A long-term collaboration with Jaguar Ma which has included the design and art direction of the band’s branding, merchandise, release artworks and live show productions. This ongoing partnership was born from a personal creative relationship between Babekühl creative director, Patrick Santamaria and Jagwar Ma founder, Jono Ma: over their decades-long friendship, the pair have worked together on countless creative projects which have included music-production, installation and performance art, events and other musically-driven projects.
The band’s debut album and accompanying singles were independently produced, by the band using their own resources. In the DIY spirit of this debut release, we created a simple visual motif based on the Ma family photos which had been saved and archived by Jono’s brother, Dave Ma. For further singles, a series of aerial and landscape photos by Dave Ma were
For Remix releases off the album – a simple, visual remix format was employed.
For the band’s sophomore release, we favoured a more cinematic approach to the artwork. The photo series which became the album and single art for the record were taken by art director, Patrick Santamaria during a trip which started in Australia, travelling through France and ultimately ending in England, to see the band perform at Glastonbury Festival. This figurative and literal journey mirrored the band’s own journey from their hometown of Sydney, to France (where much of the album was written and recorded), to the UK, where the album was finished.
Jagwar Ma commissioned Babekühl to assist in creating a one-off live show for their 2018 Dark Mofo festival performance. Working alongside Berlin-based creative studio, Destroythingsbeautiful a suite of custom visuals were created, which were mixed with responsive, generative visuals, created in realtime on a modular video synthesiser. In addition, a custom lighting rig was created for the show – a giant structure which extended from the stage and surrounded the audience on three sides.
We spent an fun, but intense week of pre-production in our studio with Jim Warrior of Destroythingsbeautiful – sequences, synths and sound designs were run through Jim’s Modular video synth, to generate audio responsive, analogue video assets. These assets were captured, manipulated and triggered live during the live show.
