Behind The Artworks: Disconnected Souls - Fragments Of Consciousness (2023)

Felix King: Simon Atkinson returned to work with us on this artwork. He's been fantastic in the past, so we went right back to him for an abstract, clean, digital composition. I cannot recommend finding a designer whose process works for your band!

 

We were looking for something reflecting the title, of the conscious fragmenting and breaking away from the material body. We wanted to make the head look rigid, stone-like, with the network of neurons storm-like and electric. There are some suggestions of circuitry in there, too, since electronic elements are both a big part of our sound, stylistically, and increasingly a near elemental part of the physical world we inhabit.

Fletch has an interest in philosophy, and I (rather more unwillingly, which is a story of its own) got pretty deep into that stuff as a teenager. I think it's apparent in the theme here.

 

It was important for us that the face was ambiguous in identity. Ultimately, I think we've got something fairly so in its perceived sex and, hopefully, race - in artwork featuring cerebral imagery of human heads, often masculine, white western features are treated as the default representative of human kind which is, y'know, not something everyone can see themselves in.

 

Something I don't think gets talked about enough in the excitement of new artwork is the practicality. A lot of time is spent on thinking about how well something will reproduce in print, versus it still needing to work on-screen. I was once told that good typography goes unnoticed, and that rings true - nonetheless, several revisions were dedicated to balancing where the text sits in relation to the edge of the image so it neither looked squished in full nor got lost in the gutters during printing!