Memorex Memories
Album cover, Analog Collage
In 2019, Midwest Collective put out an album called "In Motion" by Scottish chill-synth producer, Memorex Memories. I was fortunate enough to do the cover art for the project using analog collage. The album was warmly received by fans of the synth sub-genre, with a 100 tape run selling out within a week of release. To illustrate its reach, at writing, the track "In Motion" had 229,000 listens on Spotify, “Thanks for Listening” had 143,000 on Soundcloud and “A Way Home” had 43,000 on YouTube.
Tape layout
Inside J-card
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Typical of my design process for album covers, I began with the music itself. I listened to the album on repeat while leafing through my folders and envelopes of precut collage elements, pulling out pieces I felt went well with the theme or style of the music. For me, the music of “chill-synth” -- an ambiguous mix between the subgenres of “chillwave” and “synthwave” -- straddles both past and future, Earth and beyond, and so I feel works well with vintage portrayals of the future, and dated satellite and aerial photography. Finding the diving person tied everything together with reference to the title “In Motion”.
After a few hours of mixing and matching elements and taking pictures of arrangements I felt spoke for the sound, I sent the options over to the head of the label. He went over the choices he liked with Memorex, and they settled on the image at the top, which I agreed worked best both with the sound and the title.
