Disiniblud is the latest project of multi-instrumentalists and producers Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith. For their debut (self-titled) album, released on Domino imprint Smugglers Way, the pair art directed the haunting sleeve design, which features a huge, Falkor-like dragon’s head set within a suburban garage and attended to by the two musicians.

Photographed by Allegra Messina, the head (nicknamed Grandma) is a seven-foot tall puppet that was fabricated by hand by Miles Robinson at Sara Paquette’s Strong Friend Inc studio in Los Angeles (assisted by Emma Bradford and with creative production by Milena Gorum).

“When Nina and I were talking about the arc of our friendship, and this album we’d just finished, themes of inner child and darkness and whatnot were coming up for us,” says Nayar. “The images were of both fantasy and the mundane.”

Having seen a viral image of a replica head of Falkor, the dragon from the 1984 film The Neverending Story, on Twitter, Nayar says the idea of “something so fantastical in such a mundane place” appealed to the pair so much that she considered arranging to photograph it. 

So much of our album has our life baked into it, little field recordings of our friends … I wanted it to feel like this supernatural thing that is occurring in our actual life

In the end, Keith (along with the record label) suggested that they have their very own giant head made and shot for the sleeve. Nayar’s drawings inspired the direction and the outcome is “silly-mode, haunting and awesome,” she says. “I think [the cover] really captures the heart of what we’d been envisioning.”

Keith says that the pair’s collaborations have often involved a combination of “big magical phenomena coinciding with sort of bleak realities. I felt like it needed to be IRL to have that really hit,” she says. 

“So much of our album has our life baked into it, little field recordings of our friends, piano recorded from outside the house etc. I love that it’s this garage I spent so much time in. I wanted it to feel like this supernatural thing that is occurring in our actual life.”

The garage in question is at a house that both Nayar and Keith have lived in and so is a particularly personal setting. “I have such a deep network of memories tied to that garage,” says Keith, referring to her time there having been invited to stay by her other musical partner, Massima Bell, who lived at the house at the time. “I’m so glad we have this album cover to immortalise it.”

“Grandma comes alive in the dark,” adds Nayar. “I tried a few different lighting configurations and positions for me and Nina, and then ultimately came up with two complementary ones that I asked the photographer to composite together.”

On working this way, Nayar says: “I never know exactly what the cover is going to look like beforehand; I have the elements, the aura, the characters in mind. Even after the shoot, it takes some time experimenting with compositing and Photoshop until I arrive at the final image. It’s like writing the album itself, where you’re just searching around in the dark until the destination reveals itself to you.”

“That garage had this haunted energy and a weird gravitational pull to it,” adds Keith. “It felt so perfect the moment we set up the creature in there it just clicked. I remember we couldn’t stop laughing. It feels like this testament to us being able to shape our reality into whatever we want regardless of the surrounding bleakness.”

To complement the warm glow of the light in the main image, and perhaps to hint at the joyous and playful sounds contained within the record itself, the vinyl is rendered in a bright, sunny orange.

dominomusic.com