The concept and production for the cover was created by The Creative Corporation, which was art directed by Dave Stansbie in collaboration with Aubrey Powell from the legendary Hipgnosis design studio, who produced album covers for the likes of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Trex during the 60’s, 70’s & 80’s. This was a rare opportunity for us to work with both a music artist and designer we had all admired for many years and one we relished with all of the creativity we had to give.
Initially the project was a creative pitch, which 5 studios were invited into. We were each provided with one track from the album and a potential album title to based our ideas around. During this process we developed a series of very different directions, which were very well received by David and his wife Polly and lead to us winning the project. During the weeks that followed everybody involved honed in on what was always our favourite direction ‘the birds’ and we set about making our concept a reality. Initially this involved sourcing 100’s of images of Corvadae birds, which sounds a simple task, but this was far from the case and lead to the decision to hand-paint most of the birds ourselves.
Once this process was underway, we turned our attention to finding the ideal landscape setting. We soon decided North Wales was just what we were looking for, dark and spacious landscape with rich iron-like natural colours. It felt in-keeping with the project that we should call upon a photographer that we had also admired for many years and one that had a strong connection with Pink Floyd. This photographer was Rupert Truman from StormStudios and it soon became apparent that we had found exactly the right person for the job. Rupert spent 3 days on location in North Wales and unfortunately due to the shots we needed this meant picking the darkest, wettest day we could find. During these 3 days Rupert took 100’s of images, which were eventually shortlisted to around 10 images, which we merged together to create the perfect setting.
By the time the landscape was ready the 15 birds had been painstakingly perfected and we set about bringing it all together into one final piece, which was all brought together when we modelled the gold cage in 3D and placed into position. The end piece sits somewhere between a photograph and an oil painting, a type of dark and twisted Turner landscape.