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In the first part
of an exclusive interview, Jonathan Barnbrook
talks to Metamatic about his early work with John Foxx
- from the creation of album artwork and videos all the way through
to performing on stage at the Roundhouse... |
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Metamatic : How
familiar were you with John's work and how
did you first meet up with him?
Jonathan
: It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say John has been one of
the central creative figures in my life. I discovered his music
with the release of 'Underpass' and since then his music has
been a companion through the good and bad times of my life. There
is something in it which perfectly coincides with my own vision
of the world. We do seem to have an interest in similar things,
the first thing that attracted me was at that time his use of
synthesisers as a new form of music combined with something that
seemed essentially British, the subjects he was singing about
where far more recognisable to me than much of the rock music
others were listening to. It had parallels with new sounds from
a new heritage by Kraftwerk, but the basis was entirely different.
The atmospheric, melancholic moments evoked in the music I identified
with more than anybody else I had listened to and was more appropriate
to someone from the UK, where we didn't have to reinvent ourselves
after WW2.
There was also the figure of The Quiet Man, this quest for anonymity,
a figure who seemed to live in the deserted world which had returned
to a more natural order, it was incredibly beautiful, and as
an adolescent it helped me deal with the terrible self-consciousness
and ego you have at that age - the need to lose myself was possible
reading 'The Quiet Man'. It is also very romantic text, at the
age of eighteen the possibilities of your life are fully in front
of you, and if you can switch for a moment to someone like The
Quiet Man, who has lived, loved, obviously experienced tragedy
but is now reconciled to it all, it is incredibly comforting.
I also found it in other books, such as 'Steppenwolf' by Hermann
Hesse, 'The Man Without Qualities' by Robert Musil, which became
central to my life too. Finally both his music and writing provided
and escape from the bleakness of my environment. I grew up on
a council estate in Luton, not the most beautiful of places and
the text which talked about nature taking over and making places
beautiful again was something I wished for too. I do think it's
no coincidence that 'Metamatic' was especially important into
this respect too. It wasn't until I got into JG Ballard years
later I understood more about some of the atmospheres that I
was getting as I walked about from this album and why they directly
connected to me also.
I met John through just being at various events. He is quite
shy but still approachable, and a very generous open person with
his time. I think it was the D.N.A. exhibition that prompted
me to contact him to work on some possible projects, I could
have done it a long time ago, I think I had to get over myself
a bit though first, move from being a fan to seeing myself as
someone who could compliment the body of work he has done. It
took me being a bit older and maturer to be able to do that.
I have worked with a lot of creative celebrities like Damien
Hirst and David Bowie, but somehow working with John was a bit
more daunting because he had meant so much to me when I was young.
Metamatic
: Did the films Clicktrack
[LINK]
and A
Half-Remembered Sentence [LINK]
which featured on the D.N.A.
DVD already exist, or did you create them specifically for that
release?
Jonathan
: They were created specially for this project and the exhibition
that was arranged before it. I was delighted to be invited by
Dennis Da Silva who curated the exhibition because John has been
such a big influence on me. It did strike me as very strange
suddenly that I had never up until then specifically done a piece
of work about him or his music, maybe because I had felt it was
kind of untouchable, but then it started to feel wrong that this
person who has influenced my creative output had not been rightly
acknowledged in some form. So it was an enjoyable but difficult
task to try and express some of the meaning he has for me.
Metamatic : The music used for the film Clicktrack
is a random series of samples which John
provided to a music magazine [Future Music] back in the late
1990s. What was it about that particular 'track' which made you
decide that a video needed to be created to accompany it?
Jonathan
: I really like the fact that 'Clicktrack' wasn't consciously
'music'. At the time it was just laid down on tape for possible
use. However it still very much has the essence of the album
within the sounds, they actually differ emotionally from one
sound to another. Some are almost aggressive. Some are melancholic.
They all have a raw feeling which you often don't get with digital
sound and some of John's ideology in it where he was in a particular
state of mind when he was trying to work out what he was going
to do next in his life. I wanted to take it though and do something
entirely new for it that could only have been done in this age.
Using a throwaway fragment from the past, understanding it, reinterpreting
seemed very much a John Foxx kind of thing to do.
Incidentally it was important that the sound wasn't edited in
any way, all of the hiss and hums, silences are left in and become
natural pauses to change the animation. It was a real task to
create animation which worked on the irregular sound patterns
and rhythms that are in it. I hope that what I did is a kind
of compliment to the album and shows the emotions and images
that the period of Johns music creates. It was also an incredible
amount of work, maybe three weeks on just that one video, I wanted
to make it very dense, so that each sound had its own visual
universe.
For 'A Half-Remembered Sentence' I liked the idea of using a
memory of The Quiet Man - it's a tremendously evocative text
- like the journal of someones life that has been found and written
down for another solitary human being that might find it. So
I thought about the idea of a 'memory of a memory' it seemed
the right kind of way to reinterpret John's work, and I felt
had actually not been done before for a piece of writing that
would really lend itself well to it.
It is just based on one small sentence from the text; "You
can only find this place by drifting, it's impossible to walk
directly here, you must first surrender yourself to the tides
of the city". It's a really great thought and relates to
the process of creativity too or just the way you try and control
the outcome of your life sometimes. I also wanted to do something
that was a little more ambient, so the attention span you need
for it is different from watching an advert or even a music video.
I also did the sound for it myself using John's voice reading
the line, again I wanted it to be a step on from using his music.
Maybe in the future I will go back to the text and do something
with typography that is several hours long which you could have
on in the background while you worked or contemplated a view.
So that it would come in and out of your perception.
Metamatic : How many different designs did you end up submitting for the
D.N.A. release? |
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Jonathan : Many!
So many I cant remember. It seems to be the way sometimes I have
to work and it's not until you have gone through many possibilities
that you can arrive at what is right. It's a very time consuming
way of working but I do believe in certain cases it is what is
necessary to produce something good. |
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Metamatic : As
with Interplay
(or should that be the other way round), the artwork for D.N.A.
is very different to other items in John's
catalogue. At first glance it appears to be simply 'black and
white', but there's far more to it, even down to the choice of
textured paper.
Jonathan
: I tried to create something that looked like it was made out
of 'the silver screen' this phrase always fascinated me and when
I went to the cinema when I was younger it always seemed that
this flat thing that film was projected onto was quite magical.
It reflected light, gave us all those images that had meaning.
I had to keep touching them when I was younger, to check if they
were made of a material that existed on earth or not.
The booklet is printed black and silver to give the same kind
of strange feeling. I also used the lyrics from 'Dust And Light',
as I wanted to emphasise this ethereal quality of what film is.
Finally not to be too pretentious about it but I am a big appreciator
of Plato the Greek philosopher and in the book 'Republic' he
talks about the cave as a metaphor for how people are constrained
by their idea of reality; "They see only their own shadows
or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite
wall of the cave". This metaphor has been used today as
a good description of how everybody believes what they see is
real in film or TV. |
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Metamatic : Regarding
the photograph of the man climbing the stars on the D.N.A. backplate...
was that image created especially for this project?
Jonathan
: It wasn't photographed especially for it, I used an existing
library image. |
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Now many people
would think that's lazy, but it was chose to use a photo library
image because I like the fact that you are one place removed
from the creation of it. Photolibrary images are great social
revealers of the aspirations of society, as they are created
to fulfil a need for some kind of ideological representation
of what you are trying to say / sell / explain, that is very
attractive to me, to use an image in quotation marks. I don't
know who created the image, or who the person is in the picture.
The stair could be any place in the world, and the photo can
be used equally for an unrelated project. That arbitrary nature
of it is something that I like and appropriate to the concepts
in The Quiet Man.
Metamatic : Your next project was to create the artwork for Interplay, the first album
from John
Foxx And The Maths.
As with D.N.A.
was there a conscious decision to present something completely
different from the rest of John's catalogue?
Jonathan
: You are right in thinking that it had to be different from
the other imagery that John has used previously. There was a
deliberate wish from everybody to make it look different as this
is a separate project from The Quiet Man part of Foxx and with
a very different sound.
As an aside can I say I love the covers that John has designed.
The singles covers he was doing around the time of 'Endlessly'
and 'Your Dress' are some of my favourite pieces of design, they
use colour really well, are beautifully balanced designs, have
wit, elegance, experimentation and are of someone who has reached
a mature visual language.
Anyway back to the design of 'Interplay', Benge and John were
very open to what it could be but there were various things that
seemed to reflect the music visually. Benge in particular was
very enthusiastic about things like the Penguin book covers in
the 60s and 70s and that kind of typography. Now actually I had
to be careful because this is an area very much been explored
by Ghostbox Records, so I had to do something which had a retro
heritage but could be taken as completely modern too, that had
a basis in electro music today. When I went to Benge's studio
to do some research, we both were drawn to things like the typography
on the manuals for the synthesisers they were using and on the
instruments themselves. So this was shown in the typography,
(actually I think it comes out more on 'The Shape Of Things'
booklet as we had a little more space to play with). I do hope
underneath people can see these references.
The typeface used on the cover is Transport which is the same
one used on the motorway signage system in the UK (and was designed
by my tutor at the Royal College of Art, Margaret Calvert). It
for me is really reminiscent of the late 60s and 70s. Different
from Helvetica that everybody uses. I also chose it because I
know John is interested in the writing of Iain Sinclair, he is
one of my favourite current writers and at the time I was designing
it I was reading Sinclair's 'London Orbital', in it he walks
around the M25 and describes the non-places that he sees. How
areas that we don't consider as important still have an emotional
landscape and this typeface to me, although is simple, is so
full of some of the stuff that is evident in the synth sounds
used on The Maths music. It's this faded hope for a future that
never arrived of trying to make clarity in a world where, if
clarity existed, it would lose its character. How even things
which are supposed to be clear and logical have their own idiosyncrasies
and emotional reactions. |
That refining
is as much part of the design as anything else. This is the invisible
part of design that people don't see, the end result can often
be quite simple but usually it's a long journey to that. I of
course take this job really seriously because music is a huge
motivator for people. This means relationship between the design
of the cover and the music is really important. For me especially
as it was the thing that made me first want to be a graphic designer.
If the design of the cover is right, some kind of golden triangle
is created between the music and visuals and you when you listen
to the music. I used to worship record covers when I was younger
because they are absolutely something that is not 'logical',
they just affect you emotionally and often you cant say why.
I still don't understand that magic.
Metamatic : I assume (as it followed the show at the Roundhouse)
that you were already familiar with some of the tracks on the
Interplay
album. Did working on them in rehearsals for that show help you
to create the accompanying artwork?
Jonathan
: The excellent Karbon VJ'ed for The Maths tracks at the Roundhouse
but I attended the rehearsals and seeing the band perform the
songs was great to understand how the music was created when
I got to design the cover. There were immense technical difficulties
with the use all of the analogue synth stuff on stage, physically
it is different to making stuff on the computer, you have to
turn a dial to change a sound, and if you find something you
like, then you can't just save it as a preset. Time has also
individualised these mass-produced synths, these once-gleaming
examples of technology were now held together with sellotape
and had the dirt of a hundred hands on them, that feeling went
into the design and especially into the video for 'Interplay'
I did later.
On the inner sleeve are some images of the Kray computers which
were at NASA. First reason to use these was the sheer size of
them and what they could do in relation to what is possible today
on a something like a mobile phone. It's the same with the old
synthesisers, they were at the cutting edge of music at the time
(I think John has often mentioned how liberating it was when
synthesisers first came into pop music) and much more is now
possible on a laptop. There is also the obvious link to the word
'maths', and the constant processing of numbers that they did
to calculate amazing things such as man landing on the moon,
that is the power of mathematics, when it reaches that level
it almost becomes mystical. The man landing on the moon was a
wonderful poetic moment for humanity, but wouldn't have happened
without the basis of hard science and calculation. There something
similar happens with music, you can structure it quite mathematically
or theoretically but in the end it is an poetic reaction which
gives it the resonance. Finally of course these machines look
quite ominous, as though they had the potential to make decisions
without our consent.
Metamatic : It's an incredibly bold and striking image. What
informed that choice of image for the front cover of Interplay?
Jonathan
: The use of the Venn diagram of it is all about the idea of
'interplay', that John, Benge, all of the other people who worked
on this project brought part of themselves to it and created
something new. A very simple symbol of what was different about
this project compared with some of the other albums that John
has released. I do realise that this image has been used a lot
before, but here it was a kind of collage, taking that symbol
that had meaning and appropriating it for the cover.
I think it was the third round of roughs and John and Benge picked
up on the Venn diagram immediately. To be honest, I wasn't sure
at first, because it was so simple, but I can see now that it
absolutely has the right references for the project and was a
very appropriate symbol for the project.
Metamatic : Was there a rationale to the colours chosen and their
position within the cover image?
Jonathan
: Well the design was also informed by things like old animations
on TV, channel idents, such as the ATV in the 70s and also the
use of the basic printing colours, cyan, yellow, magenta, black
in a lot of late 20th century printing. The main basis is the
sort of diagrams you would see when you were younger in school
text books, specifically ones about colour theory of light or
how full colour TV images are made. So it uses that kind of colour
palette.
Metamatic : What led to your getting approached to VJ with Karborn
at the Roundhouse?
Jonathan
: Er... I asked if I could VJ with him when I met him at my studio
(if you don't ask you don't get!) as it was something I had being
doing for a while and felt I had something different to offer
in that area, my VJ work is typography centred and therefore
quite unusual (as well as being labour intensive. I knew John
was doing some stuff from 'Metamatic' in the concerts and I felt
I understood the album enough to get the imagery right for it. |
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I
have learnt that the best work you do is done because you are
enthusiastic about the subject and I knew I would work my heart
out to do some stuff for that album I was very conscious though
of not wanting to get in the way of Karborn the other VJ because
I love what he does and he has of course a very strong relationship
with John, so it was really important that he was OK with it. |
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He's also really
generous guy, and was really supportive. So it was a pleasure
working with him.
Personally I started to VJ because I wanted to get away from
spending days and days working on one design. With VJ-ing you
have to mix live, you have to grab the moment. Very different
from when you work on a piece of typography or a typeface as
it can take months, so it was the perfect antidote to that.
Metamatic : How would you describe the rehearsals for the Roundhouse
show?
Jonathan
: I think 'chaos' would be too nice a word for my preparation,
I had lots of problems with the equipment. I remember in the
final rehearsal on the day before the concert my computer crashed
and for ten minutes there was just a black screen, so I was really
worried that this was going to happen in the actual concert.
Also I decided that I didn't have enough animations, so after
rehearsing I went back and worked all night on more. It's a bit
silly because you need to keep these things in perspective. people
were coming to see John and not me, and the unplanned factor
was the reason I wanted to be part of it in the first place.
So I became quite relaxed about it after that and it was a really
great experience. The rest of the musicians were fantastically
supportive too.
Metamatic : The striking imagery used in the videos you created
for This
City,
Burning
Car
and He's
a Liquid
seem incredibly familiar - and yet they were all premiered at
the Roundhouse.
They fit perfectly with the atmosphere created by the songs.
How did you come across all of that footage?
Jonathan
: I had lived the songs from the 'Metamatic' album myriad times
in my life, listened to them a million times on headphones walking
through many cities. Met thousand of individuals that could be
The Quiet Man, entered a hundred concrete derelict public buildings
evoking their atmosphere. Walked through many corporate offices
full of people the songs are populated with, departed from empty
airports full of its melancholy feelings. I do think these VJ
pieces shows that I know the songs well. The imagery comes from
many sources. A lot of the animation was done specifically for
each song which means I was working for several weeks before
the show.
The other stuff the old film footage was from various archives
where people have released films for free to use as people wish.
I did keep in mind what John says about each song being a movie,
and his fascination with the narratives and imagery in old films,
so a lot of the typography is using that kind of visual language.
I do have a big knowledge of the right typefaces to use in an
appropriate situation, so I immediately knew what was right,
for instance Corvinus and Profil were used for fake film titles
for 'This City', Eurostile for 'Plaza' and as an homage to designer
Malcolm Garrett who designed the 'Metamatic' album cover, I used
Nodern No. 20 for 'No-One Driving', which is the font used on
it. The 'Burning Car' stuff was a little different, it was done
specifically in an open source 3D animation called 'processing'.
I wanted to keep away from more obvious imagery for this song
and restrict it to typography.
Metamatic : Tell us about the Interplay [LINK]
video you did and the other VJ works for the Maths
music, they seem very different to the Metamatic
VJ works.
Jonathan
: It was similar to the reasons for the cover looking different,
but I did in particular want to explore that area more in film,
so for instance there is the direct influence of Saul Bass' film
titles on the VJ works. Also I wanted to take what John and Benge
had done with analogue synths into the visual realm. This idea
of these machines producing something quite different to contemporary
digital techniques. So a lot of it, the 'Interplay' video in
particular, was done using analogue video technology. It is actually
very difficult to get hold of that stuff as most of it is not
working and the people who do have it tend to just do their own
thing. However after several months of hassling various people,
I met a guy called Chris King who has a good technical and creative
knowledge of what is possible and we worked on some stuff that
I used. If you look at the 'Interplay' video there are colours,
shapes, imperfections that just would not have happened if it
were done purely digitally. I hope it's very much in sympathy
with the music.
Metamatic : Do you have any future projects planned with John?
Jonathan
: I do want to explore 'The Quiet Man' in a form different to
what John has done so far, integrating it more with typography
rather than it being just pure text and more into a three dimensional
area. However, it's John's original creation so he has to be
comfortable with it. He is the main driving force as to what
projects get given the go-ahead, and that is as it should be. |
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| Part two of this
exclusive interview will explore some of the other artwork created
with John,
as well as Jonathan's
highly anticipated project Fragile Self
[LINK] |
| To watch an interview
with Jonathan
Barnbrook
where he talks about the record sleeves which have influenced
him (including Slow
Motion,
Endlessly
and Stars
On Fire)
as well as his album design work with David Bowie
- point your browser at YouTube [LINK] |
| For more information
on Jonathan
Barnbrook
- point your browser at his comprehensive website [LINK]
where you can also find a very detailed interview where he discusses
other aspects of his career, including his work with David
Bowie
and Damian
Hirst
[LINK] |
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