UNDER COVER OF DARKNESS - Personal Project

OVERVIEW

A personal tribute to The Strokes and their 2011 single. The concept merges two obsessions: the visual language of VHS culture — degraded tape, scan lines, the blinking PLAY indicator — and the idea that some music is so alive it goes straight past death and keeps playing anyway. Five skeletons in suits, still at it, on a cracked cassette nobody dared throw away.

THE PROCESS

The starting point was the song and the urge to visualize what The Strokes would look like if they existed on the other side. The skeleton format came immediately — it's the most honest way to say that some music is literally undying.

The composition puts the vocalist front and center with the mic stand, flanked by the two guitarists and the rhythm section behind. The suits and ruffled shirts are a direct nod to the band's early-2000s New York aesthetic — that specific mix of downtown cool and art school dishevelment.

The background layers came after the characters were finished: a giant cracked eye dominating the upper half — the feeling of being watched, or of a screen about to die — VHS interface elements scattered across the floor and margins, recording times, tape quality labels, the HQ logo, and the repeated PLAY text that turns the whole image into a tape stuck on a loop.

The poster version strips everything back to a two-tone screenprint: dark charcoal and red/salmon, halftone texture on the illustration, designed to look like a real gig poster run off a Risograph. The date at the top — February 9, 2011 — is the day the single dropped.