Phantasy Sound

Phantasy is a celebrated name in electronic music, releasing ambitious tracks from a varied roster including Erol Alkan and Daniel Avery for over 17 years. The label has established a distinctive aesthetic for its releases and collateral, elevating each product to the status of an artefact. Since 2022 I have been involved in design projects for Phantasy, striking a balance between continuing to evolve the label's visual material and remaining faithful to its rich history.

Tom Rowlands – We Are Nothing / All Night
Record Packaging & Digital Artwork

For Tom Rowlands' latest solo release (his first outside of The Chemical Brothers since 2013) I set out to reflect the intense, layered energy of the two tracks through a visual language that embraced maximalism, using dense repeating patterns to mirror the music’s frenetic and chaotic qualities.

As the project developed, I began experimenting with isolating and enlarging a single graphic element from an early draft. When scaled up to fill the sleeve, this motif took on a slightly hypnotic quality, aligning more closely with the tracks’ mesmeric rhythms and beats. The final artwork strikes a balance between chaos and clarity: bold and minimal in form, but still reflecting a sense of movement essential to the tracks.

To further root the design in the lineage of experimental electronic music, I sampled the colour palette from an image of The Simeon synthesiser built by Silver Apples, pioneers of the genre and key influences on this release. This subtle reference embeds a sense of musical heritage into the artwork, connecting past innovation to present experimentation.

Video asset for U – Parade / Watchers, adapting music video content to highlight notable reviews of the tracks and simultaneously encourage engagement with the full length music video as well as Phantasy's other social platforms such as YouTube.

Animated asset for the launch of a range of special edition merch, celebrating 20 years of Erol Alkan's iconic Keeps Kids Dancing t-shirt. I used a clipping from a blog post of Alkan's from the time in the background of the asset to appeal to a sense of nostalgia in those who lived through the era, and to generate intrigue for newer fans. This also tapped into the wider context of a resurgence in interest in the indie sleaze scene, highlighting Alkan's pioneering role in it by re-presenting content from the time in an easily digestible socials format that appeals to today's consumers.

Animated asset to promote The Hacker & Endrik Schroeder Project – Puissance 4 / The Voyagers, adapted from existing artwork.

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