In the beginning, there was a draft for Ryan Gregory Tallman‘s first album for Petcord, Time Lapses Vol. 1 that consisted of concentric circles illustrating the elapsed time intervals. This quite fit to the music, complex drones that form patterns by modifications of their frequency ranges in my opinion. Curiously, when I first listened to the album, a similar impression appeared before my eyes, long before I took a look at the draft. Back in March I created a graphic with a similar theme, somehow supposed to be a cover sometime in the future and both Ryan and I agreed that this image would provide an insight to the music’s characteristics best.

The original graphic, due to the way it came into existence, had its focusing point in the middle, which isn’t the ideal choice for a cover, because for merging image and typography, the Golden Ratio provides the best way of organising space. This may be another parallel to the music:
It is rather trivial to clutter up an image with multiple layers and facets. But the more you take away, the more thoughts have to go into the organisation of space. Therefore I believe that reduction to the essence for the sake of clarity is the most difficult task an artist can be confronted with and maybe this is a task where plug-ins or automation no longer helps. Then you are on your own with your talent (or its absence).