Disclosure Settle Album Cover
Tina Larzelere
The genre of the music is not instantly obvious from the main image, however the digitally edited white faces on the boys could suggest that their music has a digital electronic sound. The distinctive white faces on the image are one of Disclosures recurring motifs, they feature as a part of all of their music videos, several live performances and album covers, it is what makes them instantly recognisable.
We started the Caracal campaign by hunting down a wild Caracal cat to film and photograph for the cover of the album. Eventually finding one in South Oregon a small crew travelled to document the lynx. From the shoot we created the album artwork and promotional footage for the TV commercials.
In early 2015 we were commissioned by Disclosure to design the screen content for their Caracal World Tour. We continued our Art Direction from the album campaign onto the stage with a 17 strong set of custom visuals. Due to the number of featured artists on the album we also produced a number of shoots to film each collaborator to make their presence felt during the live experience. We worked closely with the artists team and lighting designer Will Potts & Okulus to create a show where lighting and video intertwined seamlessly.
In order to create and produce a high quality digipak, it is important to get inspiration from other album covers. After individually analysing five album covers, I need to analyse a further five in order to gather enough inspiration and understanding of album covers within EDM music.
This album cover reflects the title of the album very well. The album is called Propaganda, and featured central to the album cover is a group of people with televisions on their heads attached to chains being held by someones hand. This suggests that we are controlled by the things we see, especially propaganda. The use of chains conveys that there is no escaping it and that we are trapped. The colours used within the album are the same featured in the American flag suggesting that we are dictated and controlled by the government. Placed around the circle is the title of the album along with the artists that remixed the song such as Getter and Dillon Francis. Overall, the content featured on the album cover reflects the title of the album well and reflects the genre of EDM well.
In recent years, dance music's growing mainstream prominence has led to a number of excellent debuts: SBTRKT and Holy Ghost!'s self-titled efforts, Classixx's Hanging Gardens, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs' Trouble, and Katy B's On a Mission, to name a few. These records gained notice for recontextualizing the sounds of dance's various sub-genres-- disco, dubstep, house, and more-- into pop-leaning structures. The latest addition to this list is Settle, the brilliant debut album by Disclosure. The Surrey duo have not only made 2013's best dance record so far-- they've also concocted one of the most assured, confident debuts from any genre in recent memory. That they've done so on a major-label record that's absolutely loaded with guest spots-- these are typically red flags when approaching any dance full-length with crossover potential-- is nothing short of a miracle.
The brothers behind Disclosure, Howard and Guy Lawrence, seem impossibly young considering their talents: Guy is 21, while younger brother Howard just turned 18 a few weeks ago. But they've actually been on the scene for three years, and their artistic growth over that period is impressive. Back in 2010, Disclosure first emerged on the blog circuit's nether regions with "Street Light Chronicle", a slice of competent, indistinct bass music that sounded like what you'd expect from a pair that have cited Burial's Untrue and Joy Orbison's "Hyph Mngo" as their gateways into club fare. With every succeeding release, however, Disclosure rapidly moved away from "Street Light Chronicle"'s weatherbeaten greys towards a smoother, brighter sound. Last year's fantastic remix of Jessie Ware's "Running" greatly increased both artists' profiles; earlier this year, Disclosure's collaboration with AlunaGeorge singer Aluna Francis, "White Noise", rocketed to #2 on the UK Singles chart two weeks after its release. Clearly, they've come a long way in a short time.
A number of tracks from Disclosure's earlier releases would be considered highlights on any debut album. Two of them, "Boiling" and "What's in Your Head", from the enjoyable 2011 EP The Face, are relegated to bonus track status on Settle's deluxe edition. That such strong material didn't make the album proper speaks to its high quality. Over its hour-long runtime, Settle features an masterful sense of pacing, from the jacking propulsion of "When a Fire Starts to Burn" to the album's sweeping closer, "Help Me Lose My Mind". Dance music's long had a fickle relationship with the album format, but Settle's impeccable sequencing leads to an album that begs to be heard in its entirety.
Settle's playful, high-energy attitude is sometimes reminiscent of Remedy, Basement Jaxx's star-making 1999 debut. The duos share divisive tendencies: Jaxx's brash and hyper-active production style rubs some the wrong way, and Disclosure have been called out for their clear debt to established UK dance styles. Specifically, Disclosure have been charged with riding the resurgence of the syncopated, R&B-infused gait of late 1990s/early 2000s 2-step and UK Garage touchstones like MJ Cole's "Sincere" and Hardrive's "Deep Inside"; last month, they released an answer-song remix of 2-step kings Artful Dodger's "Please Don't Turn Me On"-- and this after after UKG veteran El-B offered his own dusty take on "Boiling" late last year, making the inspiration explicit.
The skepticism is understandable, to a point. UK dance culture has long prided itself on pushing things forward, and Disclosure's arrival on the scene-- not to mention bass music's current retro-fixated house excursions-- marks the first time in many years that the freshest dance sounds from across the pond sound a little second-hand. Ultimately though, complaining about young artists reviving sounds that they weren't around to experience the first time around is futile. We're a few years into an era where talented musicians are discovering influences new and old not through direct interaction with scenes but through their computers. And when the execution is this accomplished, it's hard to get too hung up on the source material. Some of Settle's giddiest highlights are clear UKG callbacks-- "Voices" and "You & Me", especially-- but Disclosure refuse to stick to any single genre. They effortlessly spin through romantic house ("Defeated No More", "F For You"), pitch-screwed bass music ("Second Chance"), and raunchy grime-inflected motifs ("Confess to Me"); nothing is off limits, and Settle is all the better for it.
For all its dance trappings, Settle is a pop record first and foremost, one that feels remarkably inclusive. The handful of male-led vocal cuts range from solid (Friendly Fires vocalist Ed MacFarlane's sultry take on "Defeated No More", Jamie Woon's emotive pleading on "January") to showstopping (the indelible, effusive "Latch", Howard Lawrence's surprisingly effective turn on "F for You"), but Settle's array of female voices are the record's nucleus. While a few notable names are used in surprising fashion-- folk-pop singer Lianne La Havas' effusive, bleated samples on "Stimulation", Jessie Ware's muted moves on "Confess to Me"-- the biggest star turns come from up-and-comers like Sasha Keable and London Grammar's Hannah Reid, who shares a co-writing credit on "Help Me Lose My Mind". While listening to Settle, James Blake's 2011 quote about U.S. dubstep's "frat-boy market" came to mind; in 2013, it could be argued that such aggressively chauvinistic attitudes pervade many areas of big-tent dance culture, and it's hard not to hear Settle's wide-reaching accessibility as a potential antidote to the trend.
Skirting dance's more bass-heavy strands, Disclosure take a spare approach to sampling throughout Settle. They lift a few stray sounds from Kelis and Slum Village and, most curiously, motivational speaker and self-proclaimed "hip-hop preacher" Eric Thomas, whose impassioned delivery is featured on the album's intro as well as "When a Fire Starts to Burn". The video for the latter brings the sample to life visually and it turns out to be a strange reflection of its source material. As was recently noted, dance music's history contains frequent intersections, ideological and otherwise, with religion. Much like when dance-pop alchemists Hot Chip released their own devotional to the dancefloor in the form of last year's stellar In Our Heads, Settle's appeal ultimately owes something to its spiritual tinge. Disclosure's unabashed pop sensibilities speak to the notion that music, as with a system of beliefs, can bring a diverse array of people-- the dance nerds and the poptimists, the club denizens and the festival obsessives, the perpetually stylish and the utterly clueless-- together as one. Settle is an album-length articulation of this idea, and it's hard not to believe in that.
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The score to this slasher-flick classic was created by director John Carpenter, inspired by the Italo disco of Giorgio Moroder and synth-rock creepiness of Italian horror-score pioneers Goblin. Although several versions of the cover exist, the one featuring the eyeless stare of Michael Myers is without a doubt the scariest.
Not only did UK brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence write, produce and mix their stellar debut album, the pair also created the album art. By simply doodling some eyeballs over a photo of the pair as children, they turned the image from cherubic cute to something that reminds us of the twin girls from The Exorcist.
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