Album Art

Recently, I had the pleasure of working with a band from York, Vaquelin, on some of their visual companion pieces for their first album, Where Dreams Hurt, and their untitled upcoming album. I put together two single covers, Roads Leading Nowhere and Broken Window, alongside a few experimental music videos.

Funnily enough, both images were shot on the same day, on the same hike. I was heading up from Honister Slate Mine above Buttermere, toward an onlooking peak when I passed some interesting structures – one on the way up, and one on the way down – which suited the increasingly ominous weather growing over Great Gable to the south-east.

The first image was of a corrugated iron built, long abandoned, tool/work shed, overcome with honey orange rust. You feel, if not for the bright contrast of the oxidisation, the shed’s pale blue metal might just have blended, unseen, into the sinking similar toned slate. Yet, fortunately for me, the years of frequent rain that the Lake District seems to be so renowned for had, for once, not hindered, but actually aided my ventures in shooting.

The second image was captured on the way back down. The photo’s subject is of, or specifically a window of, one of many bothies which hikers frequent along the sides of the Eastern fells. I had hiked this trail twice, one time the previous summer, in which I took shelter alongside several other surprised walkers from a sudden storm. But it was the second time – the next spring – when I shot this image (having been almost caught by another band of weather). However, it wasn’t until I sent this image as one part of bunch of images – all featuring broken windows – from my back-catalogue across to Jack, the drummer for the band, when I began to notice more of it’s qualities and intricacies which I had seemed to have forgotten since shooting the image (which, granted, was a rushed affair). The colours, particularly stood out to me, the greens of the moss and weeds amongst the slate and the sun bleached yellows of the damaged stool (seems the ‘window’ isn’t the only broken subject of this image). Moreover, the dark layered clouds sitting above seemed to match the tone of the song, which I’d picked up upon whilst shooting the music video for the band a few weeks prior. On the topic of music videos, I am still plugging away in the edit for Broken Window, however I have supplied some links at the foot of this article for some others from earlier this year and 2021. All together, these elements alongside the product of the much experimented with font for the text Broken Window, produced a piece I’m very proud of.