Valses Balsamiques

My favorite project in 2024 was this cassette package I designed for Klimperei and Denis Fedabeille:

This story began in 2022 when I posted a Facebook announcement for my book, Poem: A Mashup, illustrating a cento by MD Usher. 

My all-time favorite composer, Christophe Petchanatz of Klimperei toy music, whom I’d surreptitiously friended some years before, responded enthusiastically to the post. I responded equally enthusiastically to his response, letting him know how much I love his work. Christophe ordered the book and granted me permission to play his songs during the online Daredoodle sessions I was hosting. 

I sent him this illustration on the book’s theme, pictures made of words, and we vowed to work together someday. 

That day came when Christophe invited me to design a cassette package for a collection of waltzes he’d recorded in collaboration with electronic composer Denis Fedabeille, to be issued by another of my musical heroes, Denis Tagu of the label InPolySons 

The cassette came to be called Valses Balsamiques. 

It’s a hauntingly toe-tapping series of strange melodies in waltz time. You need to hear this.  


The cardboard package folds up to wraparound, with song info printed on the inside. 

Christophe asked for  “something full, colorful, different styles, many different characters dancing, some happy, some not”

To populate the dance floor, I generated several pages of doodles of dancers and musicians to combine into a scene in photoshop.

We see, for example: 

A pinhead and frankenstein collapsing into each other

An eyeball/egg figure swaying from side to side

Tango dancers merging into a shared face

A robot trying to twist

A dino succeeding

The right honorable Pere Ubu

Hidden under the flap: figures falling into a time tunnel/gidouille void

In a couple of cases, I revived stray characters from my old work:

In Steel Pulse, Pro-Wrestling Adventures #4, 1990, we published a theme song for our imaginary Megiddo Mosquito cartoon show. On the masthead to the music, I drew an insect band.

This time I swiped (clockwise from left):

Astor Ant, Casanova Cricket, Bertolt Beetle, Frankie the Wasp, and a baritone sax player who fuses Gerry Mulligan with Kafka.

  

In a Hector strip called Lodo Friday Nights (for “lower downtown,” the Denver arts district back then),1995, I included a romance sequence, in the spaces on the floor, of dancing cigarette butts. 

I incorporated them on the inside of the cassette around the song titles.

For the title, I drew inspiration from this image I’d seen of Lygeti’s musical notation.

Of course it’s all very tiny. It may be obvious that my primary purpose with these obscure details is to amuse (soothe?) myself. I had a good time with this project. I’ve been such a fan of the InPolySons label and Klimperei especially, for so many decades, I was only too happy to give something back. I made them pay me in music, and was well compensated. And happily for me, they loved the result. Again, enjoy the music here.


And check out my spring courses including one for high schoolers. Drawing cartoon figures and putting them in situations and stories is supremely gratifying. Why should I have all the fun?