CITAZIONE
I can guarantee that if there was anyone to convince you on how a band sounds, it is LA digital collage artist Sonny Kay. An impressive portfolio full of collaborative projects with musicians like The Mars Volta, 311, and Rx Bandits can not solely justify the punch that his vivid, detailed landscapes enforce. His meshing of images layered with dynamic splashes of color and shape in his album artwork put influence and perspective to both the way an album sounds and the overall image of the musicians. The depth of interpretation layered within such beautiful, surrealistic atmospheres is a prime example of how the pure aesthetic of music is continually changing; our thoughts on certain types of music are branching from more and more influences, heightening creativity vastly among all platforms. Kay also shows us this, taking his artistic spin of music as a vocalist, record label owner, and art director as well. He took some time from his busy schedule to answer some questions about some of his visual inspirations, his approach on individual projects, and his ideal place to be surrounded by while creating art.
TBL: Most of your artwork, whether for albums or by itself, obviously is appealing through its vivid, color-driven poise and the multiple images that create a very active scene. What was it about art and design that first influenced you to study it in college and continue with it through all your other music projects? Did your involvement in music influence your desire to do album artwork, vice-versa, or did it all seem to mesh together?
Sonny: I’ve always been obsessed with album cover art, for as long as I can remember. I was given hand-me-down copies of the books Magnetic Storm and Views when I was 10 or 11. Both of them are about the work of Roger Dean, who did all the album art for Yes. So I was aware of the aesthetics of Yes long before I ever heard their music. When I started to develop my own tastes in music I gravitated towards stuff like Bauhaus, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, etc. and, for me anyway, the music of those bands was inseparable from their image, and the atmosphere of their album packaging. From that point on, the music and the art used to sell it were one and the same for me. I’ve never been able to relate to people who just hear some song they like on the radio and become “fans” of the artist. I was much more concerned with the whole picture, so to speak. I became obsessed with the culture of music and art as one experience. So before long music/art eclipsed every other possible interest (sports, for example) and I never outgrew it. When I got into punk and hardcore, eventually playing in bands and stuff, it was all just a progression from that childhood obsession. I never once contributed to a song without some vague idea of what I’d make the record sleeve look like.
TBL: In regards to the album art you do for bands, what inspires you the most in the creative process? The band’s sound, lyrics, image, personality?
Sonny: Every project I do requires a different approach. For example, with Omar’s records, I know him so well and have done so much work for him already that it’s impossible not to factor in all the previous designs, his attitude toward a particular record, etc. In a way, working for him is also creating kind of an ongoing dialogue not only between he and myself, but between him and his audience. It’s a very unique situation. On the other hand, when a band commissions work from me, any number of factors might come into play. Sometimes I’m given music to help inspire the vision for the art, sometimes I get no music at all. Other times, I’m given very specific ideas to essentially illustrate. But all those things you mention – lyrics, personalities, etc. – all factor in somehow or another. The more informed I am on a band or artist, the more I feel like I can dial-in what I’m doing on their behalf. Wherever possible it’s helpful to actually sit down and get to know them personally.
TBL: The multiple images you usually construct in your album landscapes seem to portray some underlying conceptual or metaphorical meaning to the band’s album. Does each image represent some type of puzzle piece of the band’s sound/image or is your direction more geared towards random beauty, perhaps for open interpretation? Any examples?
Sonny: Most of the time, they’re constructed stream-of-conscious-ly according to what I’ve found to work with. I have an enormous bank of images to choose from, so obviously there is some design in the process of deciding what exactly to use. But as often as not I will choose images based on how well they work with one another, how consistent the perceived light source is, that kind of thing. I do enjoy the idea of certain elements being symbolic of one thing or another, so yes, occasionally things can be interpreted in more of a puzzle-type of scheme. But most of the time, it’s not that rigid and I would always prefer the viewer interpret it in whatever way makes sense to them. Some pieces are definitely more political than others, which I just think is unavoidable in some instances. You can’t really use an image of a soldier brandishing a weapon and separate it from its context entirely. On the other hand, placing an exotic animal in some kind of psychedelic dreamscape really does open up the possibilities for interpreting what it “means”.
TBL: How important is album artwork to a band’s image?
Sonny: In my opinion, it’s essential. But I grew up going to record stores and literally judging a book by its cover. I download music, but I don’t really use itunes to discover new bands, not exclusively anyway. And even if I did find something I liked that way, I’d want to investigate the visual counterpart to what they’re doing. To me, the way a band dresses their records says as much about them as how they dress themselves. Anyone who isn’t presenting themselves and their art as a fully-formed experience probably isn’t something I’m going to be interested in anyway. These people who win on American Idol and sell a billion downloads of a song someone else wrote aren’t catering to the same mentality as a band releasing a gatefold vinyl LP of original material. It’s like when a band wants something designed and can’t tell me the most basic info about what an album is about, or what they were envisioning when they wrote it. How can there not be even the vaguest visual (or conceptual) counterpart to any creative gesture? That makes no sense to me.
TBL: I mention this because on the 311′s recent album “Universal Pulse”, I listened to the whole album without looking at the cover, and I did not quite imagine the psychedelic, bold depictions that the album artwork suggested, but I could imagine that seeing the cover before listening may have geared my attention to certain sounds in favor of what the artwork displayed. Has this idea come across your mind in the process?
Sonny: The 311 thing was definitely out of the ordinary for me. Of course, I was familiar with 311 and their music. Overall it’s much more pop-oriented than the artists I usually get commissioned by. What was unique was that they had a few specific examples of my earlier work in mind when they approached me. They basically knew the style they wanted but were open to my interpretation of the concept itself, which was basically just the title of the album. So it was kind of weird to have the freedom to infuse it with my own choices in terms of specific imagery but still be relatively confined to a style, even it it was a style of my own. I wasn’t given any music to listen to, and I worried that the imagery I came up with would simply not gel with the music. I just did what felt right to me and trusted that things would work out. Fortunately the band loved it. I really don’t know if it’s the same art I would have created if I hadn’t been given the direction I was, but that’s the beauty in working collaboratively, not to mention a useful way of discovering ideas or ways of working you may never have found otherwise.
TBL: Are there any bands that you haven’t worked with already that come out as, “Wow, I could really create some cool stuff with that sound?” If so, who are they?
Sonny: Well, it’s not really the specific sound of a band or record that inspires the work I do, but rather the whole experience – the music, their image, what they’ve released in the past, that sort of thing. There are many, many bands I love who I’d be very pleased to work with. The Horrors come to mind immediately; Tortoise, Muse, Battles, Animal Collective, S.C.U.M., the Dead Weather, Warpaint, Acid Mothers Temple, Bit-Tuner, Radiohead, Flying Lotus, Yeasayer, etc. but these are really just artists I like and respect and whose previous artwork has felt compelling for one reason or another. Working with 311 proved to me that what I do is potentially compatible with anything.
TBL: I know that a lot of Omar Rodriquez Lopez’s music, including his work with The Mars Volta, sides towards more conceptual and deep albums, whether it is with sounds or lyrics. In doing the artwork for a few of his albums, did you feel compelled to have the same approach? Were the projects more collaborative with Omar or were you left on more on your own imagination?
Sonny: Working with Omar covers all ends of the spectrum. There are albums that he has a very specific kind of idea or look in mind for, and others that are completely open to my interpretation of his themes or the music itself. Sometimes one or the other of us will feel like the record needs something especially symbolic or metaphorical, other times it just needs a simple design. Most of the time, he just looks through rough ideas I have and decides which ones belong with which record. We’ve both made a conscious effort to keep the feel of the art varied, and at the same time trying to maintain some sort of continuum throughout the catalog.
TBL: I had read that Rx Bandits had found your work ‘Menegerie’ and wanted to use it for their last album, Mandala (2009). First off, what were your trying to portray in the artwork? Second, did the group ever mention why they liked it so much? I was surprised that the artwork was done before the album because I found it depicting the whole L.A. reggae rock sound extremely accurately.
Sonny: Menagerie was one of my first collages and it developed very slowly over the course of 6 or 9 months, back in 2007. I didn’t set out with any concept in mind. I was collecting the bird images and it occurred to me to assemble some of them into a single composition. At first, the challenge was in making it seem believable – matching the light sources, placing elements side-by-side that seemed to reinforce each others’ believability in terms of it being a single photo. Eventually the mannequin became the sort of anchor that the rest of it was constructed around. Over the weeks that I worked on it, I started to develop this idea (or perhaps more accurately, the possibility was revealed to me) that the birds were a sort of entourage supporting the mannequin figure. Birds, in particular, are so easily anthropomorphized – “parroting” other peoples’ ideas, “chickening out”, wise owls, etc. etc. So the idea just kind of developed from there, that these birds are the silent infrastructure reinforcing the blindfolded, cartoonish version of what people in this country think freedom is. The mannequin started to resemble the statue of liberty before I’d even realized that was happening. So, that was basically it. The RX guys saw a print of it at the Sargent House office one day and just immediately felt like it belonged on the album (Mandala). We never discussed the specifics of it, and I’ve never explained it for anyone as thoroughly as I just did. I guess for whatever reasons it just felt right to them. I agree, the image and the album seem to go hand in hand. I consider that one “a feather in my cap”.
TBL: How was the process of working on the film, The Sentimental Engine Slayer, with Omar? What were the inspirations for your art direction on this project?
Sonny: I’d never worked on a film project before Sentimental. The truth is, it was largely Omar’s vision, even in terms of the production design. So he was the single most inspiring factor, and I simply tried to fill in the blanks. I, along with Sara Gross, was basically responsible for designing and decorating the interior of the house where much of the story takes place. We were given a very limited palette to work with – basically, whatever we could find in the thrift stores of El Paso. Omar wanted to house to feel “futuristic”, so right away we were trying to accomplish a paradox. We did what we could with what we had on hand. It was actually pretty difficult considering we only had about 10 days to get everything done. Thankfully the film looks beautiful thanks to the cinematographer, Michael Rizzi. I never imagined I would find myself gluing thousands of dead bees to a wall in the shape of a cross.
TBL: Is there any place in the world that you would love to surround yourself while creating your art?
Sonny: That’s hard to say. I love Japan like nowhere else I’ve ever been, so pretty much anywhere there would be great, the more remote the better. I’d love to have a glass-walled studio in the middle of a forest, or on a cliff overlooking the ocean, or a vista overlooking a vast stretch of desert. I’ve never been to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or Chichen Itza in Mexico, but I imagine I’d be pretty inspired by both those places. Basically, anywhere outside the clutter and visual/mental pollution of an urban environment would do it for me.
TBL: Future projects?
Sonny: Right now I’m finishing up a couple of projects for Omar, some records as well as some post-production material for his next film, Los Chidos. I’ve also been doing the new Good Old War album for Sargent House, and might do another 311 project as well. I’ve spent most of this year doing design and layout stuff for RLP and Sargent House which gave me a breather from the collage stuff. Having said that, IPMM (ipaintmymind.org) are issuing a new limited-edition print sometime in the next month or so, I’m just wrapping it up for them now. I’d like to jump back into the collage stuff more aggressively this coming year. We’ll see…
