Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Early Merck websites

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Here are 2 earlier iterations of the Merck website. Version 1 was done by a friend from IRC, Desynch. Version 2 was done by Erik/Xhale of Miasmah, who did the current version as well. The individual release pages didn’t survive the archiving on my hard drive, but you get the idea. Funny how relating back to the post before this, on V1, half the upcoming stuff didn’t actually happen as planned because people got snagged by other labels or didn’t come through on their Merck commitments for various reasons. I guess that happened a lot more than I like to remember. Nonetheless, I never quite got around to doing a Version 4 and converting the Merck page into a php driven beast, so I guess it will be stuck in its flash/html glory from here on out…

http://www.merckrecords.com/v1/

http://www.merckrecords.com/v2/

Here is a preview of a slight remix of V2 by lassi/brothomstates, unfortunately he never finished tweaking.

Jimmy Edgar unreleased album artworks + story

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

Back in early 2003, hot on the heels of the success of the first Kristuit Salu vs. Morris Nightingale CD by Jimmy Edgar, we began work on solo second albums from each alias (”Kristuits Salu - re:design district” and “Morris Nightingale - I’m It’s Easy” (changed later to: Easy Like Ginger)). Jimmy had a slew of new tracks from each alias, both coming along strong and pushing the edges of the two sounds he established on the first record. He began work on art for them (he had done the art for My Mines I), which came out interesting, but fortunately he started to link up with Jesse Magicpatch, and he did two further revisions of the art that came out quite awesome. In the meantime I had flown to Japan to network and have a licensing meeting with my old friends at P-Vine, because they were excited to get a follow up from Jimmy as they had already released My Mines I in Japan. Unfortunately, shortly after that I found out it was all for naught, as big brother (Warp) stepped in, signed Jimmy exclusively to their label, and demanded that he not release any other music with anyone else (and thus why Jimmy has had several aliases since then that have been hush hush). Nonetheless, this was an important early lesson on the label side of why to sign contracts with people. Ultimately I was happy for Jimmy, because someone I had discovered and nurtured was on to bigger and better things, a much bigger audience, and hopefully some just monetary rewards for his talent. But I had definitely wasted a lot of efforts on this, and to make it worse, Warp only ended up using 4 of the 20+ tracks that we had slated for release on the two new albums (Access Rhythm EP). [.... to make it even worse, Warp basically dropped Jimmy a year after his first album, and they still owe me almost $1000! I guess you can be dicks when you're that 'big'......]

So here is the original artwork that Jimmy created in March of 2003.

The 2 new versions by Magicpatch in May of 2003 (you can click on em to see em bigger).

Shame that art never got used, and the music was never heard. Its nice to be beyond all these kinds of headaches now, back to listening, and not releasing. More artwork and maybe some more drama to come in future posts, but thats enough for now from “Gabe of the Mountain” (nickname Jimmy always called me, I don’t remember why though!).

Alternate Narita logo

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Here is an alternate version of the Narita logo, as designed by Akira Takahashi. I really liked it, but at the end of the day I wanted something that looked more visually attached with the existing Merck Logo, so I went with the one you see used. But this one had a nice flare to it (as all of Akira’s stuff does).

Merck Generic Jacket V.2 preliminary

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Here are some preliminary shots of Version 2 of the Merck Generic Jacket, as designed by Noah Conopask. We decided these were a bit too bright for the overall label vibe, so we went with the more subdued black and white with a hint of blue that you see on the last few 12″s we released.

Dosage CD unused items

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Here are two unused items from the Various Artists - Dosage (Merck 020) CD. They were made by Adesh, kind of as a joke I guess, either way we weren’t using em. First one was intended to be on the inside sleeve, and a reference to the limited edition Merck Camo Trucker Hats we had made. The second was for the tray, and I have no clue what its in reference to.

Merck Web Banners

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

I’m gonna start posting up unused or mostly unseen Merck related graphics that I have wasting away on my hard drive. First up is a dozen web banners that I made in the early years of the label, I think only a few were ever used, and only brielfly at that. I had some theory about including eyes in them to grab peoples attention and make them more interesting. Nonetheless, here they all are below. Eventually I’ll work up to some peeks at completely unused CD art that we ended up with over the years, but for now enjoy these hallmarks of IDM advertising.


I had to make an animated one.


On the left my friend Jay (rip) and his cat. On the right the famous mp3 communist.


Laetitia Casta FTW.


One of the alternate logos originally designed by Brothomstates.


Based off one of the early versions of the m3rck website.


I really have no explanation for this.


One of my personal favorites, mostly because Esa completely hated it.

Multilink Magazine

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Just had to share vocally that this is my favorite art/music magazine, by far. It makes Beautiful Decay look like a community college zine. Usually in any magazine or art show that I see around, there is like 1-2 artists work that I enjoy, and the rest are kinda interchangeable. BUT each Multilink issue is constantly good art/music. I always finish reading it and have about a dozen names I need to check out more. Admittedly I’m a bit biased towards them due to some connections, but seriously, I can’t get over the quality of the artists/photographers/illustrators/designers that they feature in there (that’s why I’m involved!). Usually people I’ve never heard of, and always amazing work.

Their site/blog has just been reinvigorated, and they got a webstore and book in the works too. As a side note for the Merck fans reading this, they did the most involved and detailed article on Merck ever. You can find it in issue #6. Also they have this badass flash based online pdf viewer for those of you who don’t want to leave your browser.

I highly recommend you check out the magazine if you have eyes, here.

Lost web content….

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Sorry for the lack of posts, I’ve had a busy last few months. I hope to be doing 1 post a week for the spring, and hopefully endeavoring into more personal territory as well. So here goes….

I think everyone (including me) nowadays kind of always assumes that things that are put on the net, will always be around. There are 2 such things that I have always regretted not ‘grabbing’ for myself off the net. As they have since disappeared from the time I first discovered them.

First off was the original website and designs of Vir2l. Some of you may remember them as THE ILLEST web design company in the late 1990’s. They did some simply AMAZING graphics. Very inspirational to visual styles I would later strive for on Merck releases. The company of course split up over differences amongst the various cocky designers (is what I’ve been told), and now the name seems to be somehow involved in cell phone games. Nonetheless, its nearly impossible to find ANY pics of any of the amazing stuff they did back in the day (even on pages and pages of google image searches).

The second thing is this website i found many years back that was someones detailed personal exploits, stories, and adventures in the world of Ultima Online. For the most part they were all griefing stories, and boy were they awesomely hilarious. He had dozens and dozens of well written out tales of various exploits he’d been involved in of torturing, stealing, and causing general strife in the world of Ultima Online (the first major MMORPG, and wild west of sorts as far as those kind of games go), most of them with great screenshots to illustrate. I can’t express how entertaining it was to read these things (and I never even got to play Ultima Online directly either!). Once again the sites content has seemingly disappeared from the internet (I don’t even know what the URL was). I spent 4 hours one day scouring Google, but was left with nothing.

The lesson, if you find a site with content you really love. Your best friend may be a wget or a lot of right click and saving.

-G

The Designers Republic is no more….

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

TDR, the wonderful people who graced us with so many completely ridiculously great album covers (mostly through Warp), has officially closed their doors. Apparently they got a bit too big and corporate. Here is an interview with the bloke who runs it explaining more. You guys will be missed, but of course you’ll live on in all our record collections.

PS. If anyone has an original TDR book (the spiral bound one I think) they want to get rid of, I’ve always been looking to get one.

Advanced Beauty (Graphics DVD)

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

This DVD of motion graphics (plus soundscapes) looks pretty dope. Its curated by Matt Pyke (formerly of The Designers Republic) with music by his brother Freeform (who i’m not really a fan of at all, but I got my fingers crossed). One of the videos is by Alex of Team Doyobi, so this thing is just wreaking of Skam/Warp. Its apparently not available yet, but should be soon.

Their blog.

Pingmag article about it.