A closer look at The Bug Vs. Earth’s industrial Concrete Desert triple vinyl

Heavyweight.

Dropping like a meteorite out of the sky, The Bug Vs. Earth’s heavyweight triple vinyl edition of new collaborative album Concrete Desert landed in our office earlier this week.

Announced several months ago, the vinyl edition is pressed onto three slabs of wax that look like they’ve been chiselled out of the earth’s crust, like a dispatch from 2017 disinterred in the midst of some dystopian future.

Featuring monotype prints by artist Simon Fowler, who worked on the preceding The Bug vs. Earth Black Friday 12″ ‘Boa/Cold’, as well as previous LP Angels & Devils, the cover references the album’s preoccupation with maximal urban aesthetics.

More than just providing the visuals, it was Fowler who played an instrumental role in the collaboration itself, introducing Dylan Carlson to Kevin Martin at a King Midas Sound gig.

The nature of the monotype printing process gives the cover a particularly tactile quality, typically made by drawing on glass or a plate of smooth metal or stone with a greasy substance such as printer’s ink or oil paint, before being printed onto paper. It’s an aesthetic carried over into the coloured records, pressed to red, off white and granite grey vinyl.

Take a closer look below and order your copy from Ninja Tune here.