A bunch of Brisbane artists have collaborated to bring followers a coffee table book brimming with nostalgic photography and poetry.
Capre, the duo of producer Patrick Hameon and vocalist/guitarist Patrick Costello, has collaborated with artist JJ James and local fashion label Studio Phile to present a coffee table book, soon to be released, accompanied by a B-side track from Capre. The project feels like an ode to youth and to living in the moment.
“It all started from Jake’s (JJ James) most recent exhibition/event in Brisbane… Jake and Paige (Studio Philo) took some of our existing clothes and upcycled/redesigned them to make custom outfits for us to perform in”, Capre explained.
“Days after the gig we had these outfits and thought it would be good to do a photoshoot to get some good daylight shots of the kit. Our photographer Allisa Tsukimori has an amazing eye for film and captured a bunch of great shots, way more than we expected. After scrolling through them we realised we needed to make something out of this. The idea for prints and a book just came floating into our heads and we got to work.”
The photos are dreamy and calm rather like the production of Capre. Green grass and a blue sky provide the backdrop. The images look ever so slightly washed out, and the colours pastel, as if the photos were taken on a balmy summer afternoon deep within suburbia. Some pimped out Dunlop Volleys are on display. There’s an air of nostalgia to the photos, some of which are black and white.
The aesthetic mirrors the sound of Capre – slow-moving, meditative electropop. The B-side track Hector’s Escape, released alongside the project, is the soundtrack to a beachside sunrise – that in-between time witnessed through bleary eyes when a city sleeps. It’s best enjoyed with a cig in hand and your feet hanging off the edge of a jetty. A haunting, ethereal voice tugs at your heartstrings, ghost-like.
The book contains a collection of hard-hitting poetry alongside the photography. Fans can already order prints of the photos in various sizes from Capre’s website.
In a famous 2019 Pitchfork piece ‘The Rise of Conceptronica’, music journalist Simon Reynolds once argued that electronic music was going into “conceptual overdrive”. Reynolds had astutely noticed the increasing prevalence of dense academic jargon within dance music, predicting the arms race towards multimedia projects within the “conceptronica” space.
For the growing experimental festival circuit, multimedia projects and world-building have become the norm. Simply being a musician may no longer cut it. Reynolds argues that this trend differs from the “relatively down-to-earth vernacular” of 90s IDM and the music-orientated raves of yesteryear.
This coffee book table venture does not represent the collision of electronic music with the art world lingua franca. But it does reflect the increasingly common cross-pollination of art scenes within Australia and the shrinking gap between fashion designers and musicians. In that way, it’s surely a sign of things to come.
