Chapter 7: The music industry

Sept 2005 - June 2009

So in 2005 I started my first stint in the music industry! As a young naive recently graduated graphic designer, I was expecting an exciting world of record cover design, free music, gigs and partying! Hmmm… well there was a little bit of that, but the music industry at this time was in crisis. We were at the peak of music piracy - there was no widely used streaming platforms at this point, and physical recorded music sales had plummeted. Therefore cut-backs were happening everywhere, and I was joining the industry at its lowest point in decades.

I started working at Sanctuary Music Group - an independent organisation which dabbled in recorded music (old & new), music management and merchandise. Within their music catalogue - you’d find a bunch of older small labels like Invictus, Castle, and Trojan Records. They looked after lots of older artists who had long careers, and had finished their major label contracts, but still wanted to release music such as Robert Plant, or Keith Emerson. They also had some new albums from Morrissey and Andy Bell.

As the new designer in the marketing & print production team, I was alongside two other existing designers - and I was finding as work came in, it could be quite competitive as to who got the nice projects. I started off doing lots of print adverts for music magazines or event flyers. We’d also always have artwork coming in to check over and format ready for printing - so it might just be adapting stuff into CD templates, or adding legal text and logos. We worked with the print coordinator team, who also handled all the work for Rough Trade - so at least we’d get some nice free samples from them - this is how I discovered Arcade Fire as well as Belle & Sebastian for example.

Other types of work I’d get involved in was restoring or re-working of old artwork for new release - this was common with Trojan projects. The albums I worked on included Dennis Brown, Horace Andy and Eric Donaldson. And then for Castle it was things like Megadeth and Girlschool.

Various Trojan records design projects

Socially it was quite fun, there was still a bar onsite - and we’d often have social drinks on fridays, but during the gdarker days when redundancy was looming, I remember we’d be coming into work, and there was so little work to do, that we’d end up at the pub for hours, just drinking and eating thai food for lunch! At least we were in a nice neighbourhood with plenty of. nice pubs and places to go! I know it doesn’t sound all that bad, but there’s still a feeling of guilt you have in this situation, I’d always rather be busy doing work and getting paid for it.

From pretty early on, I noticed the work seemed to be slowing down, and redundancy was always in the air. It wasn’t long before the first wave of people left, but I survived until a year later, when my turn finally came in late August 2006. I wasn’t really surprised when it happened - knowing the state of the music industry, and then seeing how things continued to operate as if nothing was wrong… The business model was all wrong. Sanctuary did continue for a little while after I left, but eventually was sold and divided up, I understand Universal Music acquired the majority of it.

Ironically it was on my way out of Sanctuary that I managed to get the most interesting freelance piece or work - which was a Trojan Records - Jonny Greenwood reggae compilation album. It was nice to work on for me personally, as Stanley Donwood had made a cover for it, but the rest of the artwork was left to me. I created some black ink spider visuals - very much in the style I’d used in my Rubies poetry book, but obviously with a nod to Stanley’s artwork too.

Thankfully, an opening at EMI Music nearby had come up, and they already had my CV on file, so in Sept 2006, I was immediately from departing Sanctuary I was straight into EMI’s art & production dept. I don’t remember now if I specifically applied or got a tip-off during the Sanctuary redundancies that EMI were looking for someone, but it certainly helped give me confidence and I did well in their interview process. But even going straight into it so quickly, I think a part of me knew there could be the same issues here too - unless they’ve found a way to start monetising recorded music again!?

My job title was Artworker - so I knew again I wasn’t technically going to be able to design album covers from scratch. It was much more frontline artwork this time - so lots of new artist singles & albums coming through like Coldplay, Kylie and Hannah Montana. Lots of limited edition special packaging stuff that was a bit more interesting to work on. And then even things like the NOW Music compilations - which oddly still sold quite well. There was also a lot of promo CDs we produced - mostly for press and radio, so not for resale. One of the guys in the team actually got caught one day selling these promo CDs on eBay and was fired on the spot! I think he’d been doing it from work too - not clever!

Most of the time artwork would be almost in a finished state - so we just had to add legal text, logos and check templates. Other times though some of the smaller labels within EMI might come speak to us & ask for help. The one I’m thinking of in particular was Relentless (really lived up to their name!). They were a nightmare! Always very unorganised, always last minute and never with a very clear brief of what they wanted. I wasted a lot of time trying to help them, with a lot of ideas and concepts being chucked away. The industry was very ego-driven and also many of the musicians wanted to be involved, so it was challenging trying to bring their ideas to life sometimes. Often there was no brief - not even an inkling - but that is tough when you have a blank slate - as you then try guessing what the client wants, sending them idea after idea, and most of the time it’s not what is in their head, but they can’t explain it to you either! They never gave us much access to the artists, which could have saved a lot of time, instead you were stuck with a junior marketing person and Relentless seemed to have a constant turn-over of stressed out, anxious kids who were clearly being exploited, doing long hours and not getting paid much either.

Sometimes I did manage to get some of their projects progressed - for example they had an artist called Justin Nozuka, and I did a few pieces of work for him. Another was Seth Lakeman who I’d often help finish off artwork for - but with most of this work, there was usually a clear starting point that I had to help deliver to print production standard.

One artist I did enjoy working on and helped out on a few releases was Sigur Rós - they would often provide their own photography and handwriting - so it was my job just to piece elements together which I enjoyed doing. The most notable projects probably being Heima (a film documentary DVD release), which was released in a standard and special edition. Working on that special edition got me a trip to Milan - where I visited our specialist packaging printers to do a press-pass. This was quite exciting and nice to get out the office. I still remember, even though it was a work trip for a few days and there wasn’t much to see near the printing warehouse, we got taken out for nice lunches and had some amazing food & wine at our hotel.

But sadly redundancy was always lingering in the air. I survived maybe two rounds of cuts, before I saw an opening after nearly three years, at which point I took the opportunity, and requested voluntary redundancy in 2009. Because of this constant feeling that the whole music industry was going to collapse, and no one was buying much music anymore -and so in 2007, it was no great surprise when a private equity company swooped in to acquire EMI and went through a restructuring programme.

This was a long drawn-out process where many scheduled release projects got cancelled, so the work dried up for most of us, and we even had psychometric tests to see if we were worth keeping or not! I think this alone determined the first culling of staff. This lead to my team being consolidated with another artwork team from a building across the road. To be fair I didn’t know this team existed - but they were the guys who did the artwork for the Virgin Music label, which was technically part of EMI, but had mostly operated independently, up until this point.

Outside of work at this time, one really positive thing that happened in the summer of 2007, I met my girlfriend (now fiancée). She was a singer/songwriter with her twin sister, who had both gone to University with some of the people I’d met whilst working at Sanctuary. Anyway the week after we met, she moved home to Durham, and she remained there whilst I carried on living in London. We went on like that for seven years - long distance, until I finally decided to move up north (that chapter comes later).

Anyway in around 2008, we were hanging out in Newcastle, there had been a free music festival on around the quayside, we’d seen new acts Hercules & Love Affair perform, as well as Does It Offend You Yeah, but then later on, headed into an Italian restaurant for dinner. At one point me and the boyfriend of the other twin sister Mark joking said “oh look, there’s ‘Duffy’!”, as a blonde lady entered the restaurant (We knew she’s performed on a bigger stage during the day, but we’d missed her performance). The girls were excited, and liked her music and thought it would be a good idea to go say hello. They started walking over, and half-way there, turned round with frowns, whilst we laughed. It wasn’t Duffy, we just had seen a blonde lady come in & made a bad joke. We carried on with our meal, and later on another group of people entered the restaurant, and Mark said “Oh hang on, ok the real ‘Duffy’ is here now…” The girls didn’t believe us, but we had to insist it wasn’t a joke this time. Anyway they made no effort, but instead whilst in the toilets, but after that she went in and started speaking to them!

The next thing, they became her professional backing singers and toured the world for a couple of years. It was a nice distraction from the tense atmosphere at work, I saw her performing in London Brixton Academy quite early on, after that show, I remember getting a bit drunk with Mark, and we decided to stay with my girlfriend at their fancy hotel in Leicester Square. The next morning we ordered everything off the breakfast room service menu, it was crazy as they brought in trolleys of all the food & drink - the tour manager was not happy. We sneaked off to work as soon as we were full, but with sore heads. I think I might have tried to take some food with me to give to work colleagues once I got to the office.

Another opportunity came up for Australia - as Duffy was doing a world tour. I had a friend/ex-colleague called Dan in Australia - a guy who came to work with us at EMI for one year. We’d stayed in touch so I asked him if I might be able to come stay with him. Anyway he said yes and I was off on a spontaneous two week holiday which included trips to Sydney Opera House to see Duffy and the girls singing, and then back at my base in Melbourne, I saw them again as part of the V-festival there.

Back at work… after some long tense weeks (some of which I’d disappeared to Australia), the artworkers were moved to a new area of the EMI office and split away from the rest of our print production teams. Virgin art dept were now running the show. They had an art director and two designers who became our managers, but they didn’t really want us there. We had to fight to get any work, and it was very hostile, I think almost to see if we’d leave voluntarily. Initially all I can remember is I’d mentioned being interested in digital - and seeing that as the future - but saying that I was a beginner, and had only done a basic flash animation course. Virgin had a new artist called Alessi’s Ark - and she had drawn some illustrations, which I started bringing to life using Flash animation. I think Alessi’s Ark had been on the books for a while - but like many signed acts, had really suffered during the re-structuring, and some never really had their music released due to cut-backs.

A few notable projects I was able to work on included some artwork for a new single by The Plain White T’s where I had more freedom to come up with a concept of my own, as well as Relentless work which continued to come my way, as did Sigur Rós projects. There was a project involving the singer Jonsi and his boyfriend Alex Somers - they made an album called Riceboy Sleeps - I loved the artwork when I saw it, and Alex used to come in and sit with me, as I’d get it ready for the printers - he had an idea of what he wanted, but technically didn’t quite have the set-up right, so I helped finish that album off in CD & vinyl formats.

The perks were good at EMI - we could order 6 records each month, but there was always free samples about, so you could easily get more than 6 items. I built up a nice little vinyl collection during this period. We had a few opportunities to see live music too - it wasn’t as easy apparently as it used to be, but we did see some shows by artists like Sigur Rós, Badly Drawn Boy, Captain, Kylie, Coldplay and many more. Friends who had come/gone from Sanctuary and EMI were handy contacts too - one of the best last minute gigs I got to see was AC/DC at the 02 Arena. I heard there was a spare ticket left with only hours notice, and had to race across London to get there in time. the tubes all broke down typically en-route, so I had to resurface at embankment. Up top I saw a passenger ferry boat to leave, and made a run for it. I managed to get onboard, but had no cash, so had to keep walking around the deck to avoid ticket inspectors. Arriving by boat on the thames felt pretty cool anyway! After docking by the arena, the ticket guard was manning the exit, so I quickly shuffled by and shoved an old receipt in their hand, and totally got away with it, phew!

Outside work I was also helping my brother’s band out with their artwork from time to time. They started off as The Trend, but after a few years & possible existing band name conflicts renamed themselves to Narration. Their manager’s uncle did some drawings they really loved, so I started off using these to make some artwork. The singer Dan was always quite involved and had his own ideas too. Anyway I supported them a lot, obviously wanting to help my brother succeed - and I like their music too. I’d describe their music before Al joined as their drummer, as a mix of Oasis/Ocean Colour Scene/Bruce Springsteen. But after Al settled in with his heavier drumming, they started developing a heavier rock sound - influenced by Jimmy Eat World, Brand New and Biffy Clyro. They did a lot of shows around London and couple of tours around the UK - even a brief stint across Europe to Paris & Netherlands. It’s shame as they were very talented, and put so much hard work in, but like so many musicians, never broke through and eventually parted ways.

Normally I found I didn’t feel like painting when I was in London - I just seemed to really struggle - think the main issue was space. I had nowhere to make a mess, leave my paints everywhere and the inspiration wasn’t there, possibly affected by the tensions & uncertainty of work. But when I got out, for example a trip to South of France to see the folks - I always started painting again.

There came a point maybe after my second year at EMI, that Terrafirma moved all of us from the office at Brook Green over to High Street Kensington. It was quite a nice office - much more open-planned that the last place, but some of the older staff hated it. It was here that despite the tensions between Virgin & EMI artwork teams remained, but we did at least get seated all back together. It was here that work did start to diversify a bit - there was a new market research team who came seeking our help - I ended up helping to create a series of customer segmentation posters - they were used in presentations by the management to try to identify new ways to re-engage with music fans & consumers. I also started to help with more digital work - I’d been talking about it for a while, but I’d only seen 1-2 other staff really doing stuff, I knew basic HTML and CSS - so was helping to do email newsletters, myspace re-skins & digital banners.

Again it wasn’t until I was on my way out of EMI, that the most notable piece of work came my way. To celebrate Blur’s reunion that summer of 2009 and the Hyde Park reunion shows, EMI wanted to create a new compilation album, and everyone in the design dept wanted to do it. It was initially very competitive within the team, and to be fair loads of great ideas materialised - but I stuck to the brief based on what they wanted, and eventually they picked me to work on it! I had to do a pastiche basically of a beginner’s guide book. I tried to create a new fictional one, but Blur had already seen an African music guide they liked. So in the end I had to borrow this format, but source different images that tied in references to Blur’s history. Anyway it was a strange but good project to go out on, and I got some free tickets to their Hyde Park reunion show to boot.

After leaving EMI in early summer 2009, I had no immediate plans in place for the next job and didn’t really know what I wanted to do next. All I knew is that I felt quite bitter in a way about the music industry and had no desire to ever go back into it. It wasn’t all bad, I met some great people and was fortunate to work on some really amazing releases including some of my favourite bands too. And as a music fan, some of the perks were great. But there were some egos in there that just made it an unpleasant atmosphere at times, and I never wanted to be like that. Sadly more of it was still to come…

Me and my housemates were all parting ways, so I headed over to France, where I stayed for the summer and started to try and figure out where I was going next. At least I knew I could have a good summer break… and I’d start painting again as soon as I got there!