We’re half-way through our look at the collaborations and inspirations behind the Choice-nominated albums of the year 2020. Dan O’Kelly from Silverbacks talks to us about Fad.
Who did you collaborate with on the cover?
Our good friend Cam F Taylor has done all the Silverbacks artwork since day one. We never intentionally planned on having a visual identity, but his art and ideas are now a very important part of what we think Silverbacks is, who we are, what we are, who we should be, how we should be etc.
How did this come about?
Cam, Kilian and myself are really good friends and go way back. Once Cam went to college he would share really cool doodles and larger art projects he was working on and Kilian would send him on some of our early demos. We always loved his stuff so we roped him to do the early single covers for our few demo releases and we haven’t let go since.
Did you have a definitive idea of how you wanted it to look?
We knew we wanted something colourful. But the ideas just came from looking at the colourful canvas city-scapes that Cam does. He had one in particular that we all loved and he repurposed that for the final vinyl artwork. It was all very painless and easy.
We also wanted Silverbacks written along the top of the record too. I always like when a vinyl is instantly recognisable from the top, it makes crate digging a lot more efficient.
Was there a starting point and criteria or was their free reign?
It’s always very collaborative with Cam. We bombard him with mad and confusing ideas and then he’ll send a few sketches and after two or three attempts we generally find something we’re all happy with. In the case of Fad’s artwork the starting point was more or less something Cam had already finished. So he did and he didn’t have free reign.
“We knew we wanted something colourful. But the ideas just came from looking at the colourful canvas city-scapes that Cam does. He had one in particular that we all loved and he repurposed that for the final vinyl artwork. It was all very painless and easy.”
Does the final artwork align with the aesthetic and sound of the album? What does it say?
Because we’ve had Cam since the beginning our sound has always been connected to his artwork. A lot of the songs on the album are inspired by people in cities, hence the city-scape. Cam’s already working on album two and it’ll be a little more focused on people-scapes.
Favourite Album cover(s)?
Television’s Marquee Moon.
All the Scott Walker albums.
The winner of the Choice Music Awards 2020 will be announced on March 4.
Read out interview with the band here.
