23
September
2013
Piers Faccini - Songs I love
posted in Print | Music
Monday, 23 September 2013
from
Home ! Maruéjols Les Gardons
(near Alès / Nîmes / Uzès)
/ France
listening Piers Faccini !
When I met Piers Faccini, he was on the process of making this book/CD project. I love his music for years and behind involved in his creative process is an honor. He asked me to shoot the book for him and I asked to describe it with his words, much better than mine...
The idea behind 'Songs I Love' began as a way to interact with the people that follow my music on a level that wasn't purely reliant on an album release, I began giving away a cover every two months or so back in 2010 and with it I would post the story behind my choice of song.
Back in the days when I was signed and before I started my own label Beating Drum, I found it frustrating that the only object I could propose was an album of around twelve songs every two or three years. Being free now to make the creative decisions around what kind of object to make, I wanted to propose something a little different using the seventeen songs that I've recorded so far for this cover series.
All the images for the album were made using cut up paper, it's a technique I've been refining since my collages of cut up maps for the album 'My Wilderness' in 2011. I love the instant graphic quality I can get from the sharp lines of cut paper and from a controlled and reduced palette of colours and paper textures. Creating the artwork and images for my albums over the years has made me more and more interested in graphic design. With every album release now, I find myself daydreaming and mulling over all the different ways one can create visual concepts to accompany songs and music and Uncle O is a great sparring partner during this process.
We spared no detail and no expense in making this book, it's a clothbound hardback with 92 pages of text and illustrations, the cd is included in a sleeve on the inside back cover. I signed and numbered all of the 400 copies of this first edition of the book. I'm really hoping that the book will go down well, it's been a great way for me to experiment with the new label and present an object across various disciplines. I love the idea of making hybrid objects that link Art, music and writing. If it goes down well, I'm looking forward to creating similar experiments around the releases we'll be putting out in the future with Beating Drum.
A lot of artists and labels today present "deluxe" and limited edition versions of the albums they put out to accompany their standard digipack or jewel case cd releases. With my own label Beating Drum, we wanted to avoid making any kind of cheap version of the album, for example, the vinyl release of the album is a gatefold with lyric sheet with a cd of the album included in the package whilst our cd version of the album is a a digisleeve 3 panel with booklet, printed on 'carton retourne'.
So instead of sexing up a 'deluxe' version of the album, we decided to push the boat out even further and make a book/cd around my project of covers, 'Songs I Love'. The book was designed by Olivier Carrie aka Uncle O who I've been working with since the album Two Grains of Sand, I provided the artwork and images and he came up with the design concept and typeface with which to put it all together.
The new Piers album went out today, and you can now order the book and find different collector bundles to accompany the new album in a vinyl or CD format at www.piersfaccini.com