Phantasy Sound

Phantasy is a celebrated name in electronic music, releasing ambitious tracks from a varied roster including Erol Alkan, Daniel Avery, and Connan Mockasin 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.

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