Hand-Stitched Book

Once i've learnt how to hand-stitch proper notebooks, i started using my skill on a very nice collaboration project. We made a book with a poet called Platon Lliv (i've made another book with his poems in December) and an artist called Maiorov, who participated in some cover designs for Jozik records. We all were really happy with how this project turned out. The watercolor paintings went perfectly well with poems and i found a really nice carton for the cover, which added to the atmosphere of the book.

December Batch Out on Jozik Records

Yesterday was a really busy day. We have released a new batch of tapes on Jozik records. The day of release is always really busy and i have to spend all day in front of the computer processing images, writing blogposts and newsletters, creating PayPal buttons and so on. Lots of work. But we finally have the tapes out and we are happy :)

This time i designed the artwork for only one of the tapes. The other two were designed by our good artist friends Maiorov and Anya Kuts. Maiorov made hand made carton boxes with a beautiful drawing of his and Anya designed a lovely insert (the green one) to stick inside our new poly boxes.

I decided not to do too much hand made stuff this time, so i also designed an insert to fit into poly box for a great tape by Brian Green. I based the whole thing on a drawing inspired by my new book of Indian ornaments.

Wind in Willows / St. Atom HRT605 split packaging

Here is the last release that came out on Jozik this summer. For this one, the paintings were done by another artist, Helder Coelho Dias, a friend of one of the musicians. We were not acquainted with Helder's work before, so we didn't really know what to expect. But once we saw the paintings, we loved them.

There is a separate painting for each side of the box (one painting per musician), and there are matching paintings for each side of the tape itself.

All i had to do was to cut out the boxes, print out the stickers and attach them to the boxes and tapes. Well, i also had to design the inner sticker with the info, but there's nothing to design there really :)

You can check the description and sounds at Jozik records.

My photo on the website

Our friends Ivan and Anya of Full of Nothing have made a new website for their music project Love Cult. They used my photograph for the background.

I love how every website or page or anything they do looks so simple and minimalistic and so beautiful at the same time.

I have had many things lately to blog about, but my friend's wedding it tonight and there have been so many preparations going on. Those preparations added to loads of school work i have at the moment resulted in no time to write here. But i promise i will catch up as soon as i can.

Glina "Spiritual safety"

A new cassette is out on Jozik records. 

Glina from St.Petersburg with their 50-minute album called "spiritual safety". Check Jozik for description and preview and here i will tell you about the design.

In the very beginning we had an idea of making an insert out of white paper with a black and white drawing on it, which would be differently painted with watercolor on each cassette separately. And that's what we actually ended up with, but we also got a nice new experience.

I was taking so long time to come up with a drawing. I kept sketching animals, plants and other things and nothing valuable came out. I am not so good in drawing, really. One day i was checking a blog of one artist i'm following and realized, that this guy's drawings are exactly what i'm looking for. He is an artists from Murmansk, his blog is called Maiorov-DIY, check his drawings and other things he makes, i really like them.

So i contacted him and he was happy to participate, and the next day i got this cute cockroach. The day after i got another drawing with many little cockroaches. I was supposed to choose one, but they were so pretty that i decided to use them both, one on the outer part of the insert and another one inside.

After i got the drawings, i placed them and all the needed text in places, printed the inserts on greyish paper, cut them out and then the most fun part began. I painted each of them differently with watercolor, as we planned. As i already mentioned in previous posts, i love painting with watercolor, so i had lots of fun painting these inserts. I still have a bit less than a half to paint.

This was the first time we collaborated with an artist this way. The previous release was completely done by Diana Vishnevskaya, but this time we worked together, and i really liked it this way.

Thanks to Maiorov and Glina for amazingly looking and sounding release!

Kutomo / Bedroom Bear split and a new site for Jozik

Ok, let's say I had a month holiday from blogging...

January has been very lazy and relaxed in the beginning and very busy in the end. But i am back to my blog now and first of all i would like to present a new release on Jozik records. It is a split cassette of Finland's Kutomo and Russia's Bedroom Bear:

This time the artwork has been done by Diana Vishnevskaya, an excellent artist from St. Petersburg. Check her drawings and photography here:  http://cargocollective.com/dianavishnevskaya

I am amazed by the whole release. The package is super stylish and the music is beautiful. We think it's the best release on Jozik so far.

You can find more details about the cassette on our new site. That's actually another thing i wanted to share.

One day Myspace got so ugly, i could not believe it. So i tried to come up with something i could make fast (i am still planning to make an actual website, but it will take me lots of time). So i decided to make a Jozik site right here, on Blogger, cause i am so used to it.

One evening was enough for it, and i am quite happy with the result. It looks pretty and actually has all the functions we need.

Installation for a poetry evening

Last Friday we took part in a poetry evening by exhibiting an installation. We did the installation together with a group of photographers called PMAM as well as a group of poets. We did the music for the installation as Banana Pill and i also took part in video editing.

I made a video preview of the loop for you to check out:

We made two videos like this and originally they were supposed to be projected on two sides of a white cube-shaped box with a sound coming from inside the box (two loop-stations connected to a small combo were placed inside the box). The box was placed in a dark room, next to the room where poets were reading their poems to visitors. Unfortunately, we had problems with projectors, so we had to keep only one video on one side of the box. It looked good anyway, but i didn't manage to take a good video of the whole installation.

Hopefully we get to do more things with those people. I really like when artists from different genres work together and i enjoy the results.