Is there a doctor in the House?

What image does the CD title Unsound

Methods conjure up for you? Whatever the answer, it probably isn’t medical equipment. But this is the theme Intro designer Julian House has adopted for the new CD, album and single cover for the debut recording by Mute Records’ new band Recoil, arguing that the title suggests medical paraphernalia which has fallen into the wrong hands.

House brought in photography duo Merton Gauster to shoot an array of kit, including hypodermic syringes, forceps, artificial limbs and ‘robotic appendages’, using props from Film Medical Hire Centre. He chose Jules Merton and Eric Gauster, having worked with them on the Can album, also for Mute. ‘They do nice still life stuff and use illuminated boxes,’ he says. The Recoil covers are based around an X-ray viewing box.

So keen was House on the medical theme that he had his own joints X-rayed at Guys Hospital in London, and featured them on the CD cover. Different filters have been used to create ‘some richness’ because Recoil founder Alan Wilder, formerly with Depeche Mode, ‘didn’t want it to be cold’. The CD single features petri dishes

Cover typography is restricted to a small ‘tag’ in the top left-hand corner. This was shot as part of the overall imagery and apes a conventional X-ray tag.

Whatever audience Recoil attracts when the single and album are released in October, it’s bound to be a hit with Damien Hirst.

Designer: Intro

Client: Mute Records