Behind The Artwork: Rosen Bridge - Dreamcatcher (2017)

Rosen Bridge released their sophomore EP ‘Dreamcatcher’ on 12 th May, with vocalist Antony Jones stating: “It’s about overcoming obstacles and chasing what your goals are. The artwork represents the journeys that people can take within their own thoughts, without looking like a self-help book cover.” Named after a synonym for worm hole, as a somewhat tongue-in- cheek reference, they class themselves as ‘spiritually driven metal’ - which ultimately boils down to wanting to spread a message of positivity, something often not found in heavy music. Now the band are here to elaborate on the intention and design process behind it’s artwork…

“The artist that designed the cover for our “Dreamcatcher” EP was Jason Roberts over at Victory Over All. Jason is a close friend of ours and used to previously sing in a band that Rowan, Will and Ant used to be a part of. It only took us a few glances through his portfolio to know that he’d do a great job for us. 

To get started, we sent over a list of examples of artwork that we liked and a brief description on what we represent and what we want to get out of it. We talked about what we wanted to achieve as a band and got pretty cosmic talking about the universe, nature and reality, all pretty consistent subject matters of conversation with us. A large part of the instructions we put forward were to do with just making sure that the EP cover sparks inspiration and thought. We made a conscious effort to lead a way from the darkness associated with the metal genre.

A lot of the original images we had sent over were pretty psychedelic and generally to do with the universe and meditation. I’m sure there was some Alex Grey & Miles Johnston inspired stuff in there too. It took a lot of talking as a band to kind of nail down what we were after because we couldn’t really pin down into rough sketch, so really a lot of faith was put into Jay! We were pretty blown away with the early ideas of the cover (a couple of variants are shown) and a lot of our discussions were just dealing with preferences, because I think any one of the sketches could have eventually made the cut. We chose the design we did however, because it invokes and represents thought simultaneously. We wanted to make sure we achieved a good representation of mindfulness and conscious action.”