The Cat Empire: Live On Earth
Live album artwork is a tough call… How does a designer create a striking and original concept when they’re usually provided with a stock-standard single (probably grey-scale or sepia) photograph of an artist on stage in front a legion of adoring fans?
Here’s a predictable photo+brief. Go forth, unleash your genius!
The Cat Empire’s first live album, Live On Earth managed to dodge the live album drudgery minefield. The creative agency Debaser, still featured the mandatory gig pics, but also provided saturated colour & high contrast, reinforced the band’s identity as a live act, conveyed the multi-faceted nature of the band*, & threw in an extra shot of a guy in a ski-mask for good measure.
* rock / jazz / hip-hop / pop / ska / reggae, if you didn’t know… I’ve never in my life seen a granny shaking it with a teenager in a hoodie during a turntable scratching solo other than at an Empire show – it’s… unique.
If you live in Australia and go to more than one gig a year, you’ve been to a show. Their live show reputation precedes them: on the opening night of the Sydney Festival this year, they played to 100,000 people in The Domain. They hold the record for the most consecutive shows at Sydney’s Metro Theatre (8 sold out gigs) & the largest audience ever in Darling Harbour. The six of them have toured since 2000, playing in Cuba, Japan, all over Europe, Canada, the USA, & of course Australia (hence the name Live on Earth) and tallying up a massive 650 shows in the last 7 years.
So it makes sense to use a photo-mosaic to convey their sheer number of live shows and sizeable audiences. The high colour saturation captures the energy and wildness of their shows. Also, how the hell else do you show a horn section + turntables + african drums + keys + dancing nuns all in a single image?
I’m grateful they didn’t resort to the cliched photo-mosaic style popularised in the 90s which adorns so many college dorm walls, where the comprising images may as well be photos of Persian cats for all the detail we can see… The Cat Empire photos allow us to see the fans and band members in equal perspective (the first time the band has featured prominently on a cover), and attempt to form no greater image other than the simple and iconic Cat Empire logo.
Speaking of… the Cat Empire crowned cat-eye logo (known as “Pablo”) has been a single thread running through their back catalogue – it has featured prominently on all their artwork, and is reminiscent of the omnipresent NIN logo. It’s fantastic when a band makes a conscious stylistic decision to find an image / font / concept that represents them and actually sticks to it, like the Weezer Century Gothic logo, NIN logo or Iron Maiden’s Eddy .
Of course, the world’s love affair with Helvetica has been continued on the Live On Earth album. The choice was for Ultra Compressed, although it has been slightly distorted for their usage. Having recently seen the Helvetica documentary, sans-serifs are haunting my dreams.
The kids responsible for the artwork are Dave Homer & Aaron Hayward of Sydney firm Debaser, who are responsible for most of the fantastic Australian album art for the last few years including Empire of the Sun, Jackson Jackson, Paul Kelly, Faker, Kisschasy, Tim Finn, Powderfinger, etc etc…
The Live On Earth album is available from Feb 28 in Australia, but you can download a free 25min live version of The Car Song off the album at www.thecatempire.com.
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daniel
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BUJO
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Col
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daniel
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mrtruffle
