopes and the other blurred light photography was taken in Japan when I was messing about with a new digital camera.

The Herbaliser ‘Take London’

RELEASED: May 2005
FORMAT: 2xLP / 3xLP / CD / 2xCD
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN98 / ZEN98X / ZENCD98 / ZENCD98X
DESIGN: Openmind / Ollie Teeba
PHOTOGRAPHY: Jake Wherry / various
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

The idea for this sleeve took it’s original inspiration from a film poster for The Last Picture Show which showed a row of buildings at the bottom, titles near the top with actors faces in boxes and a large expanse of blank space between. Ollie is a big fan of film and the design of film posters and had come up with the title ‘Take London’ as a tribute of sorts to the East End gangster films now largely being aped by people like Guy Ritchie in ‘Lock, Stock…’ etc.

We made a geographically fictional London skyline with as many major landmark buildings as we could think of, being careful to put them on their respective sides of the river even though buildings like the gherkin are obviously nowhere near Nelson’s column. The faces of the band replaced the original actor boxes but we soon hit upon the idea of having windows die-cut in the sleeve to show through different faces because the band has many members and features even more guests. We knew the LP would at least be a double vinyl so that would give us a potential 4 sides of inner sleeve to play with in terms of different images to show through the windows. These were easily filled …

Cinematic Orchestra ‘Man With A Movie Camera’ single / remixes

embossed logo

embossed logo detail

12" back cover

unused sleeve idea

unused label designs

Remix 12" labels

Unused remix label ideas

RELEASED: Apr 2003 / Dec 2004
FORMAT: 12″ /CDS / DL
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN131 / ZENCDS131 / ZENDNLS131/ ZEN12160
DESIGN: Openmind
PHOTOGRAPHY: Carl Fox
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Embossed cover detail on 12″
EXTRA ZEN: Man With A Movie Camera single Flite + Man With A Movie Camera remixes

I had all I needed with the artwork for the album with this one and, as it was a version of the title, it was pretty obvious what was going on the cover. I flipped the white to black so it wouldn’t be too confusing with the album and single together and Ninja paid for a nice embossed logo on the 12″ sleeve. The remix single was a weird anomaly that turned up much later and had reused images to give the remixes some context. I’ve included some different versions along the design process too.

Solid Steel presents ‘Pinball Number Count’ / ‘C Is For Cookie’

RELEASED: Sept 2003
FORMAT: 12″
LABEL: NINJA TUNE
CAT No.: ZEN12143
DESIGN: Openmind / Sesame Street
PHOTOGRAPHY: Sesame Street
SPOTTERS DELIGHT: One detail that was omitted was the parody of the Ages 35+ on the top left corner which was felt to be inappropriate by the powers that be at Sesame St.
EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY

This came about after I licensed the track ‘Pinball Number Count’ for the first ‘Now, Listen’ mix CD although I can’t quite remember how we got to doing a 12″ with ‘C Is For Cookie’. The Pinball song had never been released commercially until this release and was a beat digger’s grail for years amongst many of my friends. The ‘C Is For Cookie’ 12″ was a highly sought promo fetching over £100 because it was the first appearance of Larry Levan on vinyl as he remixed the cut in a weird twist of fate.

As I said before, ‘Pinball…’ was already licensed but didn’t appear on the aforementioned compilation because there were worries within Sesame St. about content on some of the rap tracks elsewhere in the mix. They thought that it was an unsuitable setting for their material, being a kids organisation – fair enough. In hindsight I’m glad this happened as the mix was released on Sept 22 2001, eleven days after the World Trade Center disaster, and one of the rap tracks in question was called ‘The Terrorist’, the less said the better.

Anyway, two …