Link: Monkeytown
"...We found out about the Shakers — they were similar to the Quakers in the 19th century. They tried to reconsider religion and use America as new ground to do that... They had a very tolerant idea of the non-material world and the idea of Jesus. They had this practice where they drew all these weird maps of things that happened to them in a day, including the ghost world and mathematical formulas. And this whole map looked like a score or a diagram to create a machine. So we used this as the album sleeve — that’s a Shaker design."
(MTV Hive)
"...And then, we found those Shakers drawings, which basically we stole… or took as inspiration for the album. And the Shakers were a weird religious sect because men and women in the group were equal; they had the same rights, for within the 19th century, it was quite radical. They were great craftsmen, but also liberal in a way, very un-dogmatic. And they even had this idea of a metaphysical world that they would deal with in drawings, in craftwork, in poems. So we used this kind of worldview for the record."
(Exclaim.ca)
Photos: Steve Loya
