Kisshead

Press Shot for my other band Kisshead; Electronica Folk Love Step Stuff :-)
Photo by Damian Vincenzi.

Recent Melodics Posters

Grey Ghost (My New Solo Project) Coming soon...

Self Portrait for Solo Project :-)

Starting Sunday

Brand spankin' new album cover for local band Starting Sunday

DKS

Our friend and collaborator Nick Rieve put together this clip for The Melodics 'Donkey Kong Suicide'. Half a day filming out in the bush, it was heaps of fun and hassle free. Check out Rieve's work at www.nickrieve.com

Tumbarumba

Last minute album design for Tumbarumba, a Melbourne based band made up of 5 Percussionists inspired by Brazilian Percussion and cool shit like that. Photography by Rahpael Recht.

Zulu Flow

When it rains it pours.
Late December 2010 brought in quite a few of these scenarios: "Can you design my CD cover?"
"Sure, how long have I got?"
"24 hours..."
Who needs sleep anyway. Here is an example...

The Melodics Press Shot

PMG Launch Sat 23rd @ The Crn Hotel

The Singing Lesson

Yet another last minute job...

The Melodics & [Me] Tour

Theatrical Rock will meet Electro Hip-Hop for possibly the first time ever this November as [Me] hit the road with Melbourne compadres The Melodics...

Synths, guitars and a shit load of drums will be packed into a tour bus alongside an unlikely bunch of fellows with separate sounds and the same goal. The tour will mark a nation wide launch of their respective releases, with The Melodics “Paint Me Gold’ out October 15th and [Me]’s new single ‘Naked’ out October 29th.

Sharing the stage in more ways than one, expect vibrant drum collaborations and massive live performances as they bring together their creative sounds from opposite ends of the spectrum.

A chaotic musical explosion for your ears, [Me] have been likened to the bastard son of Muse and Queen, becoming known best for their 3 minute rock operas on a grand scale. The Melodics have captivated audiences around the country with their indie-rock and electro hip-hop, most recently with their latest single Donkey Kong Suicide, which saw them unearthed on Triple J for the One Movement showcase in early October.

The Melodics 'Paint Me Gold'

It's a lot of pressure doing album covers for The Melodics, I always feels like it's gotta be my masterpiece. I guess I put so much of myself in the music that I feel I need to do the same visually. We wrote a song a while back called 'Paint Me Gold' which is another one of those space-based love tunes I like writing. The title is from the lyric...
“Colour me in // paint me gold // I'll be your canvas if you'll be so bold // the black & the white is now colourful // my satelitte // got ya signal...”
















The idea came to me to call the new EP 'Paint Me Gold' even though it doesn't feature the song (it'll be on our next record). I instantly thought of the image of a woman with a shaved head staring at the viewer with golden paint falling on her head. From there came the vision of shooting a male as well, so I called up my uncle Pete to be the dude and my friend Arlene for the female. I knew she had had her head shaved but upon talking to her I found out it had been 8 months so her hair had grown out, but... she was keen to put one in for the team so we shaved her head on the day of the shoot ~ what a trooper! So anywho, the concept is that there is 2 alternate versions of the CD; a male and a female copy. Time will tell if we can do this, if you get the CD, chances are at this stage it will be the female copy. But we may just print some male ones down the track if it's popular enough (that was a hint to buy a copy).


It was a hectic shoot, that's for sure. We emptied our drummer's lounge room, put down a tarp and went to town! Thanks to all involved, particularly Nick Rieve (photography) Juleiaah (make-up) Petey & Arlene (the modeeels) Tuddy (the paint pourer and location loaner) and Tarko (the test dummy).

Here's the 1st part of the 'Paint Me Gold Sessions' a mini-doco put together by Nick Rieve, who shot the cover art... You can also see Rieve's photography at www.nickrieve.com





'Paint Me Gold' out through iTunes October 15th
...in the meantime, check out the songs at www.themelodicspaintmegold.com

Lift Off Festival Illustration

A Canberra festival hit me up to create an illustration for their poster, they wanted something fun, young and modern with elements representing parts of the festival, such as skating, music, B-Ball etc. The following illustrations will be used as elements of their poster, I'll upload it when it's done.

Synth-Fish



Final Illustration



Skating Space-Monkey

Paris Wells Album/Single Design

'Various Small Fires' Cover/Back Cover





'Through & Through' Single Cover



Photography by Matthew Jensen www.mattjensenphotography.dphoto.com
'Various Small Fires' front cover art direction by T. Fitzgereld of Floatingworld www.floatingworld.com.au
Check out Paris' music at www.pariswells.com.au

Farfar

When my wonderful grandfather was unwell, my grandmother asked me to make some photo montages to put on the wall of his hospital room so that the nurses could see that he was once a strapping young lad and a very successful, handsome, caring and devoted family man. It was nice for them to see him as a young man, and he used to gaze at the posters for hours, as did we.
The below image is made up of scanned photos from a dusty album of him in Norway where he grew up.

R.I.P Farfar

Oceans Baroque

My fellow vocalist from The Melodics (Mr Hue Blanes aka Oceans Baroque) has a solo jazz/classical project he's been workin on. We decided to do an old school contra deal; I design his artwork and in return he gives me some bad arse classical singing lessons. Everyone wins. Well... Huey might loose out a bit as I'll be stealing the vocal spotlight with my improv Baroque rap-scats after his masterful tuition...

Check out his tunes at: www.myspace.com/oceansbaroque

CHOP!

The rhythm section better known for their work in The Cat Empire and Jackson Jackson have yet another project up their sleeves known as The Genie. The band whips up retro fusion and backwards funk with synth jazz and well just about anything they feel like playing that day. Their debut record is about to drop and I had a hell of a lot of fun putting the artwork together for it. So, ladies and gentleman, without out further ado, I present to you ~ The Genie 'Here Come The Scissors'...

DIRECT INFLUENCE ~ War In My Kitchen

Direct Influence are about to release their debut album 'War In My Kitchen'. It's a striking, vibrant record about love and war and everything in between. I went with a bold emblematic vibe... Below are some elements of the digicase design as well as the tour poster... check out DI at www.myspace.com/directinfluence1

THE MEGAHORNS

The Megahorns are a big band full of trumpets, saxes, tubas, drums, vocalists and so on... They came from a background of busking and jamming so I wanted to capture that in the artwork. I sketched up these 'hornhead' characters and worked hard on capturing a real clean cut yet hand done and super textured vibe...

Below is the outcome for the Vol 1. out very soon..

THE MELODICS RESIDENCY

The Melodics are back at Miss Libertine to play Thursdays in March...
so it was time to get some new visuals happening.
I've been vibing on the hand-done non-consequential imagery
to create a mood:
Chewbucca in sunglasses, Rubick's Cubes, 3d glasses, Nintendo controller, Super 8 camera, projector etc etc.



THE MELODICS THURSDAYS IN MARCH
"After swanning about in the sunshine and lapping up the good-time summer energy The Melodics have headed indoors to capture this feeling in song form.

Inspired by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys The Melodics have built a sandpit in their heated Headquarters to help tap into this feel good energy. Unfortunately, a week after commencement, Oceans Baroque and Fantastic Mr Fox were badly scolded in a freak spaceship accident on the way to rehearsal which brought a dark energy to the band....

This dark cloud VS sunny skies clash created a whirlwind of musical endeavors that the boys now describe as the dark-sun sounds, which has inspired brand new tunes such as Donkey Kong Suicide and Bang Bang."

ALTER EGO PASTE UPS

I was commissioned to do a series of paste ups at a cafe called Servery & Spoon. It's a lovely little spot in Caulfield with a lot of kewl and sexy young mums and lots of kiddies, cakes, Phoenix cola and organic sour dour sandwiches. I decided to create a series based on some alter-ego's that are relevant to my friends and I.

The following pics are from the process of the alter-ego paste-up series :-)











...It started with Rathf (The Monkey) who was my first alter-ego who was born at Strathfield station in Sydney after Juleiaah and I had been travelling ourselves into delirium.

Next is Rauw (Also known as Dragon) who is one of my all time best friends, she lives in my beautiful girl Juleiaah and is shy but brave and very good at looking after the treasure :-) Love you Drauwgooon!

Next is Llama, who is a lovely chap who resides in one of our bestest buddies Leon Calero and is a fan of one piece tracksuits and freestyle rapping to the beat of his own unique bum-slapping. Then we have Kitty of Kittiepie Islands; a suave accountant and keen chef who helps our lovely Kathy Sinclair to be her best.

Lastly we have Doo Doo the love robot ~ one of mine; a rad little android who travelled millions of miles from Planet Doo to be with the love of his life Juleidoo!

KISSHEAD EP DESIGN

THE STORY OF KISSHEAD & THE BOAT CALLED ZEBRA

Kisshead travelled in both a spaceship named desire and a boat called Zebra
for millions of light years to land on earthly terrain in late 2009...
Before this time, a young and spritely Kisshead travelled from planet to planet
with the aim of recording traditional music from all over the cosmos.
A common theme and feel was noticed once the recordings were translated and Kisshead began writing songs at once. The music that was produced was a hybrid of the many styles of the intergalactic lands that Kisshead had travelled ~ this new genre was labelled 'Lovestep'. Although over 27 albums were released on the other end of the universe, the first earthly disc is a brand new EP featuring breath taking tracks such as Love Letters, If You and How Convenient...

Cat In The Mutha-Flippin Hat Y'alll

I drew this bad boy for an upcoming gig, Dr Zuess meets RUN DMC...



Here he is in situ... The poster is for a Xmas gig, I started with the Grinch idea and moved on to the full Dr Zuessary...

Fab 5 Freddie

Below is a sketchola I did a while ago of a ye olde school rapper called Fab 5 Freddie aka Freddie Love aka Frederick Braithwathe...ha ha. Maybe rappers have such a history in the creation of alias' because they all have wack names!? For example Busta Rhymes = Trevor Smith, Eminem = Marshall Bruce Mathers, Snoop Dogg = Cordazer Calvin Broadus, Ghostface = Dennis Coles, Royce the 5'9 = Ryan Montgomery, Big L = Lamont Coleman, Chuck D = Carlton Ridenhour, Beanie Sigel = Dwight Grant and Nate Dogg = Nathaniel Dwayne Hale! Ha ha classic!