4th February 2016

Interview: Kevin King, founder of Secret 7”

- by Ali Gitlow

Since 2012, the London-based record sleeve design project Secret 7” has brought together seminal musicians and first-rate visual artists in the name of philanthropy. It works like this: once a year, the project’s founders Kevin King and Jordan Stokes choose seven tracks and press each one to 7” vinyl records 100 times. They then invite artists, illustrators and graphic designers from all over the world to create artwork for one of the songs, and the 700 selected designs are produced. After a month-long exhibition they’re sold for £50 a pop, with proceeds going to a charitable organisation. Buyers are unaware which artists have created the sleeves, or even which songs they’re for, until bringing the records home and opening them.

Kevin came up with the concept while he was working as part of the insight team at Universal Music Group. The company’s staff were challenged to think of interesting ways to fundraise for Teenage Cancer Trust, the charity it had pledged to support that year. Kevin decided to get involved, and wanted to make full use of the greatest asset at his fingertips: an expansive catalog of recorded music. The project was an immediate hit, growing more ambitious each time and setting up shop in various east London locations. After 2 years, Kevin left Universal to concentrate solely on Secret 7” (which still counts the company as one of its partners). In the spring of 2015 the exhibition and sale moved to Somerset House, where a whopping 22,000 visitors turned up to check out and purchase the records.

What draws these sorts of crowds is, of course, the top-notch music associated with Secret 7”. With such an amazing archive available to him, Kevin is careful to choose older songs alongside newer material – 2016’s crop of talent includes icons like Etta James and John Lennon as well as younger bands such as Tame Impala and CHVRCHES. In the past, sleeves have been designed by art world giants like Ai Weiwei, Peter Blake, Gilbert & George, Yoko Ono, Paul Smith, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Martin Parr, Gavin Turk and many more. For any creatives out there interested in taking part, this year’s sleeve design submissions close on 2 March, and then the exhibition will take place from 8 April to 1 May at Sonos Studio in Shoreditch. There will be talks, workshops and special events going on at the space, too, before the big sale on 2 May (which will see proceeds go to Amnesty International UK). To celebrate the fifth installment of Secret 7”, we had a chat with King recently to find out how things are gearing up:

What inspired the format of Secret 7”?

The idea was inspired by a trip to the RCA’s Secret sale. And the way that we could use recorded music and our relationships with artists, but not necessarily asking too much of them. That’s kind of the beauty. At the very least we need them to agree to us using their track and donating the proceeds of it to charity.

How do you select the musicians and tracks?

Every year we like to have a sonic mix of genres and time periods. There’s always old with brand new. We had Ben Howard in our first year, then HAIM, Lorde, and this year we’ve got Jack Garratt. The selection process is largely down to myself. It was when I was working at Universal, and it still is now that I’ve left. They are happy to give us the freedom to curate it as we’d like, and give us the support and advice when we need it. It makes for a really nice design challenge to have sleeves for say Public Enemy mixed in with other for Nick Drake, it brings about a real spread of different designs and makes for a fun game of guess who.

Do the musicians take part in the process?

Every year we ask them to help us spread the word, especially to their fans. They’re the best medium to get our message out there to a wider audience. Sometimes the musicians are involved in greater ways. In the first year Robert Smith from The Cure wanted to approve all the artwork and was quite keen to go through all the selections. He seemed to dislike most of my shortlist and replaced with his own. Which is fine. He didn’t seem to like any that featured his face, which is why we ran into trouble. David Shrigley did seven different sleeves, all of his face, but slightly different. Because he has such an iconic face you can draw it badly seven different ways and it still looks like him. Not that I think it’s bad work! I think it’s great. Robert and a number of other musicians have also created artwork for the exhibition too.

How do you get visual artists involved? Is it a process of both open submissions as well as cherry-picking bigger ‘names’?

About half of the 700 sleeves in the exhibition come via our open submission. Usually we’ll receive about 5,000 designs via our website. We also put design packs into record stores across the country and get back a number of interesting ones through that medium. And then the other half are people that we invite directly.

In terms of artists and designers, prior to starting Secret 7” I had zero knowledge. Music, I was fine, I knew where to go and I was comfortable. But when it came to designers I was not. So there was a lot of trawling sites like It’s Nice That. What was really nice about the design world was that it quickly became something that got a lot of momentum via people just talking about it. We met an illustration agency called Handsome Frank and they got all the people that they represent involved. We met the Peepshow Collective in the first year and they continue to support us every single year. They’ve even helped DJ and live draw at a few of our opening nights. In a way, the first couple of years was a nice, organic spread through the first core group of people that I identified as wanting to have in the show. And then every year we build onto that.

I am always open to people suggesting designers for us to check out, especially ones that like to do something physical. That’s an area of the exhibition where we’ve been getting more and more crazy interpretations of what a one-of-a-kind record sleeve can be. Last year Non-Format suspended Peter Gabriel’s record for “Sledgehammer” in a piece of concrete, so you’d have to use a sledgehammer to get it out. We’ve had sleeves made of wood, metal, felt. We had a big wig once that contained the record inside. That was, er, interesting.

This year, you are supporting Amnesty International UK. How do you decide which charities to partner with?

Like the tracks it’s always a mix. We begin each year by drawing up a personal shortlist and getting suggestions from our community. It does tend to be ones that have a link to music and art. Choosing Amnesty this year was a reflection of watching the goings on around the world. They have a great history in the arts too. They’ve got a really nice team we met with a number of time and I had a feeling we could put on a good show together.

In years gone by we integrated the charity differently in the show depending on what it is they do and how it can fit. For example, in our second year we had a lot of the young people supported by Art Against Knives involved in the production of the show – from photography to graphic design and working at the exhibition. One guy called Kay evened landed himself an internship at Universal afterward, which made Jord and I so happy.

I think there was a big learning curve for us in the first year – we wanted to weave the charity in so it would not feel like a charity event. I now like to think of Secret 7” as fundraising with an emphasis on fun; something people can participate in whether that’s their time, skills or cash.

What can people expect from the sale on 2 May?

There’s always a core group of people that queue out over night. There’s not, like, tons – I don’t want to put people off. Most normal people just come early in the morning. Basically don’t turn up when doors open 10am and not expect to be at the back of a big queue. What’s really nice is that we have got to know a lot of the people that queue overnight. It was very civilized last year, I left Somerset House to them sharing cheese and booze around a big table. Some years we’ve slept inside the venue, partly so that we’re there if they need us, and also partly probably because we weren’t ready so we had to work an all-nighter! Expect me looking very tired and emotional.

secret-7.com