Jerkcurb invites us into his world of noirish dystopia and mischief

As both musician and illustrator, South London-born and based Jerkcurb (AKA Jacob Read) frequently sees his disparate creative disciplines collide and inform one another, instilling in both a unified atmosphere of noirish dystopia.

“To me art and music are like two snakes wrapped round the same branch of a tree; wrestling, making love, biting each other on the tails,” he says.

For his latest single, Night On Earth, musician and illustrator Jerkcurb has produced a deliciously retrofuturistic sleeve design, featuring a troupe of androids dancing on the stage of a noticeably empty theatre. Pink and yellow tones invade the scene, evoking the title track’s pervasive sense of twilight nihilism.

The reverse sleeve also carries a piece of his illustrative work for the the b-side Midnight Snack, featuring a carnivorous nuclear family at a picnic bench, tucking down to lunch amidst the jungle foliage of an otherwise undisturbed and overgrown eden. “A common theme in some of my work is this idea of an uninhabited world, a post-apocalypse or something… juxtapositions between things I find really beautiful and ugly,” he says.

Jerkcurb’s previous release, Somerton Beach, was accompanied by a self-animated video. Illustrated in hues of green, purple and solid shadowy black, the dim incandescence imbues a sense of hopeless hopefulness to the nostalgic imagery of 1950s stardom and the American dream. Dark and eerie, the track unfolds at a languid pace with the story of a lonely, balding middle-aged man dreaming of stardom, or simply life behind the walls of his bedsit, wryly laced in ennui.