Behind The Artwork: Call Me King - The Writer And The Written (2018)

There is a story hidden in the music we've written, and for The Writer and The Written, I drew direct inspiration from that story. Much of the story centers around an antagonist that hides behind the scenes, using the media to bring about events and influence the masses to his bidding. I wanted to use ink dropeed in water and wispy smoke to represent the elusiveness of this character and his ties to media. The triangles are representative of the three major players in the story; the protagonist, the ones he believes to be his enemy, and the true enemy playing the part of the protagonists friend, guiding him toward his goals.

The lyric book for The Writer and The Written reflects the antagonists most powerful tool. The lyrics were written out similar to newspaper articles, complete with a typewriter style font. The background of the lyric book syombolizes the fluidity of these stories, and how they can be willed to mean many things depending on how they are presented and percieved.

Overall, I kept the art for this release somewhat minimalistic. The songs we wrote are dense, both lyrically and sonically, so I wanted to contrast that with somewhat simplistic art. I've also always been attracted to the hard contrast between geometric and organic shapes, and using the hard lines of the triangles over the fluid shape of smoke and ink was aesthetically pleasing to me.

Ultimately, I believe the "meaning" behind both the art and the music is up to the viewer/listener. The meaning that they derive from our art will stay with them easier than any projected meaning we could give them, and I want our art to be as meaningful to those who consume it as it can be. Interpretation is as fluid as the smoke on this art, and can change from day to day, so any meaning that I give can be changed at any time. That malleability is one of my favorite things about creating art in any form.