🎵 IT071: TRY HARD TIL YA DIE HARD
✏️ Alex Moore
🗓 11.08.20

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Alex is an illustrator from London.

Howdy Alex. Can you tell us a little bit about your tape and your song selections?

TRY HARD TILL YA DIE HARD is a selection of punchy, crunchy (and sometimes INCREDIBLY trashy) get-up-and-go songs. This has basically the soundtrack to every horrendous breakneck storyboarding deadline (50 boards in a day is the current record) and 6am run. These songs all have a special way of tapping into my adrenal glands and helps makes all those things… weirdly fun? Hopefully there’ll be something in here that’ll put some pep in your step!

What direction did you take with your cover art, and what was your process?

I wanted to make something as loud and brass as the songs on this list (plus I’ve been making a point of trying to get better at incorporating typography into my images). I draw from start to finish on my Cintiq in a series of increasingly tiger-tuned layers as the image goes from rough to final.

What are your fave album covers, records with a great music and artwork combo, or musical projects with a visual component?

Not to go for the predictable choice but I remember seeing Gorillaz video for “Clint Eastwood” drop on Top of the Pops way back when I was a kid and it BLEW. MY. MIND (you can probably see it left an impression) - not just in terms of Jamie Hewlett’s art style but just the idea of an animated band. I also loved his work on Monkey: Journey to the West.

I’m also super here for whenever My Chemical Romance have brought a more illustrative element into to their album; James Jean’s work for The Black Parade is just mmmm chef’s kiss and That went even further with The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys which gave us a whole comic series illustrated by Becky Cloonan.

What did you listen to growing up?

I was brought up on a strict diet of Classical Music (I was an insufferably precocious child).

And what’s on heavy rotation for you at the moment?

I am VERY much in love with Orville Peck’s Summertime at the moment. Also the last gig I saw before lockdown was Ajimal which re-ignited my love for ‘How Could You Disappear’ and ‘It’s Real’. I am VERY excited for his new album to drop. I also have this insane audio soundtrack/moodboard for a graphic novel I’m currently working on.

What’s happening in your creative world at the moment?

I’m freelancing here and there between dayjob but at the moment I am TOTALLY OBSESSED with working on aforementioned graphic novel. I’m currently waiting to see if it’s got any further than the longlist in Myriad’s First Graphic Novel Competition before I carry on pitching it but otherwise I’m going to go the self-publish route. Because the world CLEARLY needs a 380 page book about art, self destructive idiots and LSD cat monsters.  

Where can we find you?

︎  cargocollective.com/alexmooreillustration
︎ @notanotheralex
︎ @alexmooreillustration