Mugison
Lonely Mountain
(Lifelike 2003)
Format: CD
Designer: Sasi, Kjartan, mugi and Runa

cyclicdefrost.com

by Alex Crowfoot

This is a highly personal and idiosyncratic design that perfectly matches Mugison’s music. This is a complex one to describe, but if you’re pushed from time: Go the sewing machine! Go the crap drawings!. Go recycling! Recycled board is stitched together to from a pocket with a flap, with a booklet on recycled paper is stitched to it inside. The cover: a blurry digital mountain shape with title in black, artist in muted red, both in lower case Helvetica. A scribbled arrow points from the title to the blurred, digital and slightly 3D from of a mountain. Mugison is subtitled “one man band” in awkward handwriting. Jagged clouds and a portion of smiling sun are also hand drawn. The mountain flows onto the back cover and is joined by running stick figures, scribbled arrows, with track listing (in red) and credits (in black) in a mix of typefaces and handwriting. Tear apart the Velcro tab and it’s scribble heaven. Handwriting (some child-like, some adult, a mix of comments, lyrics and credits), doodles, photo booth stupidity, smears, repeated chopped up shapes, lower case Times typesetting, and blurred digital forms collapse across the pages. A nice touch – the booklet centrefold also appears across the spread of the inside cover. The CD is a red circle that repeats the mountain shape in a white line, and mirrors the typography of the cover. A suitable sleeve for the mix of melody, insanity, softness, DSP, electronics, vocals, drums, guitar and whatever else on this extraordinary record.

Alex Crowfoot

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