Issue #014 (July 2006) Cover design: Traianos Pakioufakis Email this article to a friend Interview by Matthew Levinson Perth is a long way from anywhere, as cities go. It is so isolated that bands simply do their own thing, or else they up and move to Europe. That is the generally accepted truth at any rate. 22-year-old Traianos Pakioufakis, known to his cronies as T-pak, grew up in Edgewater, a safe northern Perth suburb with a beautiful lake. `Perth is great,' he says. `The typical complaint is the isolation, which seems to be a big deal for a lot of artists and so they move, but I think it's probably had a reverse affect on me. Nothing's ever going to happen in a small town unless you do it yourself, so leaving to join an already established scene never really made any sense to me. I guess that's why it was natural for me to start a record label and put on shows.' Small cities usually mean less hierarchy, less people and more personal connections. You can just try things and make them happen. Pakioufakis learnt piano and guitar growing up but never really pursued them. At 14, he started making music with his computer and got interested in noise, self-releasing a rash of tapes and CDs to high-school friends, which spun out into the FuckFace CD-R noise label. In 2001, he played his first show and simultaneously stopped making new tracks, instead recording new material to use in an improvised manner on stage. He was soon sharing bills with hardcore bands such as AIDS, and post-rock favourites The Tigers and Adam Said Galore. Moving on, the nascent record boss started indie electronic label Meupe after discovering Aesoteric, a regular club night at the Velvet Lounge (since that venue shut, Aesoteric has bounced between the Bakery, the Rosemount Hotel and Hyde Park). Dave Miller, one of the guys behind Aesoteric, who recently released a remix EP on Meupe, says he stumbled across the FuckFace website and booked Traianos and Stina to play the show. Apparently, Pakioufakis played a signature five-minute set of riotous noise and pop that the crowd loved. The label soon became part of the Aesoteric crew. He has since collaborated with Chris Cobilis, Manuel Bonrod and M. Rosner (aka Pablo Dali), and is working on a commission for a dance project choreographed by Sam Fox, titled `Run'. Early in 2004, Meupe released Stina's Pocket Songs, a lovely piece of music packed in a basic jewel case with a badge, and enclosed in an envelope of cutely printed tracing paper. Releases from Pimmon, Inchtime, Qua, Lawrence English and Pivot that couple individual design and sound have followed in rapid succession. It is a unique thing to be able to package somewhat difficult music in a manner that instantly disarms listener prejudices. `The packaging and artwork of a release has always won me over in a record store,' says Pakioufakis. `I think it's especially important for a label such as Meupe to have a strong visual identity so that people appreciate and purchase releases rather than burning or downloading. Not that I think that those things are killing music, but it's nice to have the option of owning a well-designed product you'll happily put on your shelf over an encoded audio file you can't even touch.' Three-inch CDs, unadorned jewel cases, and other unique uses of packaging tie Meupe into a historical thread of iconic record labels. `It makes the release collectible and personal,' he says, `which is important for recordings. It shows that the release hasn't just been put together to generate money but so that it exists as a documentation of sound. `It should be seen in similar light as a book; you never see a novel or art book hastily put together. Binding and printing plays a huge part in the package especially those that are unique to the format.' Pakioufakis undertook a photography course that included a basic graphic design component. Now, armed with a Nikon F100 and 35mm film, as well as a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II digital, he's pursuing a minimal aesthetic that ties into a history of design, which stops off in Norway with Kim Hiorthoy's sleeves for Rune Grammofon, and to a lesser extent Reid Miles's work for Blue Note. `I've always been interested in the printing process, but didn't really think much else about it at the time, until a year or so after [the design course finished] when Aesoteric asked me to do some flyers and posters for their events. From there it's just been word of mouth and I do as much as I can between my full-time job at a photographic studio and running Meupe. `I'm not usually that specific with graphic inspiration though any minimal design and innovative packaging will do it for me. Right now, I'm a big fan of using lines, dots and black and white photography like Heidi Specker, Lee Friedlander, Irving Penn and Rankin.' Pakioufakis designed the stark cover of this month's issue of Cyclic Defrost. `The photograph was taken on Murray Street in Perth in winter last year,' he says. `The cover probably indicates my love of simple black and white design and yes, those old ECM sleeves! `Nowadays people seem to be weary and aware of retouching, but it's played a huge role in photography for many, many years. People seem to forget that there were manual printing techniques used in the darkroom, which enhanced photographs. The fact that we now have more options whilst effectively doing the same thing on a computer screen makes people question a photographer's skill. I really don't know why! We live in a very visual society that relies on post-production, there's no going back.' Despite the obvious demands of designing a music magazine cover, Pakioufakis felt no great pressure to follow any particular creative direction. Aside from the shape, of course. `Having the cover of Issue 13 on the back of this issue made me think about it a bit more, in that it's such a cool and colourful design,' he says. `But I decided to run with my original idea, which is super-minimal. I took the invitation as a compliment to prior output and just created something that was typically in my style. Anything else wouldn't have seemed right.'