Behind The Artworks: Gnarwhal – Lucid Machines (2026)

The artwork for Lucid Machines reflects the same tension and atmosphere that runs through the music itself. When we started thinking about visuals for the album, we kept coming back to ideas of consciousness, machinery, and the strange overlap between organic thought and mechanical systems.

The image sits somewhere between dream and circuitry. It suggests a world where technology isn’t just a tool, but something that begins to blur with perception and reality. That concept felt fitting for the record. A lot of the songs on Lucid Machines explore themes of awareness, control, and the uneasy feeling that the systems around us—technological, social, even psychological—are becoming more complex than we fully understand.

 

We commissioned the artwork from illustrator Dylan Davis, whose work we’d admired for quite a while. By coincidence—and a bit of luck—he opened his schedule for commissions right as we were beginning to develop the album visuals. His style immediately felt like the right fit for the world we were trying to build around the record.

 

Ultimately, the cover acts as a visual doorway into Lucid Machines. It doesn’t spell everything out, but it hints at the atmosphere of the album—something dreamlike, something mechanical, and something just slightly off-kilter.

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