In advance of his Waterfall EP, Evian Christ continues the welcomed trend of producer-designer collaborations with a stand-alone interactive website offering a stream of the EP before the March 17th release date. Taking its starting point from the dark and misty Waterfall cover art and severe typography designed by long-time Evian Christ associate David Rudnick, the site, designed by Eric Hu of Nothing in Common, leans hard into the music's unnerved industrial jitter.
Evian Christ says he wanted the visuals to re-enforce the darkerness in his production. "I hope the design captures a sense of underlying aggression building inside something very serene...kind of like a digital sea storm. The typography is really brutal too. I think it all relates to the music in a pretty literal way." The feeling of storm is conveyed by animated rain drops on the site's surface that make it feel like you are peering out the porthole of a hyperspace pirate ship. The sense of unease is only exacerbated by the gothic-lettered track titles that pulsate in an epileptic digital flicker as the music plays. Although he claims "the site is just meant to be a cool place for people to listen to the music for the first time" the end result is certainly more than that. In the age of the iTunes thumbnail, the visual experience of a record is far less present or satisfying than it used to be. But with projects like Waterfall that manage to think outside the 100 pixel box, we get a brief glimpse into a fascinating future for album art.
Check out the site and stream here.
