Martin Grech - Unholy
The art of Stephen Kasner is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. Although I’m now familiar with his style, it still d/haunts me. It’s a “take a deep breath and leap into the unknown” proposition, which I prize but find so rarely. I’m honored to have spoken with him; his interview and artwork are up today in my ongoing metal artists feature this week at Stylus.
Kasner did the cover for Martin Grech‘s Unholy (Island, 2005). It’s the inverse of a Rothko take on a cross – not religious, but dirty, gauzy, fading. The image fits the the album, which pairs Grech’s Jeff Buckley/Thom Yorke/male Bjork vocals with ambient alt-rock and occasional metal a la Tool or NIN. Like an M. Night Shyamalan movie, the result doesn’t always work, but it’s atmospheric as hell. “Guiltless,” one of the album’s singles, is a lush, slow burn.
Below are some outtakes from my interview with Kasner.
Do you think there’s misanthropy in your work?
I think in terms of the darker side of nature, the darker side of man, buried thoughts, nightmares, regret, things that we as humans often try to bury – things that psychiatrists make a lot of money on.
In your album artwork, you often focus on a central element instead of playing with the edges of the frame.
In my paintings in general, I usually have a central focus or various groups of focus, and there’s also areas that are not focused. They’re unrefined, and I don’t mean that in a negative way. It’s almost like pinhole photography, where you have a focus, coupled with areas of distorted image.
I’ve always been fascinated by early photography. Some of the most powerful images I’ve ever seen have been in early photography or portraiture, where things are as refined as they can be, but the tools and techniques they employed at the time had a natural distortion to it. There’s something about that to me that’s so melancholy and so beautiful. Not to read too much into the edges of my paintings, but I think it’s part homage to these photographic images.
Are you one of those people that prefer vinyl to CD’s?
I most certainly do. But CD’s and MP3’s become very handy in the studio. If I’m working in the studio, I’m working for many, many hours. My work is pretty dirty. It’s pretty hefty work. I don’t paint in a very controlled environment. A lot of times I’m throwing huge buckets of paint and washes on my work. It’s very tactile and messy. So it’d become inconvenient to always be flipping vinyl. But I do have a vinyl collection that I appreciate very much when I’m at home.
