Is It Backlash Enough?
This is the question we’ve been asking ourselves consistently for the last six months. Lyrics, music, recording process, budget, illustrations, artwork - the whole thing has had to be Backlash from the beginning to the end.
For me, being Backlash is about doing things differently, understanding what I really enjoy, trying to step out of the comfort zone and make something new. Once you do something that some people like, it’s easy to slip into repeating yourself over and over again.
Watching Matt (illustrator/maverick) over the last six months has been a real inspiration for me - he’s embraced this idea and run away with it. The original Backlash Vista that he constructed (you can see part of this on the home page) was his interpretation of the musical concept and turning this into a physical package was the next step.
Andy Rouse came up with the idea of cutting and stacking Matt’s characters on a three dimensional ‘set’ for the front and back covers. Photographing these set ups proved to be the biggest challenge and we were delighted to have Jamie a colleague of Andy’s come on board for this. I’ve made a youtube video of the last day of shooting; I think that the whole project worked out really well. It was great to collaborate with such an enthusiastic illustrator, designer and photographer. It’s been indicative of this project the whole way through - when we started writing it, we wanted to make a really fun and inclusive record and I think feeling that runs through the whole campaign.
Out there in web world people are starting to listen to the tracks and give their opinions on blogs - those links that I can stick in google reader will appear on our home page, the text will be archived as usual on the STA main site. Enjoy the video and the new track ‘Hendrix Sur La Lune’.
Andy’s first book has just been published - I’ll post details of where you can buy that soon; Matt has been working on a new website called ‘Zico Town’ - I’ve had a sneak peek and it’s going to be awesome. I think that goes live in June; again, I’ll post a link here and on the STA site. Check out Photo for a slideshow of the whole shoot.
Friday, 6 April 2007