Thibault Barillon of Robocobra Quartet explain why he grew petri dishes of fungus to illustrate their 100-track release.
When I was a student, I shared a room with a lovely bloke, but he did have some unsavoury habits. For instance, he had a pint glass by his bed and his ambition over the course of several weeks was to gradually fill it to the top with his own phlegm (he was a heavy smoker). I can’t remember exactly how far he got, but it was pretty far advanced. (My brain seems to have blocked out the details, which is probably a sign I needed psychic protection at this point.)
So when I first saw the artwork for Belfast group Robocobra Quartet’s 100-track album Hundred Pieces, my mind immediately went to unpleasant places. But thankfully, it turns out the contents of those images didn’t come from the band members’ bodies; they were produced through something of a home science project.
Robocobra Quartet, whose unique sound combines influences from jazz, hardcore punk and contemporary classical, was inspired to create the 100-track, five-hour record by Serbian artist Marina Abramović, whom the Evening Standard described as “perhaps the single most important figure in performance art”. So it seems appropriate that they took an equally experimental approach to the cover art.
A dish served cold
It all came about because, while writing the album, saxophonist Thibault Barillon started growing 100 petri dishes of fungus at home… as you do.
“One day I just bought some agar plates and started experimenting,” he recalls. “I found joy in inventing my own techniques for what type of mould would grow from different organic matter I’d put on the plate a few days earlier. This started before we knew Hundred Pieces would become a thing, without grand plans or intent.”
As time went by, the band became more aware of the parallels with Thibault’s petri dish process and the process of recording the album: namely, “chance-based moments and letting songs find themselves, melodies and riffs as spores spreading and growing, the cross-pollination, the joy of the process and the beauty of art taking a life of its own that the artist hadn’t intended.”
As each petri dish turned into a unique riot of colour and organic growth, each was shot exactly the same way, from exactly the same angle: dead-centre, in a square white-background frame. “The petri dishes were an exploration of beauty in the natural world, scientific drawings and experiments that touch us emotionally without an artist’s intent being behind it,” explains Thibault. Some dishes were shot again days or weeks later as the cultures developed further, reflecting similar dynamics in the recording of the album.
Now each of these 100 images will accompany one of the 100 tracks on the album, and a rapid-fire GIF cycling through them will be used as the Spotify canvas for the key track, Haha, which drops in about a week.
No need for a moodboard
To me, the most interesting part is that none of this was briefed, storyboarded, or moodboarded into existence. It was just grown in a home, on a whim, and only later did the band notice it was already telling the same story as the music.
For a band whose press notes proudly state the album was “created with absolutely zero use of AI”, there’s an irony to the fact that this cover was made, in a sense, generatively. But while the band leaned into the chaos of nature, they also kept a level of control by imposing a strict photographic system. It’s often in these spaces between anarchy and a clear vision that creativity springs forth most effectively.
It’s also worth noting that none of this required a large budget, a team of experts or a professional brainstorming session. And perhaps that’s exactly why this album’s artwork probably won’t look like any other when it’s released in November.
