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Jun 27, 2014 Fujiya & Miyagi By David Best

Undercover is our recurring series where we talk to bands about the genesis of one of their album covers. Here, David Best from English band Fujiya & Miyagi talks about the cover of their latest album, Artificial Sweeteners. The band formed in Brighton, England in 2000 and Artificial Sweeteners, their fifth album, is out now via Yep Roc.

We wanted the cover to be really vibrant and also to reflect the themes and feelings we want people to hopefully get from our record. I tried to write “Artificial Sweeteners” in syrup, which was a mess, then sugar, which was less of a mess but a mess nonetheless. We thought of getting sticks of Brighton Rock with our group name and the album title running through it, but thought that might be a little too obvious.

This was followed by trying to melt different colored sweets so they dripped down and made interesting shapes and patterns. I tried melting them but soon realized it wasn’t going to work so I ate them all instead.

Then Anna (my girlfriend and a keen baker of cakes) suggested that I use icing sugar instead. She mixed up the icing sugar for me and I mixed the colors to my requirements and experimented with different consistencies and patterns. It took about three or four goes with about 20 different icing sugar pictures. Once mixed I put the different colored icing at the top of the canvas, then tipped it up so the icing ran down creating the drips. I couldn’t hang about when I was doing this as I didn’t want the drips to drip too much. This was a real trial and error process. I decided on the colors and the order they would appear in and also the length of drips I wanted. I also wanted the colors to blend together in places so I used a sewing needle to make swirls in the icing. Although I had a strong idea of how I wanted the final image to be, there was an element of randomness and spontaneity about it, which was fun. It was the same way we approached writing and recording the record in many ways, which is a nice parallel. One of the problems was that the icing had to be left overnight for it to set. The other was that my three-year-old son, Riley, looked like he wanted to lick them.

The final version was over two canvases as we wanted the album to be gatefold and needed the image to not be too small, as it would lose quality when increased photographically. The two canvases had the same two colors on each end so they could be swapped over but still make a continuous cohesive pattern. If you look at the inner gatefold and compare it to the outer gatefold you can see what I mean.

Once this was done I asked Matthew from the group to photograph them, which he did in a timely and professional manner. We then put it all together with our friend Charlie who designed it with us and sorted out the typefaces etc.

I put the canvases in our studio as we were running out of room at home. On Christmas Eve our studio sprung numerous leaks due to the storms that were battering the U.K. at the time. Luckily none of our synths or other electrical equipment was damaged but due to moisture in the atmosphere the icing sugar liquefied and dripped off the canvases. I had planned to cover them in adhesive or a glaze but didn’t get round to it. I was a little gutted if truth be told as I was quite fond of them. They exist on the album covers though, so they served their purpose.

(www.fujiya-miyagi.co.uk)