Continuing the brand from Chains The EP:
Peter was keen to keep the success of the first release’s (see my post on Chains The EP) traditionally classic, legendary feel, with a modern edge – but he wasn’t so keen on appearing on the cover of this next single.
What we wanted to communicate:
We wanted a cover that was visually exciting, but not too slick – we really didn’t want this to look like a major label release – we wanted to keep it indie, a certain amount of ‘homemade’ feel to it. This was early in Peter’s career and we wanted to communicate the fact that this single was something Peter had recorded and created with people he trusted and loved – not manufactured in a huge recording studio, surrounded by clever machinery and the latest production technology.
Then we saw it!
One day sitting at Peter’s house, going over designs I saw his reel-to-reel player.
“What’s that?” I asked, “Does it work? It looks amazing!”
“Oh that..” replied Peter, “Yeah, sure it works, I recorded the first ever version of Breakthrough on it..”
!!!
So there we had it – the visual we were looking for. I had it photographed by the legendary documentary photographer Daniel Meadows (who’s beautiful black & white portraits from the 70s were used this spring on the Starsailor album ‘All The Plans‘ – and accompanying single ‘Tell Me It’s Not Over‘.).
Then I played around with the photos a bit on Photoshop and hey presto, we had our promo! It’s something you want to pick up, hold, inspect and listen to, even if you’ve not heard of the artist on the cover – the perfect combination for a promo CD.
