Uncovered: Islet - Eyelet
Nominated for Best Art Vinyl 2020, Psychedelic pop trio, Islet’s most recent album Eyelet, is the product of sweeping life changes for each of the trio: Emma and Mark Daman Thomas having their second child, and fellow band member, Alex Williams, recently losing his mother. Emma Daman Thomas has always created the band’s sleeve art and talks us through her creative process for the striking cover of their 2020 release.
Emma explains, “When I started on the artwork for this record the first thing in my mind was that it had to be rooted to our location. Here, the hills of Radnorshire (Wales). We recorded the album in the back room of the house. At that time the band was all living under one roof: myself, my husband Mark, our friend and bandmate Alex. And our two children who are very much not in the band, but who are very much present. I had given birth to both our children in front of the open fire in midwinter in the front room of the house, and at the time of recording the youngest was only a year old”.
“The personal and geographical was very much intertwined for me, and I think there’s a sense of isolation and upheaval in the lyrics I was writing. The album was very much overshadowed by the birth of our children and the death of Alex’s mother in the previous months. I had a sense that the hills we were surrounded by, were a place of comfort and healing but also of isolation and the unknown. That’s where the idea of slicing open the hillside came from. I’d tried versions of this on a previous commission that never made it to print.”
“Up until the birth of my first child, I’d only ever lived in towns and cities. Mark is the one who comes from a sheep farming family, and I always find the picture-book perfect rolling hills round here faintly ridiculous. I’d go out with my camera, snapping the most triangular hills that reminded me the most of what a child would draw if asked to draw a hill. Newchurch, Glan-yr-afon, Disgwylfa all figure - I see them all every day”.
“I stretched them out on Photoshop to emphasize their Mr Men curves and layered them to make an exaggerated version of our home. Tried various colourways, nearly all warm, until I settled on the reds, pinks and orange of the final version”.
“The inside had to be gold. Whatever you find in these hills has to be hidden, precious and beautiful, a symbol for what the music we made huddled away in the hills, meant to the three of us. Luckily for me Fire Records were well up for the die-cut packaging and gold printed inner sleeve. The outer sleeve is printed on reverse board and the gold inner on coated so it has a slight sheen”.
“I’ve done all the Islet album sleeves so far and I feel satisfied with the job Eyelet does in reflecting the lyrics and music of the record contained in it. It all makes sense, if only to me! I feel enormously glad that I get to make music and the images that go with it.”
Eyelet by Islet, artwork by Emma Damon Thomas on FIRE Records. Nominated for Best Art Vinyl 2020.
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