The Nude Dimension

As we move further away from the previous century, we begin to realize that the 90s the last age of innocence, which ironically means it was the last cultural moment where the heady, anything goes zeitgeist of the 60s and 70s had any broad (no pun intended) influence. ‘Nude Dimensions’ is a continuing series that revisits the turn-of-the century phenomenon known as Naked Music, and the cultural spirit of the age that preceded social media.

I met François Kavorkian in 1997 when I was living in New York (and San Francisco). At the time, I was working for Phil Smith, the owner of Twilo (formerly Sound Factory) and the Sound Factory Bar, creating the brands for both locations. My day job was art director at Eightball Records, where I did all the graphics and learned to operate the lathe that made dubplates for most of the top house music producers in NYC at the time.

I had the privilege of listening to new tracks from Françcois, Frankie Knuckles, Danny Tenaglia, David Morales, and numerous others, weeks, if not months, before release. François asked if I could create the cover for a new single he was releasing by Jay Denes (Blue 6) on his imprint, Wave Music.

Jay was also starting his own record label at the time and asked if I was interested in proposing an identity for Naked Music Recordings. I was stoked, and immediately proposed a couple of concepts.

So many things were happening at the same time. My agent was getting me heaps of illustration work, outside the world of house music, but Naked Music seemed to be always on the periphery. I had created the identity, in 1995, for Patrick Moxey’s Ultra Records, and they released, ‘Motivation’, by Naked Music NYC in 1996. Then, Naked Music NYC started releasing on my hometown record label, Om Records, San Francisco. The head of A&R at Om was my good friend, Bruno Ybarra. Bruno, along with Dave Boonshoft and Jay Denes, ultimately decided to create the record label in 1997. This was a year after I had submitted my proposals for Naked Music to Jay. In the meantime, they had started working with the well-known graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister. Although I loved Sagmeister’s work (still do), I felt like the designs he’d done for Naked were pretentious and unsuitable for the sultry, sexy sounds of Naked.

Although I was a little bit crestfallen, I’d forgotten about, and instead found myself suddenly living in Barcelona, working for a clothing company, Custo Line (funny enough, a few of the Custo t-shirt designs I created feature the icon that would eventually become the Naked logo).

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