Sometime late 2007 my friends DJ’s/producers Full Crate & FS Green approached me with a concept they had for a mixtape series and wanted me to collaborate on. The idea was simple, they would do a mix every month and I would do the artwork. The finished mix and artwork would then be made available through our mutual friend Nalden’s website in the form of a .zip file.

As I started working on the artwork I titled the project “Mixing Monthly” and came up with the idea of naming each month’s mix after it’s respective month. So January would be “Full Crate + FS Green Mixing January”, February “Full Crate + FS Green Mixing February” etc.

My concept for the artwork was taking the same design but applying a different structure or technique to it each month, loosely inspired by, again, it’s respective month. I made the January cover based on that idea:

The following month however, I was spending a majority of the time in New York visiting my fiancée with my sister. As we had all planned on keeping the releases consistent, Full Crate decided to ask Brian Elstak (MC/Mixin) to do the artwork for February since I wasn’t going to be able to finish it in time for the desired releasedate.

When starting on the March artwork I had to decide on what to do with my previous concept, as it would now miss one month in the overall series. I therefor decided to ask Brian to join the project and take turns at doing the artwork with me. From there on the concept was to loosely take inspiration from each other’s artwork each month.

We’ve just made the September mix available, which originally prompted me to write about the project as I was asked to further elaborate on the story behind the new artwork on Nalden.net. I had originally made a design built up out of 10mm x 10mm paper squares, but the pictures taken of that were accidentally erased off my SD-card. Past Friday we were all at my friend Rory’s (Swurdin) new party “BANGERS”, where me and Rory collectively DJ under the name SUCKERPUNCH and Full Crate and FS Green DJ’d in the lounge.

After our set I went over to the lounge to check out their set and found a roll of masking tape. This gave me the idea to make the design right then and there with the masking tape on the wall behind them. I was quickly told by the bouncer to NOT do this on the wall regardless of me removing it afterwards so I went for a table instead. The result as well as my other covers can be seen below.

Make sure to check out the mixes every month over at the Mixing Monthly website!

If you’re a frequent visitor of my blog then you definitely must have noticed the recurring Monday Hilversum pictures shot in a radiostudio. Some of you may know that the show recorded in those pictures is called Future Vintage, broadcasted on Dutch radiostation Lijn5 and hosted by Radna (my housemate), Melodee and Tom Trago.

Due to some restructuring Lijn5 has officially quit as a station this week, and now broadcasts their former programs on Dutch radiostation FunX. All their programs except Viral Radio and Future Vintage. Since the whole Future Vintage crew wants to keep the show alive (there are plans/talks of getting it back on the air elsewhere) we decided to create a website/blog (designed by me): FutureVintage.net.

On FutureVintage.net we’ll be posting an archive of old shows, extended versions of previously broadcasted interviews and more information on upcoming events and music that we like. The last 2 shows are already up on the site so go check it out!