behind the album art with Countach
This past Sunday was a Couch Day. I love a good Couch Day, I'm on the record about that. Well, this one wasn't an entire Couch Day—the morning was spent dropping friends off at Los Angeles International Airport, and some chores needed doing—but a partial Couch Day was good enough. We watched Planet Earth, quite a bit of it, and I did what I always do when I watch Planet Earth which is scream at it like it's a football game. At one point there were birds whose home had flooded, and they were apparently powerless to help their young get out of the floodwaters, and I was hollering, HELP THE BIRDS! HELP THE BIRDS!
Nature's logic, chaos and beauty makes it an eternal source of artistic inspiration. This leads me to today's blog feature....Countach! This is the latest musical ID of Philadelphia artist Zachary Devereux Fairbrother, whose work I first experienced as part of the "nü jungle, digital hardcore, US grime band" Ghösh. Now Fairbrother is up to plenty of other wild shit as Countach, including the retrofuturistic Mechanical Death Wish Mixtape, which sounds like the soundtrack to a movie set at the Woodstock '99 rave tent.
Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 2, 2019
And now there's Cuttlefish, an EP with two vibey electronic tracks back to back, one more hype ("Acid Cuttlefish") and one so chill ("Ambient Cuttlefish") as to end with the calming sound of ocean waves. The EP is "very loosely inspired" by Fairbrother's "favorite cephalopod." His love for the cuttlefish began after selecting a cuttlefish-themed documentary on YouTube to help him drift off to sleep one night; it ended up being so interesting that he stayed up to watch it again.
"I made some little videos from clipping the documentary, and the [EP] artwork is from a still of one of the loops," he says. "I had the video going through a little glitch box into a tiny RCA television that I was recording the screen of. The loops made the cuttlefish look like they were dancing."
The Countach art is just as hypnotic as the tunes, so I asked Fairbrother about both and got some great intel about YouTube rabbit holes, Radio Shack, and the ol' nature-technology duality...questions and answers below...
[Molly Mary O'Brien] First tell me...what's the coolest thing about cuttlefish??
[Zachary Fairbanks] I am not going to pretend to be an expert on the subject of Cuttlefish, I’ve just seen a couple of documentaries. However, the coolest thing about them is easily their ability to rapidly change and morph colors as a way of camouflage and to hypnotize its prey, like they’re a Pokémon. It’s incredible and there are a few videos out there, most notably from the BBC Planet Earth series, where you can see it—it’s so sci-fi and psychedelic.
They are also very smart but have such a short life span, one to two years. They are born with this innate intelligence. I often wonder what that’s like, only being around for such a short time. What is their perception of time? They must be aware of it in some capacity.
Do you see any connection between the visual vibe of the cuttlefish, and the audio vibe of Countach music?
Not directly, per se. When I made these tracks, I kept falling asleep to this documentary on Cuttlefish that I’m gonna guess is from the early 2000s, I found it on YouTube. I just loved their little tentacles and all the amazing colors they made. I created some video loops, intended for a music video, of them swimming and changing colors from the documentary. I just imagined them dancing along to the tracks with their colors morphing. I was trying to think of visuals for the songs and the dancing Cuttlefish really seemed to fit.
I'm very interested in the glitch box to RCA TV setup. Do you often do these kind of analog image experiments? Would love to hear about any and all visual techniques you use to make art.
Yea! So the artwork for the Cuttlefish EP is from a screenshot of an aforementioned video I was working on. I ultimately didn’t end of up making the video for a few reasons, mostly time and I had to pack up my studio for a period. I also didn’t want to have to wait for everything to be ready to release the songs. With Countach I want to release things pretty steadily and not worry about perfection or the “right time." In my previous groups, releasing things with videos and promos was important. I don’t want to feel burdened by having everything lined up in order to release some songs that by they time they’re out the thrill of creating them is gone.
I suppose it is trying to catch the feeling of just throwing something up online and having people hear it. I realize it’s much harder to put out music now as a small artist, with the algorithm working against you, but I want to do the music for myself first of all and hope some folks find it and dig it.
I saw some video artists on Instagram that used old RCA televisions to create cool visuals for things like title cards. I love the saturated, soft focus of those old TVs. I found a 4-inch color RCA television on eBay, which was cool cause as kid I always loved those tiny TVs at RadioShack. Etsy has a lot of people that make these things called glitch boxes, which are these little devices with knobs that control things like the saturation, and “warping." Basically you can make the video really damaged looking, like a haunted VCR. You play the video from the computer, to the glitch box, manipulate the video, it goes to the TV, then you have another camera capture the video off of the screen. This felt like a more immediate, improvisational way of creating video, more like making music or noise, complete with knob turning.
I’ll have my studio back up and running soon and look forward to getting back to doing more video. Lately, I have been doing a lot of film photography, I love how it’s a surprise when you get film developed. I feel analog equipment, music as well, has a wide margin for error, the mistakes can be cool or desirable, if that makes sense? Of course it’s very easy to fuck up a photo with a film camera, but if you have a basic technique down and take a photo of something ordinary, I find it has just more pizzaz with the film, more texture. This is true with audio too, for instances if you distort tape it has a cool effect, this is harder to do with digital.
The art for Countach releases rocks in general. What would you say is your overarching theme / goal for the art for your music across the board?
Thanks! My friend Gavin Caffrey, did the art for the mixtape, it was hand drawn. He also did some work for my previous band Ghösh. I gave him some references and he just want for it and really killed it.
I always like thinking of visuals and logos for my musical projects. This was very important to Ghösh and to one of my early bands, Lantern.
I think this comes from one of my earliest musical loves, metal. You can’t have a metal band without a logo, its part and parcel. Countach is named after the Lamborghini car, which apparently is slang in Italian for “woah." Ironically, as the project has grown, I find myself being more inspired by nature, such as the Cuttlefish, and I’ve been incorporating field recordings and ambience to my productions.
You found the cuttlefish video while looking for sleep-inducing videos...any other relaxing video recs or favorite YouTube rabbit holes to go down?
Yes of course! Unfortunately, YouTube isn’t what it was 10 years ago with tons of slop these days, and like all the other social platforms it’s impossible to avoid an algorithm, however, if you keep your feed like a garden and trim the weeds you can discover some weird, interesting and unique stuff.
My wife and I have been interested in big waves. This stems from us reading the book The Wave by Susan Casey and watching big wave surfing videos. On YouTube there are quite a few video compilations of ships riding through storms and going through rough seas.
I suppose this may not be the most relaxing subject matter, but I love the videos where the only sound is that of the ships bridge, the waves crashing and rain hitting the windshield. Seeing the vastness of the oceans and the sublime power of the waves, I find oddly comforting, like this was always here and it always will be. Watching videos of boats in the storms has the algorithm recommending me videos of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. These machines are truly sci-fi. The push and pull of technology and nature is a theme for me I guess?! Other than that, I like videos of people driving on wintery roads in Alaska or of train rides through the Rockies.
Do you have a favorite album cover / album art made by other people?
There are so many great album covers but I’ll choose one that’s been with me a long time and might be my most listened to album and that’s the first Black Sabbath record, the self-titled. I bought it on cassette when I was around 14 (I’m 39 now) and wore out the tape. It’s not their heaviest record but it might be their spookiest. It’s before they really committed and fortified their metal sound and has many jazzy, folky and bluesy elements.
There's lots of space and patience throughout the album which makes it feel haunting and the cover perfectly embodies the sound; the mysterious lady in black, (is it a lady, is it Ozzy?), standing in the middle ground amongst the fallen and decayed foliage, stares back with an indecipherable expression. Along with the ominous house in the background and the coolness of the colors chosen when developing the film, it creates such a moody atmosphere and beckon you to pick up the record and put it on.
Thank you Zachary! Go listen to Cuttlefish EP and follow Zachary on IG.
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