Hanabi

smash all the windows

A sad side effect of this here digital paradise we all inhabit in this The Year of our Lord 2020 AD is that some cultural forms we once thought were safe an expected to be around forever have either fallen away entirely to the march of progress or have been forced to compromise and retool themselves to the demands of the digital space. So it is with the album cover. What worked on 14 square inches of cardstock just might not scan at 300 x 300 pixels. Ya cant fight time’s inexorable march and really ya shouldn’t want to, so the challenge becomes making art that can kick up a presence for itself in either space. Which is not to say there cant still be room for a little nuance and wit, but it becomes a more secondary challenge to immediacy.

Interpreting the band

When Hanabi leader Chris Marron contacted me in late 2018 to think about something for his band’s forthcoming debut Smash All The Windows, it was a great chance to interpret a band from the atoms out. I had known Chris casually for several years through our frequenting the Coachella message board and as such had an impression of the man formed, but had no idea what to expect from his band. In fact I may not have been aware that he was a musician at all before that. But this was gonna be great. I could listen to the rough mixes of their tracks (mostly) blind, without any inborn perceptions or biases and see where the songs took me. Immediately I found the band sharp, catchy and literate in a way that ticked off several of my boxes. It had a wiry (and at times Wire-y) post-post-post-punk energy that lined up my Venn circles quite nicely.

But still, that doesnt always translate into visuals immediately. In fact, sometimes its actually harder to design for bands that I genuinely like becuase that can put you in a space where youre so focused on not fucking it all up that you second guess every idea and end up spinning your wheels forever. But I was about to find my way in…