R. MICHAEL HENDRIX
R. Michael Hendrix is an American designer, author and musician living in Iceland. This digital exhibit highlights music packaging and related promotional materials from his personal projects.
War is on its Way (2020)
This album was built from tension—anxious swagger, brooding gloom, and a stomp that turns gospel into dread. I wanted the songs to feel like a swirl of unease, isolation, and catharsis, a commentary on America’s violent language and gun culture.
War is on its Way (2020)
This album was built from tension—anxious swagger, brooding gloom, and a stomp that turns gospel into dread. I wanted the songs to feel like a swirl of unease, isolation, and catharsis, a commentary on America’s violent language and gun culture.
The cover reflects this same weight: a sculptural portrait of my daughter framed within itself, a monument to despair and the nation’s self-inflicted traps. I repeated the motif across singles for consistency. The social media graphics were as much reporting as promotion, echoing the chaos of current events.
Magazines (2022)At eight and a half minutes, this track unfolds in movements—chant, bass, guitar sprawl, collapse. It wrestles with media rage, fleeting digital fame, and fractured identity, shifting from ancient choral structure to unhinged tirades before snapping back with a vengeance.
The artwork is a handmade collage of magazines, the head torn and burnt away. For the campaign, I extended the narcisism by creating fictional covers—lyrics as headlines, satire masquerading as gloss. The images blurred critique and absurdity, giving the song’s themes a physical, unsettling avatar.
The artwork is a handmade collage of magazines, the head torn and burnt away. For the campaign, I extended the narcisism by creating fictional covers—lyrics as headlines, satire masquerading as gloss. The images blurred critique and absurdity, giving the song’s themes a physical, unsettling avatar.
Urban Turks Country Jerks (2014)This record was a mash-up of influences: shoegaze, punk, and psychedelia. Slowdive in one moment, Sonic Youth in another, stitched into something raw and off-balance. Its arc moved from noisy bravado to melancholic redemption, holding both grit and air.
The cover mirrored that clash. Photographing on my kitchen table, I paired bone with metal: teeth in a spoon, a wishbone with scissors, a jawbone beside a comb. They were rural and urban at once, stark collisions of texture that echoed the music’s mix of abrasion and space. Together they are a visceral portait of the songs.
The cover mirrored that clash. Photographing on my kitchen table, I paired bone with metal: teeth in a spoon, a wishbone with scissors, a jawbone beside a comb. They were rural and urban at once, stark collisions of texture that echoed the music’s mix of abrasion and space. Together they are a visceral portait of the songs.
Shamblegloss (2021)
This record was a reassembly, a “best-of” stitched from previous albums. Shoegaze shimmer, noise-pop density, melodic undercurrent—the sound was cohesive in its brokenness. It was a way of cataloging an era, both fractured and beautiful.The design came from trash, literally. I scanned cheap “thank you” shopping bags, dry-transfer lettering, envelopes, tags, and government forms. The cacophony of sources became a noisy surface, an ironic wrapper for repurposed songs. Early singles shipped with a risograph poster that later doubled as a cassette cover—a gesture of reuse.
YUKS (2025)
YUKS is uneasy by design. It drifts between art-pop brightness and trip-hop hypnosis, drones and unravelings, tension and release. The record was built to hold chaos and reflection in equal measure, like a dusk that won’t leave.The cover carried that same restlessness. A blurred portrait made by Marino Thorlacius in the Iceland landscape became the anchor, stamped with a single bold YUKS in custom ligature I designed. On the back, the title deteriorates, just as the music does, clarity eroding into tension, resolution never arriving.
Etc. (2010-2013)
I called a record “Shamblegloss,” a fictional, contradictory word that described the music I make. It’s no stretch to say the same of my graphic design, especially for my own records. In this new era of AI-mimickry and polished emptiness, I believe even more strongly that broken is better. r.mh