MELT2000 Limited Editions

Sharing some of my favoured artwork with a series of limited edition posters

by Robert Trunz founder of the MELT 2000 label

It’s been a privilege and honour to work with so many creative people for the past 5 decades both during my time at the helm of Bowers & Wilkins and from the early 90’s with MELT 2000.

From the time of working on the campaign and creating the slogan LISTEN AND YOU’LL SEE (which lasted for 40 years) for B&W to working with Laurence Dickie on Nautilus and later VIVID AUDIO products.

However the time I enjoyed most are the MELT 2000 years of producing music and work with the creative forces who turn acoustic pleasures into a stimulating visual experience or a piece of work that gives us flashbacks of the music by simply looking at the album picture.

The MELT2000 Years Part 1

Music With No Name Volumes 1 & 2

After one of many highly enjoyable briefing sessions with Ian Swift (Swifty) we decided in 1996 to launch a series of Remix under the banner of MUSIC WITH NO NAME. Swifty came up with one of his mad graphic concepts this time working with external visual creative artists. Swifty already designed the 3pack CD release for the 1994 Outernational Meltdown recordings in Johannesburg and CapeTown. Right there and then when South Africa celebrated Nelson Mandela os its first democratically elected African president – a special time for a unique gathering of musicians from Brazil represented by Airto Moreira and Jose Neto. Byron Wallen and Andrew Missingham joined from London UK. Native American percussionist Valerie Naranjo was already in Joburg when the posse arrived. For some 3 weeks they shared and created music with som 50 local musicians who were hungry to work with artist after the cultural boycott of the apartheid era came to an end. Gathered from most of the provinces Pops Mohamed and Sipho Gumede directed the event.

Swifty also designed early covers still under the B&W MUSIC label name and created the M.E.L.T. 2000 logo (Musical Energy and Loud Truth beyond 2000). Swifty (Ian Swift) is London based and got the taste for graphic arts at The Face magazine in 1986. Using his signature “remix” visual style, he’s created countless iconic designs and logotypes for the music industry and youth culture via publications like Straight No Chaser and labels like Mo’ Wax and MELT 2000. In 1997 he launched Typomatic, the UK’s first independent Font foundry. When Swifty shifted his focus towards art, he produced a body of work making use of nostalgia and camo. He more recently released a 374-page book, The Graphic Art of Ian Swift, chronicling his decades of graphic makings.

The Artwork for Music With No Name

For Volume 1 Swifty engaged French visual artist Frédéric Voisin of The Wicked Studio. The Wicked Studio was created in 1995 in London by Frédéric Voisin, then a graphic designer. He specialised in making album covers and illustrating for Rock Magazines, such as New Musical Express, Select, Straight no Chaser, DJ Magazine etc so it was the right step for Swifty to work with Voison. Both the CD and Vinyl releases they created made a great impact on the international electronic music scene. Remixes like Smith & Mighty’s Ubombo (by Madala Kunene) and Spring Heel Jack’s remix of Hungry on Arrival (by the Outernational Meltdown team of Airto Moreira, Moses Taiwa Molelekwa, Jose Neto, Fana Zulu, Shaluza Max, Andrew Missingham and Byron Wallen) started a new awareness in South Africa of the potential of fusing traditional music with electronica – evidence in the works of then DJ RUDEBOY PAUL at YFM in Johannesburg in the mid Nineties and at the turn of the millennium one of the most respected DJs BLACK COFFEE who remixed MELT2000 artists like BUSI MHLONGO and MABI GABRIEL THOBEJANE.

Volume 2 was a 1998 London UK collaboration with media artist, director and creative producer Christopher Thomas Allen of The Light Surgeons. The company was established in 1995 and through a network of award winning artists, filmmakers, animators, designers and software developers The Light Surgeons produce a diverse range of creative projects both nationally and internationally that blur the boundaries between art and design practises. http://www.lightsurgeons.com/

Limited Edition Posters

To start off the LIMITED EDITIONS I chose the MUSIC WITH NO NAME Vol. 2 poster by Swift and The Light Surgeons. It was never released and the only existing “GOOD TO PRINT” sample and had been ON THE MOVE with me between continents and places in the UK, Switzerland and South Africa and always occupied a prominent place in the many homes that became my temporary home. The poster showed it’s age and had quite a few blemishes so I took it to Melissa at FotoMax in Durban (my favoured place) and asked her to scan and repair it. The result is so stunning that it had to be No.1 choice to start the MELT 2000 Limited Editions printing 100 A1 format laminated posters for the true collector and music lover.