The Choice Music Awards is an annual celebration of the best Irish albums. We delve a little deeper to discover the story behind the album artwork chosen by some of the contenders and its relationship to the music in question.
Jafaris explains how he and his videographer Nathan Barlow depicted his inner struggles in a visually engaging and innovative manner on the cover for Stride.
Jafaris: I really just wanted the cover art for the album to be striking from first glance. We didn’t have many different ideas, I had one idea before the final one and it was extremely basic and predictable. I literally reiterated the word stride.
The cover stemmed from myself and my videographer Nathan Barlow just chilling in his house. A couple of things that day for some reason conjured up the image of thread/string material. Then Nathan suggested being wrapped in thread that’s attached to the ceiling.
Initially we were gonna write the album track list on the thread but then I decided I’d like to write some lyrics from the album.
The image is basically me being wrapped up and consumed by my thoughts, music, relationships, mental and spiritual struggles. All of which is presented in the title track “Stride.”
The words written on the thread were plucked from this song.
Words: Jack O’Higgins
