Groupie magazine spoke to Sydney design studio Debaser about the fantastical, science-fiction artwork created for Empire of the Sun's debut.

Frontman for Australian indie rock outfit The Sleepy Jackson, Luke Steele fell into the music audience’s consciousness when his Perth band released their debut album Lovers in 2003. A world away from Luke’s independent pop music, twiddling dials and banging synthesizers, Nick Littlemore is one half of Sydney dance duo Pnau, who released their second self-titled album late last year. Both are famously enigmatic and regarded as genius producers at home and overseas, and together form Australia’s newest and most-talked-about electro pop out group Empire Of The Sun.

Their debut album Walking on a Dream is a breezy, inter-stellar “sun-drenched excursion into shiny pop” and landed in the ARIA charts at a healthy No. 8 upon release. Which was perhaps no surprise for a duo so accustomed to the upper echelons of the charts, and whose lead single ‘Walking on a Dream’ was voted “Hottest track in the world right now” by the UK’s BBC 1. But what caught Groupie’s attention early on was the duo’s fantastic film-clip for their lead single, inspired by trips to Tokyo and old school anime cartoons. Now that we’ve seen the artwork we’re even more impressed.

The retro sci-fi album artwork was initially conceived by Luke and Nickthemselves after being inspired by movie poster artist Drew Struzan whois responsible for the iconic posters of some of the most famous 1980’sfilm such as the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Back To The Future movieseries, and E.T, Blade Runner and Big Trouble In Little China.

The artwork was then created by David Homer from the Aria Award winningSydney design studio Debaser, who produced the end result by“illustrating the artists faces from initial headshots and working withdigital painting and extra photo bits, creating a mish-mash”.

Discussing the artwork, Homer says the entire process took 3 months andbeing an artist himself admits sci-fi art was never something he eversaw himself doing, highlighting that Debaser is one of the few designstudios that have inhouse illustrators/artists on board. Infact Homerhimself has an exhibition planed for early next year.

The imagery is so evocative that we’re totally ready for the Flash Gordan-esque movie to come appear soon. Have a flick through the Gallery and see what we mean.

Groupie Magazine