EXCLUSIVE: Gold Fields' Album Artwork Revealed

Today we are thrilled to reveal the stunning cover art for the long-awaited forthcoming debut album from Gold Fields, Black Sun.

We're not art experts, so thankfully the artists behind the design and the band themselves gave us some time to talk about how it came together and what it all means.

"The artwork for Black Sun was by Sean and Scott Leonard, who are mates of our from home in Ballarat. They are both amazing artists," the band told us. "Sean has a similar thing going called The Black Math and when we saw it, we sort of identified with it immediately... It looked like the way our music sounded.

"So we hit them up and asked if they'd want to collaborate with us on making the visual side to our album. We spent the next few months, while we were writing and recording, going back and forth with Sean and Scott, showing them what we were doing and they would create the art as we were creating the album.

"When we ended up re-recording the whole album in my parents garage, we printed some of the pieces and had the artwork hanging on the walls of our makeshift studio with fairy lights and lamps set up around the room... Sort of made our own little world for us to record in as if we were living inside the artwork..

"It definitely helped us imagine where we were going with the record and I think you can definitely hear that in the album when you listen to it."

As far as how the artwork came about, the Leonard lads took us through it in some detail.

"In mid 2012, we were invited by Gold Fields to create artwork for their debut album Black Sun. Initially we met with the band over a coffee in Melbourne to explore their ideas for the creative direction. The band had a solid idea of the overall feeling they wanted to achieve with the artwork, which provided the foundation for finding a style to best represent that desire.

"The band gave us access to their original recordings (which at that stage were unfinished). Listening to these gave us a personal insight into the music and mood that was evolving. From then on, we began designing pieces that could stand alone as an individual artwork, but when viewed together as a collection told a story. We worked in close collaboration with Gold Fields to shortlist pieces and create some new artworks. Our artwork had to translate across various media including: Album/Single covers, online platforms, apparel, live stage banners, film clips and other promotional material.

"The direction of the artwork evolved along with the album progression. This was an exciting process for us as designers - combining our creative direction to complement that of the band and guiding the project relative to the music that the guys were making.

"The fact that each piece was created using permanent markers and printed photographs made this an exciting and creative project. Although these artworks may seem sporadic or even at times chaotic, each piece was carefully mapped out and each symbol specifically placed. Hand drawing each line and symbol was a hugely rewarding journey culminating in the final product.

"The artwork for the lead single Dark Again (Lights Out) was the first of the visual works released. This piece captures the feel of the art direction as a whole. While the subjects of each piece from the album vary from organic environments and man made infrastructure to people and animals, the reference of symbols and markings run throughout the entire story. The Dark Again artwork encapsulates the initial notion of combining natural environments with darker primitive imagery. Colour was not introduced until the latter stages of the process, which is an indication of the way the creative direction evolved hand in hand with the progression of the music.

"We again merged the presence of life with a darker overtone to deliver the final artwork for the track Ice. This image was used in the booklet and also as a placement print for the bands US tour merchandise. During our first discussions with the band we explored working with this style of removing and adding elements of existing imagery. Humanity, nature, animals and situations would be the underlying themes to our base imagery.  These ideas creatively explored are all set in a familiar, yet totally foreign world.

"We believe that the final product (music and art) combine to deliver the most original outcome possible."

More images taken from the artwork are below.

To view more of the Gold Fields artwork or to see other various works from The Leonard Brothers, visit their website.