Music for Empty Ears

Funded by the Arts Council and launched in April 2018 by Ergodos Records at the Project Art’s Centre, Music for Empty Ears is Seán Mac Erlaine's 3rd Album. Featuring Norwegian musicians Jan Bang and Eivind Aarset and Irish vocalist Sadhbh Ni Dablaigh.

The final design for Music for Empty Ears ultimately brought us back to the first conversation that was had with musician Seán Mac Erlaine regarding his beautiful album. Having known Seán for some time we found ourselves with a group of friends camping on the beach head at the northern end of one of Wicklow’s most quietly beautiful lakes, Lough Dan.

To pass the time during the day Seán and myself along with some other friends played a game whereby we would each take turns throwing small stones into the still water. While one player would throw a stone and create a ripple the objective for the other three was to try and get their stone as close to the centre of where the first stone had hit the water and to do so before the initial ripples disappeared. Whose stone came closest and thereby won a point was decided by the initial thrower with this responsibility rotating amongst the group until a player had amassed nine points. I would like to remember it as if I had won but I can’t honestly stand over that claim.

We worked with Seán for close to three months after that game developing visual ideas, informed by the core aspects of Seán’s approach to creating his album. Along the way we had conversations concerning all manner of considerations and ideas that we wanted to instil in the album covers artwork. We arrived at various solutions that never seemed quite right for the project. Ultimately we found ourselves at a point where we needed to deliver and further procrastination was not an option. It was at this point that we went back to the game.

Bespoke album cover printed using three spot colours front and one spot colour reverse. Printed on 330gsm box card.