apple tree

Apple Tree is my eighth album. Released in 2022, it was written over several years as is typical of my music.

The title was inspired by a housewarming gift. The song 'Apple Tree' is an ode to my daughter who was living in London at the time.

The nine songs on the album have been likened by musician friends to Roger Waters, Robert Forster, late period Reels. Mojave 3 was another name mentioned, new to me.

Apple Tree's cover art happened like this.

I had been using a particular shade of red for some time for my brand company website. Then a straw gold colour too, for a couple of my music projects. Finally, a cornflower blue – that I had grown fond of using as a tag for family files on the server.

When I was designing the artwork for the album, it occurred to me that these three colours (plus black) are similar to the essential four colour process – the CMYK printing colours of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black.

I decided to experiment. With a discipline of constructing my image using squares of only these four similar colours – in any layered combination of only 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%. In doing so, any of the greens, pinks, oranges, purples or browns are a transparent, mathematical combination of the four base colours and percentages.

It took some time, working with a Photoshop standard grid of 2000 pixels square and a guide layout of twenty columns and rows. Adding and subtracting tones and layers to achieve the final design.

I was pleased with the result. But something else happened along the way. As someone who had always shied away from multi-colour brand palettes, this road of discovery led me to a context and reason for an inexhaustible range of colours that remain on brand – an evergreen palette across bands and brands – the two sides of my creative life.