As we sing on our new album, we are The Armoires. Which is to say that we are a musical artist, but we – Christina and myself, Rex, the singer-songwriters – also have a day job as the co-founders and pretty much the entire staff of Big Stir Records. And that means we live our lives at the intersection of art and commerce. The funny thing is, the more we observe and refine our take on modern music promotion, the more we come to feel that the best and most appealing form of promotion is... art. In a super-saturated market of new indie music, “hype” is alienating at best. Art... engages.
As a band, we had all of this in mind at even the earliest stages of working on our new album Octoberland. It was natural outgrowth of the new world-building approach we took in the songwriting: as Octoberland, the fictional place, started to take on its own identity replete with recurring imagery, a loose cast of characters, and above all, a vibe, we started to wonder what it would like, and what aesthetic that would impose on the version of The Armoires who were creating it.
Rex and Christina recreate the Octoberland cover art in the attire they wore when modeling for it. We call this shot “Octoberlandception”, but it would be fair to call it a manifestation of the Ouroboros itself
And we're in the era where most of the “promotion” for an album occurs before it's even released, at which point it's considered basically done. The “waterfall” of singles demanded by streaming services has inverted the timeline of supporting a release, and as disorienting as that is, it's a fact of the industry and there to be reckoned with. We determined to do so creatively and thoughtfully, setting an aesthetic that would reveal itself over the course of ten months, from the release of the first single “Music & Animals” in January, 2023 through the street date for the album in (naturally) October of this year. Our very small crew, which started with the two of us, producer Michael Simmons (who was deeply immersed in the musical side of the work in progress, and is a graphics wizard as well) and my daughter Ridley Broome, a veteran of art design for the label at 21 years of age and a consummate, thoughtful world-builder in her own right, had a long-term, nonstop task ahead of us. What follows is an abbreviated version of the hypothetical concept art coffee table book of The Art Of Octoberland, something that we – and Ridley – would most certainly enjoy even if we had nothing to do with the project at hand.
This is Zagreus. Invented by Ridley as a fictional triplet to Christina's “twin Maine coons, soft and dark as the midnight skies” so as not to show favoritism to either one. Yes, this is really how we are.
Ridley and Rex with Congnac Girl, more properly “Cognac Bisquit” by Alphonse Mucha, c. 1899, in the slightly discolored form that set the “copper and teal” color pallet for a year in the lives of The Armoires
In many ways, it started with the Cognac Girl. Christina, Simmons and I had been kicking around the idea of a new logo and a new overall look for The Armoires (it had been paisley and platinum blonde since the early days) for what felt like a new era defined by the new songs. There was something antique or at least non-modern in the songs, drenched as they are in mythical, folkloric and somewhat witchy imagery (omens, cats, ravens and snakes abound, and the titular month's multiple mentions lend an Autumnal cast to it all). The process of looking to craft a new logo kept pulling us toward Art Nouveau, and the final rebranding was a bespoke contortion of a Nouveau-inspired font called Plesantha engineered by Simmons. But the key to it all was hanging right next to the bathroom in my apartment in Highland Park.
When I broached the subject to Ridley of taking on her biggest-by-far design project, one that was going to involve executing at least five major, thematically-linked pieces over a year's time including one 12” LP cover, I wanted to make sure it would be in a style she'd enjoy working for that long. She'd been enthusiastically following the demo-writing process and knew the songs (including the one in which her name prominently features, “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse) and had her own take on the vibes. She'd already been thinking Nouveau, too, shot through with some inevitable-for-Zoomers anime-adjacent design cues, and she quickly created an inspiration board on Pinterest that captured it perfectly. In addition to the high detail level that leant the style so much texture, it was the typically limited color pallet that was speaking to us, usually no more than two tones per piece. The piece that had been hanging on our wall since we'd moved a couple years before – we're not quite sure where it came from! – became the singular touchstone.
Aphonse Mucha, 1906–1939, who bears some responsibility for everything that follows
We'd learn this was a piece by Alphonse Mucha, an ad for Cognac Bisquit, and its tones were essentially teal and copper. (We would later learn that most prints of the work were earthier, with more natural greens and browns, but “our” version, which skewed ever so slightly new wave, was the one that stuck). Christina and I had the idea that our own look needed to align itself with the design direction, so we committed to the bit... gone was the blonde, as I dyed my hair to various shades of teal and aqua and Christina went to a shade of auburn that's as close to copper as you can get. Although we'd be a little more limited in our choice of colors, the paisley would stay– the intricacy of the pattern and its association with '60s Nouveau-inspired concert posters was a solid connection – but everything else was about to get a bit more bucolic, albeit in a new wave-informed kind of way.
Music & Animals” single cover art, Ridley Broome, December 2023
Ridley's first piece was the cover art for the “Music & Animals” single. It was, to be honest, striking enough to have been the album sleeve itself (and ultimately did serve as the basis for the back cover). Already drawing on the lyrics from the song, and across the album, the two black cats brought the witchiness to the fore, the background and text rolled out the Nouveau vibe, and the mandolin... well, music needed to be represented here, but we'd all agreed that we wanted to stay away from rock-and-roll iconography as much as possible in presenting this little world. We're just kind of sick of it in our little guitar pop world. It would inevitable creep in via the videos, but that's okay... it was equally important that we weren't presenting a strict period look, since the album is intentionally a bit untethered in time.
The fun thing about the rollout of “Music & Animals” was knowing, as the general public did not, that it wasn't just a one-off but the start of a slow reveal. By the time the single was out, Ridley was already working on the cover art for the next one, the much more assertive “We Absolutely Mean It”. Fittingly she went for a much more aggressive color pallet of vibrant reds and yellows, and again drew on the album imagery to create a sort of “corvid phoenix”. The Nouveau panels, borders, line work and title treatments really began to establish a pattern here, and it was just delightful to watch it all unfold.
We Absolutely Mean It” single cover art, Ridley Broome, April 2024
At this point, things really accelerated as we worked ahead to make sure everything that needed to happen between the April release of the second single and the street date for vinyl would actually happen. It was most certainly time to start rolling out videos, we were running behind in our plans for new and thematically related press photos, and the manufacturing lead time for the Vinyl edition was already looming. The video for “We Absolutely Mean It” was the first thing to miraculously fall into place when Brent Seavers, a terrific solo musician and member of The Decibels, responded to a casual social media request for collaboration on the video front, and in discussing the idea for the clip – essentially wrangled together from over a thousand hand-drawn frames by Seavers and green screen footage of the band with directed AI animation in-betweening – we knew we'd found another perfect collaborator, and that our direction was strong enough to translate (and evolve in new, complememtary directions) in the hands of other talented and empathetic artists. Brent's eye-popping clip takes off from Ridley's specific existing work, imagery from the lyrics to album tracks not to be heard for months, and the general neo-Nouveau directive. It was an eye-popping moment at the time, and bears revisiting now that the record's out and some of the Easter eggs can be spotted in context.
It's hard to recall exactly what happened in which order next, but a lot of ideas started flowing from one side project to another. The dates on the work-in-progress files help a bit: Ridley was working on the cover art for “Here Comes The Song” in March while we were searching for a suitably timeless location for our new press photos. But by the time that cover art – a beautifully eerie cooling down of the color pallet based on the line “the song came to her in a dream like a flabbergasting omen of death” – was delivered, we knew we had a flexible but instantly recognizable visual language developing. I can see from my phone records that we were already cobbling together the ideas and reference material for “the big one”, the album cover art, at that time.
Here Comes The Song” single cover art, Ridley Broome, July 2024
We went back and forth on that for a bit, but ultimately it was decided that we would finish where we began... with Cognac Girl and the color pallet we'd claimed as our own. The original vertical composition was broken up and extended into a square, which provided room for the five members of the band, and over a period of weeks (and using the green screen still standing from the “We Absolutely Mean It” video) we photographed all the band members in an evolving composition that would fill the frame. My middling design skills came into play in tossing the photos together with other little characteristic Mucha elements for Ridley to reference... When she was done with the current single. It's worth noting that while Mucha's work is in the public domain, and he's one of only ten people named in the album credits, every last line of the final composition is Ridley's, including some marvelously subtle details that can be appreciated in this time lapse look at the evolution of the Octoberland sleeve art.
The evolution of the cover art for Octoberland
What's really interesting is that that cover art was only about half finished when we finally did shoot the press photos. But not having landed on a suitable location, and having the foliage-bedecked composition firmly determined, we decided to essentially recreate the vibe in real life. The press shots were taken in Christina's family room, but we'd purchased two large, half-crescent shaped frames which we – in this case with a lot of help and art direct from Larysa -- proceeded to adorn with leaves and branches, some fake but most of them harvested from the citrus and olive trees in her back yard, and place them flanking the fireplace, with an autumnal wreath and a fake raven purchased from the open-all-year store Halloweentown in Burbank completing the scene.
Rex and Larysa on the set for the press photo shoot and the “Here Comes The Song” video
The primary press photo for the Octoberland campaign, photographed by Michael Bulbenko. L-R John M. Borack, drums; Rex Broome, vocals and guitar; Larysa Bulbenko, viola and vocals; Christina Bulbkenko, vocals and keyboards; Clifford Ulrich, bass and vocals )
And books. Books seemed right. It's always been borderline lit-rock with The Armoires. And the books saved our ass, and added the next layer to the visual lore. Time being what it was, and a rather sweet and thematically relevant set having been built for the photo shoot and Michael Bulbenko's practiced eye with a camera already on hand, we made the decision to shoot half of the video for “Here Comes The Song” in that setting, with the candles and fireplace ablaze. (The instruments did come out for this bit, but it was chill – Christina on a toy piano, and Larysa's viola, my Rickenbacker and Cliff's bass all looking rustic enough). We got enough footage for one setup, including all of us looking up from the books we were reading to sing the song, and planned for a second shoot, a woodland exterior lit in stark violets to mirror Ridley's cover art for the single. The scheduling of a brutal summer schedule for the band members and cinematographer alike took that idea off the table, but the storybook nature of the song itself, and the presence of books in the existing footage, suggested an alternative: taking the viewer into book itself. 
Two pages of the book layout created by Rex, using Ridley's art, for the “Here Comes The Song” video)
I was on deck for this one, having the advantage of not just living in the same household as the designer but having an established rapport with my own kid on what kind of contingency art elements might come in handy. I was able to assemble a 12-page, Dr. Suess-meets-Ray Bradbury fairy tale “book” featuring all the lyrics, Noveau-style appointments, and illustrations drawn directly from bits and pieces of Ridley's art for all of the releases past and future. Michael Simmons and Michael Bulbenko were able to sort out how to map the pages onto a CG tome that could open and flip its own pages to match the lyrics as we sang them – and once again elements not yet officially release provided spoilers and easter eggs for keen-eyed viewers. And the illustrative aesthetic continued to take center stage.
Simultaneously with all of this, I was assembling the artwork for the Vinyl and CD editions of the album, and the “storybook” exercise proved to be the guiding light. Our proclivity for lit-rock aside, the crew behind Octoberland was incredibly contained, and the credits list was minimal, so we felt that a text-light, illustration-heavy presentation would be the purest expression of the record (and an especially rewarding one for fans who'd been following the visuals of the unfolding campaign). Of all the Nouveau-inspired fonts we'd been using, the one that became the go-to for readable text was a surprisingly well-constructed free set simply named after Alphonse Mucha himself. The panels on the back cover and inner sleeve revisited Ridley's artwork for the first three single (now looking great at 12” square dimensions).
Octoberland back cover and innersleeve; art by Ridley Broome, layout by Rex Broome)
I recall Simmons saying that the text looked unusually large and design-y – “My name is huge!” -- but my thought was, “Yes, we're used to seeing reams of tiny text on LP sleeves, but does anyone actually enjoy that? We don't have anything more to add, so lets's have the images do the evocative work and keep the words to a minimum, practically ornamentation in and of themselves.” To me, we had a rare opportunity to make the LP look a little more like a satisfying piece of art than a product, and I was happy to take it. I've grown a little impatient with clever retro touches that nod to the history of the LP form, and felt like Octoberland in particular needed to feel like something from before that era, or an alternate timeline altogether.
Octoberland inner sleeve art by Ridley Broome, layout by Rex Broome)
The LP label and the even-better CD surface art featured one more Ridley-generated nod to the lyrical content: the Ouroboros as highlighted in “Ouroboros Blues (Crow Whisperer)”, the iconic snake swallowing its own tale (and now spinning in a circle whenever either format is played). We'd also incorporated an actual snake – Ridley's own corn snake Maple – into both the press photos and the “Here Comes The Song” video. It's a little touch we're really proud of, one of the moments when taking an extra second to be thoughtful about ways to establish or reinforce our unique set of iconography led to things that, if noticed even subconsciously, enriched the whole months-long Octoberland experience.
Octoberland vinyl label designs as submitted, to be printed on “Rose Quartz” vinyl)
The circular Ouroboros, both in its original and floral variants, was also used with the Plesantha logo to create a sort of Armoires sigil that we used liberally on social media posts, as stickers and badges, and in two color variants (inversions of our copper-and-teal color pallet) on new T-shirts. The best of the new shirt designs, though, might be the first... a striking and simplified version of the “Music & Animals” cover art on muted green. (The cover art shirts look quite nice, too.)
Amoires Ouroboros sigil logo)
Armoires T shirt-designs)
In early September, with the album (and its cover art) now announced to the public, we rolled out a daily series of short video vignettes on TikTok and Instagram. These were by far the most casual bits of content we'd fielded, just shot on our phones with no editing, but when Simmons dropped them into the frame of the album art with the Mucha font identifying who's in the clip, we found that just by looking like we now looked, and choosing background of foliage or artwork, the concept was holding. So much visual groundwork had been laid that even these almost trashy clips manage to look considered and manicured. The hard work of our talented and dedicated crew was yielding low-key miracles here.
Sample frames from the Octoberland Daily Dispatch TikTok/Instagram video series)
Also in the late summer runup to the album announcement, Ridley had one more big assignment: the cover art for the final pre-release single, “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse” – obviously a track with a personal connection for her! She looked at this as part of the unfolding story the single releases had told, and a climax in the narrative of sorts, and chose an explosive color pallet to go with the cataclysmic imagery. The song itself is packed with ideas (and story beats) pulled from years of discussion between Ridley and myself about narrative conventions and genre tropes (largely, but not exclusively, as used in animated films and series), so it was a challenge to narrow it down to a single image. The results take the established aesthetic to a new extreme, but are still recognizable as one more part of the whole.
“Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse” single cover art, Ridley Broome, September 2024)
There were already plans to expand the idea in an animated video for the track, with a long-time Big Stir Records collaborator tapped to do the honors with time to spare. But again, circumstances changed and we found ourselves seeking a new collaborator on a locked timetable. Ridley had already sketched out a “character sheet” for the lead characters (“Ridley” and “me”, both recognizable but reframed for an Avatar: The Last Airbender-style story quest) and we'd hatched ideas for the key parts of the narrative that needed to be drawn, when we had to retrench with a new artist.
Ridley's character sheet / concept art for the “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse video)
Fortunately, Larysa was able connect us with a talented animator friend of hers, and immediately upon speaking with Andrew Edwards it was clear we were once again working with someone who “got it”, as it had gone with Brent Seavers but from a younger point of view. Andrew dialed into everything from the Nouveau vibe to Ridley's existing work to the specifics of the song's animation-inspired story beats. The idea here wasn't one of “polished” animation: in the song's metanarrative (that's what it really is), the title characters are engaged in ideating a separate story line, and lines like “character development, character design” and “we haven't worked out the lore” indicate a unfinished world-building work-in-progress. So the art here was not only going to be acceptable in an “unfinished” form, but completely appropriate and maybe even ideal --- storyboards, sketches and animatics, something that also made perfect sense to Andrew. As of this writing, the video for “Ridley & Me” is still about a week away from completion, but we can share some of Andrew's work on it – it's pretty clear that this is yet another step forward for the established Octoberland aesthetic.
“Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse” storyboards, from top
Andrew Edwards: “traipsing through burned out starship hulls”
Andrew Edwards: “paisley's the province of Dad (Rex)”
Andrew Edwards: “the band squads up”
Andrew Edwards: “transformation sequence”
Of course there would be one more conceptual Ouroboros, another artistic feedback loop: like the other videos, “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse” was set to have a live action component as well. That footage was shot while Andrew was still working on the storyboards, but we had a few in hand. Ridley herself, in another meta move, was to appear in the video as “herself”, sketching the ideas that the lyrics put forth. And in order to have her sketches match with Andrew's, she ended up sketching a sketch based on Andrew's sketches based on her sketches. Somehow, this seemed like the inevitable endgame of the back-and-forth design work that went into Octoberland.
Screen shot of Ridley from the “Ridley & Me After The Apocalypse” video shoot)
It's safe to say that there have been more visual “assets” produced for this album than any other that's ever been issued by Big Stir Records. It's also probably valid to say that for all the improvising along the way, it's also been the most focused and coherent set of such material. And the truth is, although a lot of this stuff could be thought of as ancillary or disposable, we're really proud of it, and the incredibly talented team that brought it all to life. Yes, it's unlikely that anyone studiously absorbed every single piece that was fielded... but at the same time, for folks dipping in and out of The Armoires' orbit during the long pre-release period, there was always going to be something new, but also something of a piece with what had been established before. And it'll honestly be a melancholic time when it's all over, when the hair dye fades and dust settles onto what'll enter the musical timeline as “just another album” and the cover art is essentially all that's ever seen again. But it'll all be there to discover, and it deserves a look, we think. It's not just a lot of hard work, it's consistently quality stuff. 
Product shot of the Octoberland LP)
And it's not just talent and time that the likes of Ridley and Simmons, as well as Brent Seavers, Michael Bulbenko and Andrew Edwards and Christina and myself brought to this extended party. It was pursuit of and commitment to a shared vision, even when it seemed not to matter. It was most definitely a form of love. And if you listen to the lyrics on Octoberland, you'll hear that that was what we were writing about and envisioning at the early stages. The “artistocracy” and Octoberland itself, the explicitly self-identified “collective” of The Armoires a creative entity, the “caravan” of like-minded bands in “It's A Good Time To Come Back Down From The Cold”... the thematic thread present on nearly every song that community and collaboration are the antidotes to the rampant and toxic self-involvement that's the key problem in modern culture. We offered up a solution in the music, and for a glorious (if frequently fraught!) year, we lived it on the visual side as well. We'll miss it.
But we'll probably do it all over again. It'll look entirely different, but it'll be the same kind of love. For now, we're settling in to our digs in Octoberland, with some really choice drawings tacked to the wall of our new digs. Visit us when you can!
Screen shot from the “Here Comes The Song” video)
Essential Information
It's Armoires Week in Outsideleft!
More about The Armoires at Big Stir Records, here
