Dead Letter Circus On The Lost Art Of Album Artwork

Dead Letter Circus are currently preparing for a national album tour in support of their second full-length album, The Catalyst Fire, playing dates through August and September with support from Closure In Moscow and Sleep Parade.

Kim Benzie, frontman for the Brisbane progressive rock group, took time out to speak to Tone Deaf about the all-important impact of album artwork, discussing the band’s visual synergy with a local visionary, as well as the creation of their powerful album art for The Catalyst Fire, and the international spiritual journey that inspired it.

That moment when you stare into a piece of album artwork, and it perfectly matches the music you are listening to, for me, is a rare occurrence. There are plenty of album covers that are just amazing artwork that you can admire on a wall and get lost in. What I am referring to is when they say the same thing in their separate languages, when the aural and visual sing together.

I’m not claiming at any stage that our band has achieved this, but the story of our quest to try and attain it, is a worthy tale.

For our debut release [2010’s This Is The Warning] I was lucky to stumble across an amazing artist by the name of Cameron Gray. Staring at his art, it clicked that he was telling his stories from the same perspective that I wrote the lyrics from. Fortunately he felt the same way when he heard the music, and shared my ethos about album artwork. We then embarked on an ambitious project of creating a piece of art for every song on the album.

(Artwork for This Is The Warning. Source: Cameron Gray)

The first step in this process was simply Cameron creating a visual impression based on the music and lyrics, which sometimes worked. And failing that, a massive rant by me on the topic of the song, generally got us to the same page. Although it sounds like it was a lot more work, it actually felt more realistic to chase our goal song by song, rather than an attempting to create one piece that spoke for the whole album.

I had no idea that I was on my journey to find the pieces of The Catalyst Fire‘s artwork work when I was on a tiny riverboat winding it’s way through the Amazon river in early 2011. With a small group of lucky people I was on my way to a place called The Temple of the Way of Light to drink the sacred brew of ayahuasca in ceremony with shamans from the Shipibo tribe.

Whilst there I met one of the more remarkable people to have crossed my path, an apprentice shaman and incredible visionary artist by the name of Klara Soukalova. There is no way to describe or experience Klara’s art in words or even a photo, it’s like a language from some advanced alien race.

Klara has been living in the jungle for the past six years, studying and helping her husband build the Temple as a facility for people from the West to experience the mother of all medicines, ayahuasca.

The profit from the Temple is used to help the local tribes in their fight with the oil companies who are systematically and illegally obtaining and poisoning the Amazon rainforest.

These guys are the real deal, 100% dedicated in every aspect of their lives to fighting this fight and are truly inspirational individuals.

Over the course of my stay and many conversations about the bands beliefs and the message in our music, Klara gave me an amazing gift, a set of her symbols for a tattoo I wear now across my chest and arms.

Following my return and the inking of said tattoo, the band began to write the songs for the new album. About halfway through, when the theme of the album became apparent, I couldn’t stop thinking about the connection between what I had felt and learned in the jungle, and the music we were writing. Cameron, our artist, and I had begun discussing the direction for the new artwork, and when I showed him some photographs of Klara’s work he was blown away.

I knew it was a long shot, but I put my feelers out to contact Klara and see if she would be interested in collaborating with us for the album art. Eventually word came back she was keen, but only if it felt right and she could approve the end result. And so began a couple of the most intense months of our lives as art for the The Catalyst Fire created itself through us.

(Artwork for The Catalyst Fire)

The goal was to create a piece of art that anyone from any walk of life could stand in front of and be moved to feel something, and obviously have that feeling match the way the music made you feel when listening. It didn’t happen easily. Every time we tried to force it when someone set a deadline for us, we just couldn’t make it feel right.

Everything from selecting the right symbols, placing them in the correct order in relation to each other, what other imagery could actually sit next to Klara’s and work, the shape of the vine, every single little detail having to be there for a reason with meaning, all surmounted to us creating 102 versions of the piece until finally it felt finished.

We then endured a very anxious wait for word back from Klara if she approved of the final version. The sound of the high five when she said ‘yes’ could possibly have been heard from Brisbane to Peru.

While all of this was going on I was tracking the second half of the album’s vocals and every time I closed my eyes to sing, all I could see was the artwork. So perhaps in a way, this time round the art shaped the music. Whatever the result and whether we achieved the goal set, it sure was an epic journey.

(Liner notes for The Catalyst Fire)