“Time To See The Light” is a record of friendship and complicity. For this new album, Adrien Varachaud gathers around him musicians with major careers such as Kirk Lightsey, Darryl Hall, Famoudou Don Moye and Archie Shepp. As Jean Buzelin writes, this album is “(…) deeply rooted in the spiritual and social roots of jazz.” A story of roots, then, of bonds and transmission: for Adrien Varachaud, this record embodies “the great tradition, forged alongside renowned Black musicians, often much older than him, who form a large family into which he was welcomed. He has fully absorbed the sound and the soul of African-American culture, a rare experience and a remarkable adventure for a musician of his generation.”
We wanted this lineage to be visible on the cover as well. Because jazz has its own graphic tradition, every bit as strong as its musical one: that of the Blue Note covers of the 1950s and 60s, where the photographs of Francis Wolff and the layouts of Reid Miles established a visual grammar that has become legendary. A black-and-white photograph tightly framed on the musician, typographic restraint, a composition that dares to embrace empty space and asymmetry: a simple, direct language, free of ornament, in the image of the music it dresses.
Our mission was to translate this musical collaboration into a cover that belongs to this heritage without imitating it. The portraits by Philippe Lévy-Stab, captured in the intimacy of the session, carry the album: they reveal the faces, the hands, the instruments, this “large family” gathered around Adrien Varachaud. Typography and layout come next, in dialogue with the image, with the economy of means and the compositional rigour inherited from the label’s golden age. From vinyl to CD to booklet, the object thus recovers what classic covers held most precious: a graphic presence that fits in the hand, and that already tells the story of the music before the record even touches the turntable.
