Making of Solipsistic Artwork – part 1

I want to write about the album cover and answer some questions, who, how, why?

The album cover and artwork of Solipsistic was designed by my good friend Saad Fanari. Saad is an amazing artist, I met Saad at a record store back when I was in Aleppo – Syria, and the first thing I learned about him is that he’s a huge Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd fan, he’s very friendly, funny guy, fun to be with and he’s very passionate about art. I have shared the most exciting trip of my life (so far) with Saad, when we took the bus to Istanbul back in 2002 to see Dream Theater perform live for the first time during their World Tourbulence tour.

Solipsistic - making of the cover
A girl walking down a pathway in a corn field, with the sky in the background as a wallpaper.

When I moved away from Syria, I’ve been disconnected from a lot of my friends, but thanks to Facebook I’m back in touch with them again. Last year Saad launched a website showing most of his work, my first impression when I visited his site was a mix of shock, excitement, nostalgia and goosebumps! I never knew he had such hidden talent. At the time I was in the middle of composing and recording the album, so I immediately asked if he’d like to create the album cover for my project, of course he was thrilled to help.

I had a couple of ideas in my mind for the cover, but before I revealed my ideas I asked Saad to create something related to solipsism as it was going to be the main theme. He came back with a few designs that I really liked a lot, but they were missing something, the “album cover” element.

Solipsistic - making of the cover
A man fishing in the desert
Solipsistic - making of the cover
A very “Falling into Infinity” like design.

So we went back and forth working on different versions and new ideas until I spilled the beans and sent him some sketches I made of the ideas I had in mind. One of them showed an embryo in the mother’s womb, inspired by the classic Stanley Kubrick movie A Space Odyssey: 2001.the fetus doesn’t have an umbilical cord on the blue planet and the universe in the background, all inside a human brain. Unfortunately Saad couldn’t recreate this idea since he had already created a similar cover for another book that was going to be released soon.

Solipsistic - making of the cover
The Embryo without an umbilical cord on the blue planet inside a human brain.

So we had to move to my second idea which showed a person walking down the street. From this person’s point of view everything looked normal, the buildings the trees the people on the street, but from the viewer’s side you’d see that all the buildings are nothing but facades, the people have winding keys on their backs as if they were some kind of automatons, crew working in the far background taking down some buildings and erecting new ones, in short everything else is fake.
So Saad agreed to build on this idea and he did some modifications and added a lot of new elements and tiny details with hidden nuggets (easter eggs) which is something I love about releases and covers.

Maybe I should make another post in the future, illustrating the creation process of the final cover design, as it took us a few weeks to bring it to its final state.

Read Making of Solipsistic Artwork – part 2

Inspiration – The Early Days

It was probably 1990 or 1991 I don’t exactly remember, but I used to help my dad at his photo printing shop and I realized we could use some music there, so he had this vintage National Panasonic cassette player that he used to listen to the radio, National Panasonic Cassette Player I asked him if I could use it to play some music, and he agreed saying “as long as you don’t play it loud”. So now I had the player, I needed some tapes, but where ? how ? who ? I had absolutely no idea what to listen to, the only tape my family had at home that I kind of enjoyed listening to (please don’t laugh) was Boney-M, and I got bored listening to it over and over anyway, and the local Arabic or Armenian music didn’t appeal or interest me at all, no offense but they sound like you’re in the middle of some middle eastern wedding in 1920 and everybody is dancing on your head.

Anyway! One day one of my dad’s friends brought me a tape, it had no case and nothing written on, he said I can keep and listen to it, and so I did ! I kept listening to the single cassette tape I proudly owned. It sounded like different musicians were playing on it, it must have been a compilation I thought. And so months have passed and I kept listening to this mysterious tape, there was one song that I loved! I wish I knew what it was called.

Would’ve been great if we had Shazam or Internet back then!

At some point I wanted to get more tapes and listen to more music, so I made a feeble attempt to pick up some music randomly from a local music store, now I’m not gonna tell you all of the tapes I got, some were pretty embarrassing, but among the tapes were Pet Shop Boys, Aerosmith, Brian Addams, Bon Jovi and The Freddy Mercury Album which was just released. I loved everything I heard , but I have to admit my dad didn’t like all of them specially Aerosmith.

Fast forward a few months, it was 1993 and my friend introduced me to a new band that he had just discovered, we both loved the music, it was Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell we were listening to, it had just been released. So we decided to go down to the local music store and pick up more of their albums, we got The Wall, Dark Side of The Moon and Wish You Were Here. It was a Sunday morning and my dad’s store was closed but I had the keys, and by then I had brought this vintage Denon cassette deck to the store, it had really nice and big speakers and nobody was using it much at home anyway.

Pink Floyd - The WallSo we started playing The Wall and blasted the speakers and it started “So ya, Thought ya, might like to go to the show…” and it suddenly hit me in the face! This was so familiar, how ? and why ? I didn’t understand what was going on until Comfortably Numb started and then it all made sense, I opened my eyes wide and dropped my chin in shock and happiness. It was my favorite song from that mysterious tape!

Later I discovered that the tape was a collection of Pink Floyd and Scorpions songs.

So I decided to start blogging (in disguise)

wordpress-grey-xlHello everyone!

First of all thank you for checking out the blog!

There’s a whole lot going on right now, and of all the things I am busy doing lately, handling the orders, packing, shipping, promoting, doing interviews, sending out promo copies etc… I, out of the blue, decided to start blogging !
Well… it’s not completely out of the blue, since I was thinking where could I post press items, reviews, interviews and such, and wanted to keep them all kind of separate from the main Semantic Saturation website.

So be it! When I have a task in mind I must do it, and I must do it NOW!

This blog will indeed keep you guys up to date to the latest things and projects I’m up to, and it will keep all my ideas in one place. Of course I won’t always post about how good my music is and where to buy blah blah, I’ll try to keep this place more friendly and post about various stuff.

You’re probably wondering why is it called “Blogging in Disguise” ?
Basically I was thinking of modifying one of the track names from the debut album Solipsistic. Starblog, Blogdust, What if We All Blog, Blog of Singularity .. all didn’t sound as good as the track name “#5 Blessing in Disguise” so “Blogging in Disguise” it was.
What do you think ?