I was asked by my friend Jonnie Common and producer Si?n Parkinson to design a sleeve for a suite of music he created for the McManus Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum. The McManus celebrated it’s 150th anniversary in 2017 and Jonnie was commissioned to create some music to mark the occasion. Jonnie first performed this music on the steps of the museum in November 2017.
Initially Jonnie was keen to record sounds from some of the objects in the McManus Collections but for a variety of reasons this wasn’t practical. Instead Jonnie began to think of ways he could use the building as a source of sonic inspiration. He used ingenious recording and production techniques to explore the museum building and some of the weird and wonderful objects housed in the McManus Collections.
For the artwork and packaging I used Jonnie’s approach to recording and composition as a starting point to produce a gatefold sleeve, 24 page booklet and unique riso print all in an edition of 300. Here’s a video showing 60 of the 300 unique riso prints I made.
We launched Jonnie’s record with an event in cinema 1 at the DCA, for which I produced a series of music videos. The videos build on the animations made by Biome Collective for Jonnie’s live performance.