- as well as responses with more ambiguity.
Chvrches - Clearest Blue
Churches, consisting of members Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook, and Martin Doherty, are a Scottish electronic pop band, formed in 2011.
Known for their 'clean' sound, Chvrches's music style is most commonly deemed as electronic or synth pop. The band are involved in every part of the production of their music, writing, recording, mixing, and mastering their songs in a basement studio in Glasgow.
Associating imagery of Chvrches is typically geometric, with the visual language most recently used by the band for album artwork and in promotional material features contrast via soft floral imagery or depictions of nature and geometric glitch interruptions/image interference.
Etta James - At Last
The song 'At Last' was originally written in 1941 by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren for the musical film Orchestra Wives. In 1960, the song was covered by blues singer Etta James in an arrangement by Riley Hampton that improvised on Warren's 1941 melody. James' version served as the title track in the same-named debut album At Last!, which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
Although Etta James' musical style changed throughout the course of her career, at the beginning of her recording career in the mid-50s, she was marketed as an R&B and doo-wop singer. After signing with Chess Records in 1960, James' broke through as a traditional pop-styled singer, using her debut album At Last! as a platform to cover jazz and pop music standards.At the time of the songs release in 1960, visual motifs of the era included psychedelic art, Art Nouveau-inspired curvilinear shapes, almost illegible hand-drawn type, and intense optical color vibration inspired by the pop art movement.
Jack Garrett - Worry
Jack Garratt is a British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Little Chalfont, Buckinghamshire. His 2014 single 'Worry' was playlisted by BBC Radio 1,he was the winner of the Critics' Choice category at the 2016 Brit Awards, BBC Sound Poll of 2016 and is on MTV's Brand New 2016 shortlist.
Garret's parents put him through music lessons as a child to encourage him to hone in on a potential talent rather than to 'show off.' He wrote his first song when he was 12 and learned to play multiple instruments including the guitar, drums, piano, harmonica, mandolin, trombone and ukulele. After one abandoned first album due to a lack of pride in songs produced for the wrong reasons, Garratt spent a year writing new songs 'with a totally different level of respect and integrity.' He released his debut studio album Phase on 19 February 2016.
Musical genres explored by Garratt include Indie-pop, alternative R&B and electronica. His visual language currently depicts limited colour, gradients, shape and form.
The Jam - Art School
The Jam were an English punk rock/mod revival band active during the late 1970's and early 1980's, comprising of Paul Weller, Rick Buckler and Bruce Foxton. Formed in Woking, Surrey, they shared the 'angry young men' outlook and fast tempos of their punk rock contemporaries, however instead wore smartly tailored suits as opposed to ripped clothes.
The trio incorporated a number of mainstream 1960's rock and R&B influences into their music. This placed The Jam at the forefront of the mod revival movement. The band drew upon a variety of stylistic influences over the course of their career, including 1960's beat music, soul, rhythm and blues and psychedelic rock, - as well as 1970's punk and new wave, though above all the trio was known for their melodic pop songs, distinctly English style and mod image.
The song 'Art School' was taken from the band's debut record 'In The City,' released in 1977. During this time, design was infatuated with an aesthetic of youthful rebellion, which was in fact a part of the Postmodernist movement which began as a reaction to the rigidity of Modernism.
John Lennon - Imagine
'Imagine' is a song that was both written and performed by the English musician John Lennon, who was murdered in 1980 after being shot in the street. The best-selling single of his solo career (individually away from The Beatles), the song's lyrics encourage the listener to imagine a world at peace without the barriers, borders or divisions of religion and nationality, and to consider the possibility that the focus of humanity should be living a life unattached to material possessions.
Max Richter - Dream 3
Max Richter, born 22nd March 1966, is a German-born British neo-classical composer. He has been an influential voice in post-minimalist composition and in the meeting of contemporary classical and alternative popular musical styles since the early 2000s. Classically trained, Richter graduated in composition from the Royal Academy of Music. He is also heavily influenced by punk and electronic music.
Richter is known for his prolific contribution to the industry, composing and recording his own music; writing for stage, opera, ballet and screen; producing and collaborating on the records of others; and collaborating with performance, installation and media artists. He has recorded seven solo albums and his music is widely used in cinema.
Dream 3 is taken from 'Sleep,' Richter's 2015 album - released on September 24, 2015 on Deutsche Gramophone. The album is over eight hours in length, totalling eight hours, twenty-four minutes, and twenty-one seconds. Richter conferred with American neuroscientist David Eagleman while producing work for the piece to learn about how the human brain functions during sleep. Richter stated, "Sleeping is one of the most important things we all do. We spend a third of our lives asleep and it's always been one of my favourite things, ever since I was a child. ... For me, Sleep is an attempt to see how that space when your conscious mind is on holiday can be a place for music to live."
Tame Impala - The Less I Know the Better
Tame Impala are an Australian rock band founded by Kevin Parker in 2007. The group began as a home recording project for Parker, who writes, records, performs, and produces the band's music. As a touring act, the project consists of Parker (guitar, vocals), Jay Watson (synthesiser, vocals, guitar), Dominic Simper (guitar, synthesiser), Cam Avery (bass guitar, vocals), and Julien Barbagallo
(drums, vocals).
The band's music is heavily influenced by late 1960's and early 1970's psychedelic rock, which is achieved through various production methods. Some favoured and often-used effects by Parker include phasing, delay, reverb and fuzz. Electronic music is also an influence of theirs. Parker says of Tame Impala's sound "The way we do music, it's organic, but it's meant to be quite repetitive and hypnotic, almost in a kind of electronic nature. Using our playing as though it was a living sample."
The visual language of Tame Impala most commonly involves imagery inspired by psychedelia, using vivid colour, pattern and forms. The album from which 'The Less I Know The Better' is taken from, Currents, features artwork designed by Kentucky-based artist and musician Robert Beatty. Kevin Parker has said Currents'designs are based on a diagram of vortex shedding he remembered while trying to visualise the album's themes. Beatty described how Parker's ideas for the album artwork "were all based on turbulent flow, the way liquid or air flows around objects."
Thoughts
Having explored each of this years Secret 7 artists, tracks and their contexts and current/established design styles and influences, I have decided to focus primarily on Chvrches' track ' Clearest Blue.' This is the only artist(s) I have any preference for, having listened to their music for some time - though I have not listened to this particular track as yet. I believe my limited familiarity with
the band will allow me to produce ideas that are objective, yet informed marginally by prior knowledge/encounter with the trio's work. Whilst researching the tracks, I experienced the
most ideas coming to mind whilst considering this song, providing me a foundation to be
explored, extended and built upon via concept generation and production thereafter.
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