ACDSleeve: Songs I Love
Especially for Record Store day, we ask design genius and founder of ACDSleeve, Tom Leggett, to take us on a tour of his favourite releases …
For a guy who designs album packaging for a living it’s not surprising that Tom Leggett listens to a lot of music. The founder of ACDSleeve, Tom puts his background in industrial/product design to good use, working for hundreds of musicians looking for an aesthetically beautiful way to share their sounds.
Putting together a playlist of his favourite, most inspiring tracks, he admits he got a bit carried away.
“I was expecting it to be about ten songs, but looking back at past releases, there’s a lot of music I love on them! It’s pretty all over the place, much like my taste in music, and I doubt many people will enjoy all of it. But there’s bound to be some stuff in there people will like that they’ve not heard before.”
“Blakfish: This was taken from the first ever run of packaging I’d worked on, which was a re-release of one of my all time favourite EPs. I’d not made any packaging before this run, and for it to be made specially for the band’s last ever show was pretty amazing. Making 100 copies of the EP was stressful, I’d never made more than one of anything, ever!
“Girlfriends: This originally started as a project I was going to release with Big Scary Monsters Records on vinyl, the album has been online and free for years and I absolutely adore it. I wanted to get a physical copy out there. We spoke to Jerry [Joiner], the one-man-music-making-machine behind Girlfriends (honestly, check out some live videos on YouTube, he loops all instruments live and plays the drums, it’s mesmerising, so much talent) and he was really into it. Kev (from Big Scary Monster Records) met up with him at SXSW last year and they got on really well, unfortunately it never happened due to everyone involved being busy with their separate things, fingers crossed it’ll happen eventually.
“Entrepreneurs (main image): One of the best songs I’ve heard in years and was pretty obsessed with. The guy releasing it as a single I had done some work for the year before, and came to me to package/design it. It was a bit of a nightmare custom job, with release dates clashing with a family wedding, to get them out on time meant I had to stay up ’til 7am to get them boxed up and picked up by a courier that day. I’ve learnt to manage my time much better since then luckily, and allow longer productions times on custom/large orders.
“Hymns: This is taken from their live DVD, which is one of the few cases that I’ve completely designed myself from scratch and a development from the single I designed for them the year before.
“Doctrines: This is the first record I actually helped release with Alcopop Records; when I say released I mean I helped fund it and organized the entire production, including CDs. I included the entire EP as it’s one single piece of music that can’t really be split up. I knew the band before they got in touch with me about me packaging the EP, and they sent me a link to it, and I couldn’t get over how good it was. I got in touch with Alcopop Records to see if they’d help me put it out, as I had no idea what to do other than make it look as good as possible. We released what was probably my favourite record of last year.
“Arcs & Trauma: These guys are probably my favourite band I’d never heard of, before they got in touch for me to package their EP White to Violet. Really, really great summery vibes.
“Shoes and Socks Off: I think this was the second piece of packaging I’d ever designed, it held the first three Shoes and Socks Off albums in one case. Shoes and Socks Off, better known as Tobias Hayes, is one of my favourite singer/songwriters, he sang in one of my favourite bands, Meet Me In St. Louis, and I was a massive fan of his solo project, so for this to be job number two and to work with the man himself was bizarre.
“Kerouac: I’d made all 300 5” vinyl/pop up business card CD cases for this release, and because it was as bonkers as it sounds, I thought I’d make a video of the case to post on YouTube. I needed a song for the backing of the video and listening to the release I was completely blown away and pretty annoyed I hadn’t checked them out sooner. They opened my eyes (and ears) to a lot of great heavy UK bands like The Long Haul, Bastions, Goodtime Boys and the label Tangled Talk (who I’ve subsequently done a few jobs for), and rekindled my love for heavy music.
“The Physics House Band: One of the most recent jobs I’ve completed, this isn’t even the EP version of the song – it’s only just been released on the 15th April. This band absolutely blow my mind. I got sent a digital copy of the EP and listened to it on a loop six or seven times, one of the best records of the year for sure, and I got to play a small part in its release, which is pretty brilliant.”
Check out the most recent ACDSleeve creations here
Read our full interview with Tom
