It’ll be a while until A Lullaby Hum… gets pressed up onto vinyl. June or July I think. Before then, though, I wanted to make something to give to everyone who helped make it – either by playing, or by (in whatever way) providing inspiration in the making of it.
I turned 28 while making this record, so this first, completely hand-made edition, will be limited to twenty-eight copies. I always meant to ‘document’ the making of the books we did as Time Travel Opportunists a couple of years ago, because when we started it was hard to find methods of binding that weren’t completely hardcore…like for binding bibles…a method for folks binding small runs on a small scale and no budget; folks that don’t own huge paper slicing machetes.
So here’s some pictures for your eyes to look at, probably with some notes (and also, if you’re the hand-making type, pop some links in the comments…I like handmade stuff (see Sonic Pieces for some of the best))…
1. Nice card. Bought this stuff from Green Door Printmaking Studio in Pear Tree, Derby. Fabriano – hand sewn apparently. Expensive stuff…but gorgeous, and I decided to keep the rough edges as they’re really natural and fibre-y.
2. Aaron made a sketch based on a photo I took from the bottom of Sadlergate in Derby (Cheapside for anyone in the area – just stand outside the disused building that is sometimes used as the No Parking art gallery and look up towards the Guildhall). I used this picture because I walk this way everyday, at all times…it’s a key piece in my mental image of the album as a journey through the city at night. All the covers are hand-inked from a carbon transfer made from a printout of the original sketch that Aaron (pictured, looking proper 1950’s) drew.
3. Turn your kitchen into a print-shop. It’s the only way. Unless you’ve got a print shop.
4. I laid out all the pages in Photoshop, and paginated them manually. Using the ‘centre’ option in the print menu isn’t massively accurate for doing double-sided printing on a non-double-sided printer, but with a few tweaks here and there on a test run I was pretty happy with how everything aligned. The inner pages are printed on my favourite paper – good old off-white Conqueror laid. Get a stanley knife, and cut the shit out of your pile of print, fold each sheet carefully, then stick the detritus in the recycle bin.
5. This is the easiest, securest, and most durable method of thread binding I’ve found so far. Double up your thread through a needle, in through the centre, out through the top, in through the bottom, and out through your centre-hole. Tie up the two ends, snip it off, and you’re done. Emma found this method in a book…I can’t remember which book. It was small and red. I’ll find out what it was called…
I’m using little black cd spongey things to hold the cd-r on the inside back cover. I got about 100 for a fiver. The cd-r has handwritten text on it, and the last page is hand-numbered. Here’s some pictures of the finished thing. N.B. On the last page there’s a print error (these photos are of the prototype (first copy/my copy)) – Picador should be “Bloomsbury, 2002″. More about the quote, its origins, and its attribution in a future post…
