Renegade Hardware, from past to present. Artwork (D)Evolution

Any Drum and Bass fan worth their salt will be well acquainted with London’s Renegade Hardware record label. Home to some of the scene’s most prolific producers, well respected and a label with a strong history and roots within the music.

(-Artwork by Twista)

For those that don’t know Hardware was launched back in the mid nineties as a place to for the harder more futuristic, forward thinking drum and bass music to reside. Its sounds were straight out of a sci-fi film, its harder edge and rumbling bass had everyone screwing up their faces on the dance floor. Towards the turn of the century the harder 'techy' sound of DnB was extremely popular, with producers like Bad Company, Loxy & Ink, Keaton, Konflict, and Future Cut to name a few personal favourites releasing lots of amazing music and filling dark sweaty dance floors the world over with their sound.

(-Artwork by Twista)

The sound represented all that I love about electronic music. Having come from a rock background I was never into house music. It was the dark side, aggressive edge to this tech drum and bass, the beats echoing around an imaginary futuristic landscape in my head that made me fall in love with it. I wasn't into the vocal soulful stuff or the reggae sampled jungle sound really. When it came down to it, it was the metallic edge to the processed amen breaks, strange alien sounds, samples and of course the ridiculous chest-shaking sub bass that made Renegade Hardware not just mine but many a DnB fan’s favorite record label.

I was approached by the label a few years ago to start working with them to help develop a new look for the label. Moving away form dark and overly futuristic imagery into something more abstract and minimal to help represent the new music they were putting out. It was a real daunting challenge as the look of the label hadn’t changed for years and was established already with a pretty consistent artwork style and loyal fan base. The artwork during the nineties and up to fairly recently had been using a lot of horror of sci fi images and working a heavily overlaid artwork style into the imagery, lots of effects with the Hardware metallic logo often featuring heavily.

The first big project I got to work on was their album ‘Last Of A Dying Breed’ which featured the traditional Hardware sound and also featured a couple of more spacious minimal tracks. In particular Rockwell’s anthem; 'Shards'. Whilst still moody and very sonically heavy the space in the music was a departure from the older Hardware sound and this was reflected in the more minimal but futuristic sleeve design.
Since then I have worked on a few albums projects for the labels and continuous single artworks and have designed for their label nights in London. Its been great to work with the label and I have been given an appropriate degree of creative freedom which I think has helped me to produce some of my best work.

Below are some example of the recent sleeves I have created for Renegade Hardware...