Music Declares Emergency

posted by Emily Gosling December 9, 2020

Music can do a lot of things. According to Madonna, it makes the people come together; for Missy Elliot it makes you lose control; for Julie Andrews, it’s the very thing that makes the hills alive. ABBA? They’re just bloody grateful for it. And as Hot Chip’ synth botherer Joe Goddard would have it, music is the answer. But the question on everyone’s lips, possibly, is: can music and the music industry “drive forward public understanding of the climate emergency and pressure governments to take immediate action on climate and biodiversity loss?”

Charity Music Declares Emergency blummin’ hopes so. The organisation was founded in July last year by music business executives and artists to forge a cohesive, industry wide response to the climate emergency—their declaration of a Climate and Ecological Emergency has over 3,500 signatures now. That document calls for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and pledges music industry action on environmental sustainability.

At the time of its formation, independent group Music Declares set about organising an industry wide declaration of Climate and Ecological Emergency signed by leading artists including Thom Yorke, Stanley Donwood, Jamie Reid, Paul Cook, and Anthony Burrill as well as businesses within the UK music industry, calling for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and pledging industry action on environmental sustainability. At the heart of its work is the belief that “the music community can drive forward public understanding and pressure government to take immediate action on climate and biodiversity loss.” This goal is currently being bolstered by a line of t-shirts that raise awareness and funds for the organization, created by big names whose work has frequently married visual art and music, including Jamie Reid and Anthony Burrill.

While it might seem odd for a climate crisis organisation to be making anything physical at all, we’re assured that all the shirts are made through a process that’s “sustainable and circular,” using natural materials and renewable energy. People are also encouraged to send shirts that are “at the end of their life” to online retailer Teemill to be reincorporated into the manufacturing process and go round the cycle again.

The series launched with a design from letterpress megadude Anthony Burrill, and brought his bold letterforms to life beautifully in stark monochrome. His tees were followed by designs from Jamie Reid.

Even if you don’t think you know Reid’s name, you’ll almost certainly know his work: it pretty much defined what we think of today as a “punk”. It was Reid who, back in 1977, created the sleeve for Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, as well as the designs for singles “Anarchy in the UK”, “God Save The Queen”, “Pretty Vacant” and “Holidays in the Sun”. The scrappy, ransom-note style cutout lettering and subversion of found images (Reid’s placement of a safety pin in the nose and swastikas in the eyes of the Queen, taken from an image shot by photographer Cecil Beaton for the God Save The Queen sleeve, for instance) proved perennial signifiers of all things punk (or punk-aping) since the artist first deployed them. While they’re best known in Reid’s Sex Pistols work, he’d first created them in his designs for the alternative political magazine he ran for five years, Suburban Press.

While Reid’s hardly rested on his laurels since, it’s little surprise that his design for Music Declares Emergency’s ‘No Music On A Dead Planet’ T-shirt range draws on that instantly recognisable punk aesthetic.

The latest release is designed by Thom York of Radiohead fame and his long term artistic collaborator Stanley Donwood. The pair met at Exeter University’s art school, and first worked together in 1994 when Donwood worked on the single My Iron Lung from that same year, and created the cover for 1995 album The Bends. He’s gone on to work on designs for the band’s album ever since, as well as Yorke’s solo projects, inclidong Atoms for Peace.

Whether with Radiohead, or across projects like his ongoing work for Glastonbury, the linocut graphic novel Bad Island, JG Ballard book covers or large-scale installation, his work is frequently disquieting in the best possible way. The same goes for this t-shirt design; but then again, the climate emergency is pretty unnerving.

Yorke and Donwood’s design launched last week, and the Music Declares says that “further high-profile designers” will have their creations on sale in the coming weeks—all bearing the same ‘No Music On A Dead Planet’ slogan that spearheads its work.