How do you begin to design artwork for an instrumental piece of music – especially when that piece of music is entitled ‘Last Words’?

Where lyrics often provide clues to a tangible visual concept, music itself offers something much more cryptic, more subtle. I find myself searching deeper into the ‘feel’ of the music, and with no words to conjure specific images, I’m left to interpret the music in a more open, abstract way.

GoGo Penguin’s Last Words is a beautiful, melancholy track driven by a repetitive underlying piano motif, carried along on an upbeat tempo. I wanted to somehow capture the rhythm of the track visually – the bars represent the tempo, punctuated by the ‘words’ of the piano. This visual rhythm continues with unbroken regularity, before it is suddenly cut short, leaving the final note to echo off into silence – like an unexpected goodbye.

The overall design reflects GoGo Penguin’s clean sound and existing visual style.