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.
Daithí talks about finding the balance between darkness and light with painter David Smith for his new album LOSS.
Daithí: I knew I wanted the cover to reflect that this album was quite different from what I had done before. It needed to feel darker and more desolate, while also keeping a sense of nature and ‘Irishness’.
I stumbled upon David Smith’s Instagram account completely randomly one day, and was blown away by what I was seeing. The art he was creating was so in tune with what the music sounded like, I immediately sent him some of the album tracks, and we met later in Galway. He had returned to Ireland after a long time living in Hong Kong, and we got on very well, he was a fascinating person.
I would play the album while going through David’s work and see which spoke to me at any given time. The work I selected for the cover felt to me like a vista in the west of Ireland in the dead of night, illuminated by a giant moon with a dark tree branch reaching across the scene. I think it resonated with me because it had a mix of loss and recovery, a sense of hope in the dead of night.
David paints his works, so we agreed to use a selection of his paintings as the entire artwork collection for all singles released, and the album itself. It really tied the entire project together in a way that was really magical. David also painted a version of my logo, which we placed at the bottom of the album cover, with no text at all so as not to distract from the artwork.
Words: Jack O’Higgins
