Christian Bland

Summary: Ilia Rogachevski, the Content and Community Manager at audio.com, introduces an experimental podcast featuring an archival interview with graphic artist and guitarist Christian Bland. The interview took place in April 2012 in Austin, Texas, where Christian created psychedelic posters and cover artwork for bands he played in. He discusses his background in graphic design, his process of combining music and art, and his admiration for artists like Wes Wilson. He also mentions the influence of the 1968 Olympics on his artwork and the message of his band, The Black Angels. Transcription: Hello, I'm Ilia Rogachevski, and I'm the Content and Community Manager at audio.com. This is our first experimental podcast featuring an archival interview with the graphic artist, promoter and guitarist Christian Bland. You may have come across Christian's work if you've ever listened to The Black Angels, Christian Bland and the Revelators, or attended one of the Levitation festivals held in Austin, Texas and in France. This interview dates back to April 2012. Back then I was really into my psych rock and obsessed over bands like The 13th Floor Elevators, Spacemen 3, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and of course The Black Angels. My background is in music journalism and radio, but before I started writing about music, I studied graphic design in London. I was particularly interested at the time with the history of psychedelic imagery in graphic design, you know, like the classic screen printed posters created for the Fillmore by Wes Wilson. More or less on a whim, I decided to go to Austin, Texas to attend what was then called the Austin Psych Fest and try to nab an interview with Christian who created colourful psychedelic posters in a 1960s style for the festival and other gigs happening in the Austin area, as well as cover artwork for the bands he was playing in. This interview was conducted outside of the Red 7 Bar in downtown Austin in April 2012, right before the guitarist performed a warm-up show with his band Christian Bland and the Revelators. You can hear a little bit of the bootleg recording from that show fading in and out during the interview. Okay, I went to school and studied advertising at Florida State. During my time there is when I started learning how to play the guitar. Then I came to University of Texas. My goal was to start a band. I had this vision in my head, once I started to learn how to play the guitar, that I wanted to play in a band. At the same time, I was also doing advertising and studying graphic design. I just started to formulate in my mind that I wanted to combine these things. After going to school for six years and studying advertising, I knew I did not want to do advertisements for other people. Does the music come first or does the artwork materialize first? Music comes first. When we are recording an album, I will have my laptop with me in the room when I am not laying down a guitar part. I have my computer in front of me listening to the song we just recorded. I try to recreate visually what it sounds like. The time spent doing stuff is cut down big time compared to the way a poster artist might have been doing something in the 60s. Cutting things out with scissors, shapes, drawing everything. It is another fortunate aspect of living in the future. You do a lot of screen printing, right? Do you have a screen printing facility? I do. I have a screen print set up that I actually have not gotten to use since the end of last year because I moved houses. I used to have a house that had a porch in the back and a garage that was my darkroom so I could do the entire process. Wake up in the morning, have an idea, boom, go into the darkroom, create it, go to the porch, screen print, and it is all done. Now my set up is around the corner at a friend's house and we have been so busy touring and writing the new album that I have not really gotten to use my screen print set up. I refuse to sell it because I am definitely going to be using it again. I am going to be using it again. Each day, Psych Fest has a poster. I have a poster of me and Rob Fitzpatrick who is one of the other guys that does Psych Fest and me. We designed it. I worked on the psychedelic lettering and he did the design work. He and I worked together. In the past, I had a buddy of mine, his name is Andy Burr, that used to live here in Austin. I would say pretty often I get emails to the brand design website asking if I can design album artwork for people. In the past, when I had people like Andy Burr, when I was too busy, he would then help me and he would come over to the house and screen print as well. There is typography, you said you did the lettering. Is there anybody in particular, any typographers that you admire? My favorite artist is probably Wes Wilson, the old Fillmore poster designer. I love his lettering. That is kind of what I base a lot of my stuff off of. We got to work with Wes Wilson. He helped do the artwork on the last album, which was pretty amazing to be able to do. I was trying to find someone that could do Wes Wilson type drawings. I was like, why don't I just see if Wes Wilson can do it. I typed it in to Google and then found his website, got in contact with him and he was like, sure. Modern era, dude, the internet. For the Black Angels album, Passover, the artwork appropriates the bold kinetic lines of Lance Wyman's logo for the 68th Mexican Olympics. Was it purely an aesthetic decision to reference psychedelic artists from the period? Was there a political or conceptual subtext which you wanted to echo in the album? That's exactly right. That's that design totally from the 68 Olympics. The 68 Olympics were amazing Olympic games for several reasons. I mean, you know, you had the Black Power movement with Tommy Carlos on the stand with the raised fists with the black gloves. Another reason more close home to me, I went to Florida State and UT on a high jump scholarship. I was a high jumper. And in 1968, Dick Fosbury, the US high jumper, introduced his new technique of high jump, which is how you jump over backwards and arch your back. Whereas before, they would run up like if you were jumping onto a horse, called the straddle roll. And he brought in the new Fosbury flop. And everybody in the crowd thought he was nuts. And then he goes on to win the gold. A lot of revolutionary stuff happened in 1968. I mean, politically, too. Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy killed, I think, the 60s was a time of turmoil. And I feel like the cycle has come back around. And I think on many levels, I think that that art reflects what our vision was for the sound of the Black Angels and the message of the Black Angels. I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. I'm going to stop the recording. 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