Behind The Artworks: Phaeton - Neurogenesis (2025)

Colin came up with the idea of the suspended human brain, awash with eldritch bioelectricity and cybernetic implants. Our concept of “neurogenesis” ties in with all the unsettling modern talk about the singularity, where elitist jerk-futurists are persuading everyone to get jiggy with the A.I. and upload our minds into the Wankersphere.

 

We wanted the album imagery to be dark and moody and wrap around all four panels of the LP’s gatefold sleeve and connect back on itself, but it was a struggle to find a suitably motivated, imaginative artist to bring the concept to life - until Colin found Calgary’s Matt Semenok! His results were impressive and astounding. Matt captured a very real visual balance between the eerie creepiness of H.R. Giger and the surreal washiness of Bill Sienkiewicz. We were damn lucky to find him, and we will trust him with future visual concepts if he can stand to work with us ever again.

 

The artwork’s message is a warning. Technology is exploding across our world at a highly accelerated exponential rate, and human technology always outpaces human psychology, and it’s not always for the better. We’re trying to download 21st-century software into cerebral hard drives that haven’t been updated in over 50,000 years. Hilarity will not ensue.