The making of the artwork of Narcotica

Techno trance act DFA step out into the digital frontier.
Shot on location in glamorous downtown Heckmondwike.
Like all good techno trance studio rats DFA are more likely to spend money on a Lexicon Reflex reverb unit, rather than the latest Vivienne Westwood outfit, designed to make it look like a gaggle of ferrets have set up home under your skirt. Most of the time DFA members favour the timeless classic appeal of Desert Storm army surplus, cheap, functional but not exactly the cutting-edge of cyber fashion though we do sport the occasional pair of moody Tommy Hilfiger jeans as we wobble about Morrisons. Six years ago when our tunes came out solely on 12 inch vinyl, packaged in Cybersound generic record company sleeves we didn’t have to bother with photographs of the band members. Selling white labels out of the back of a van did not demand any artwork or publicity photographs to accompany the sound.Electronic techno is created by studio rats, boffins armed to the teeth with cubase, samplers and effects units. Why should a computer programmer have to project themselves like David Bowie, Liam Gallagher or The Spice Girls?
When the classic, StrangeCargo albums were released they did not feature a raunchy portrait of William Orbit on the cover; stripped to the waist and smouldering Jim Morrison sexuality. Techno dance fans do not give a f**k what acts look like. Techno is about sound textures and beats, it either works on the dance floor or it doesn’t, end of story. Well do you know what Prana or the Green Nuns of the Revolution look like? I love the work of Hallucinogen but I would not recognise Simon Posford if he came up to me in the street, force fed me acid and hummed the whole of ‘The Lone Deranger’ in my ear. These are, after all, futuristic sounds, generated by aliens who wish to leave this planet without the aid of a flying saucer.
This willfully obscure faceless approach was fine when we were merely releasing 1000 limited edition DJ friendly 12 inch vinyl. Then our small label got bought up by Music for Nations a major who offered us a million pounds to sell out and sign a four album deal, (OK so it wasn’t one million pounds but I can dream). However they didn’t just want a DAT tape of our music they wanted a band to appear on videos and in photographs. Well I’m prepared to play media slut if it means someone will fund my studio costs, so of course we said yes and signed. We were to become a product on the racks of Virgin. HMV and hell, even baked bean tins need a visual package so you can distinguish them from peas on the supermarket shelves.

DFA started life as a scuzzy industrial electro outfit. Our sound developed and eventually we could afford our own computer, DAT recorder and modest cellar studio. ‘The Bunker’. This meant we spent less time giggling and more time producing dubby, techno, trance and have become big in Belgium! In the studio we wear t-shirts and jeans to make ourselves look more interesting, it was logical that we use our computer to help give our photographs maximum impact. Our music is computer generated so why should our image not also be manipulated by the aid of a photoshop programme?
So Here It Is – The DFA step-By-Step De-Mystification guide to image manipulation!

1. First get a camera. The cheap £20 point and shoot (with a built in flash unit) type your mum takes on holiday will do the job. Borrow it and load it with a 36 exposure film.

2. Then all the band get together for the photo shoot. Tell everyone to bring along their favourite outfits. Then all try on lots of clothes. It’s a bit like an Anne Summers lingerie party except you get to keep your clothes on, if you know what I mean. Our outfits were a variety of Army surplus garments that have interesting shapes and patterns that are popular with heavy duty techno heads . No nonsense industrial and military clothing, everyday wear for innercity acid casualties.
3. Once you have decided on the location you can take turns photographing each other.This saves the cost of getting in an expensive professional camera person. We chose to stand against a plain white background in the kitchen of our keyboard players house in Heckmondwike. Not exactly the epicentre of the fashion world or the sort of place that design gurus like Gaultier would chose to launch next seasons ’up market rent boy’ range. Remember with the aid of a computer location is not crucial, you can put yourself in the correct setting on screen later.

4. Once the film has been exposed, take it down to your local ‘Snaps U Like’ processing shop and get the film developed into prints.

5. Take these prints and scan them into a power PC programmed with photoshop. Presto, up come your snaps on screen.

6. Select the best shot of each band member then cut them out on screen and bring them together onto one frame.

7. Now the magic bit. You can also scan in any backdrop you want. This can be a still from Teletubbys, a Jupiter landscape, Niagra Falls, Brookside, wherever your heart desires. Place this backdrop image behind the group members and presto you are all transported to an exotic location without the cost of travel. I made my own backdrops by photographing things around my flat because I am lazy. I photographed my bong, Indian prayer scarves and those paper lamp shades that
have Hindu gods printed on them, the sort you can pick up in your local head shop for £2.

8. You should now have on screen a group composition plus a suitable cosmic backdrop. Then you can tell the computer to change the colour, distort and twirl the image, pull it out of shape, put it into negative, and add weird textures that come with the programme. This will let you create an on screen image so extreme that not even your mum will recognise you in the line up of usual suspects. You can also add typesetting, so you can make up logos, ads and the art work for tour CD sleeve, but more of that in part two.
9. Transfer the finished visual information onto a Syquest disc and take this along to a professional processors who can output the image in print form. Then send your prints to the best hip dance magazine you can think of and hope that you will be immortalised on one of their pages. This will of course insure that you will get openly mocked in your local pub by all your friends who will say things like,”the new CD is fine but you looked like a right divvy on the sleeve”. Ignore these comments and put them down to jealousy.

10. It is important to realise that what you see on screen is not what you get in print form. A computer screen is light, you’re literally painting with light so the colours are very luminous. When your image is reproduced in a magazine you have to realise that this involves a switch to print technology, ie no ink in the world can glow like a telly screen. It would be good if it did, then you’d really stand out on the racks, beyond day-glo.