Sound and Color: The Work of Music Photographer Neil Krug To...

http://bit.ly/1Uf9u4x


http://bit.ly/1Uf9sd3


http://bit.ly/1Uf9sd4


http://bit.ly/1Uf9u4y


http://bit.ly/1Uf9u4z

Sound and Color: The Work of Music Photographer Neil Krug

To see more of Neil’s work, check out @neilkrug on Instagram. For more music stories, head to @music.

Two years ago, Neil Krug (@neilkrug), the Los Angeles-based photographer best known for his colorfully decaying portraits of musicians, received a cryptic note from a friend at indie label Warp Records.

“She sent me a private message and said, ‘I have something for you, but I can’t email it to you and I can’t talk to you about it over the phone,’” recalls Neil. “So I go and meet with her. She shut the door. She’s like, ‘Boards.’

Boards is shorthand for Boards of Canada, an elusive, cult electronic duo out of Scotland. A decade earlier, Neil had spliced together his own unofficial music video for one of their tracks, which he then passed along to the group through a middleman. The clip made a big enough impression on them that, years later, Boards asked Neil to handle the dark, desert visuals for “Reach for the Dead,” the lead single off Tomorrow’s Harvest, their first album in eight years.

“I was like, ‘Holy s—.’ I was unbelievably nervous,” he says. “I know that fanbase because I’m one of them. But at the end of the day it was just such an exhilarating thing. I was like, ‘If we do this well, this is one of those things that will stick around for a long time.’”

Most of Neil’s work has that effect. His photos — dreamy, faded frames dyed different shades of red, purple, blue, yellow and everything in between — linger in the corner of your eye and the back of your mind long after they’ve left your line of sight. Recent projects include portraits of A$AP Rocky in a stark white tee against a salmon-colored background, and Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker, staring off into the distance next to yellow, forest-green desert vegetation. Neil’s best-known work, however, has come from his ongoing collaboration with the singer Lana Del Rey, having handled the sun-drenched art for her last two records, Honeymoon and Ultraviolence. His goal with her was easier said than done: create something “that would be interesting for her fans but also interesting to someone who doesn’t know her.”

“The album, it’s going to stick around for a while,” he says, “so you want to make it great.”

Much of Neil’s inspiration comes from his small-town Kansas upbringing, where he would listen to music and daydream about abstract visuals. When a song came on the radio, he would go into a brainstorming session. By the time it finished, Neil would have a complete idea. He wasn’t even thinking about music videos — it was just about creating a story in his head from start to finish.

“When you come from nowhere, you have to find your own way,” he says. “I think finding your own way, whether it’s the right way or the wrong way, it informs your perspective no matter what. As long as you have that, then you actually have a language, you have a visual identity. You know what I mean? There’s something there that’s singular.”

—Instagram @music

by via Instagram Blog