MATTO, an Italian photographer and graphic designer.
“We wanted to do a magazine that was mainly about contemporary art, but a bit more accessible in terms of the text,” he says. “So we do studio visits and conversations with the artists or designers themselves. We don’t want it to be overly academic, so that it becomes completely impenetrable for anyone to read. We wanted to make a magazine about contemporary art that was a bit more inclusive. When we started the magazine and it went into shops, they had really hard time to placing us in a category. It was quite interesting that sometimes it would like end up in the erotic section, sometimes we would end up in design or architecture. It was interesting how everyone saw it as something different, even though for us contemporary art is the core of it.”
Armour
sounds so specifically Northern - what is it about Preston and Salford, about Lancashire, that inspires the music you make?
Blackhaine: The Lancashire I know is a lost place, trapped between hills and moors. That feeling drives me when I make music, being pressured between nothingness. There’s less sunlight and more rain in Preston, Salford - non of these areas are gentrified yet so it’s a lot more real here for sure.
The record was made over quarantine, how did that shift in living inform
Armour?
Blackhaine: Creatively I don’t think anything changed, I’m used to working on concepts in isolation. In terms of the lockdown it gave me time without distractions to get deeper into my process and research ideas more. Practically this record was created over the internet. Rainy Miller and myself have known each other for around ten years, we’ve always talked about working together but never really had the chance. When lockdown began I sent Rainy the Blackpool voc