This is an artwork commission I worked on in early 2022 for Ocular Bats’ new album. The idea was to create a piece of work that was filled with details that represented the tracks on the album, so people could look over the art whilst they’re listening and find things that are visual representations of the audio they’re listening to.


I had a lot of fun listening to the music and having a back and forth conversation with Ocular Bats over what we felt best suited each track, trying to find details/events/scenarios that felt different from one another but also felt like they were a part of the same world. Overall there are 8 tracks on the album, and they’re all captured in a moment somewhere within the drawing. Some moments are big, other moments are small. There are also other details built within the drawing (I mean it wouldn’t feel like an occupied world if there weren’t other things going on) which I think is quite nice as it allows people looking over the art/listening to the album to find their own interpretation of the tracks, and find their own visual representation of the music.

One of the details I enjoyed revisiting/including in the work was the use of a standard pig-pen cipher throughout the drawing. All the signage/billboards/adverts that feature in the piece are all translatable, so if you can read the cipher, or if you have the curiousity to translate it, then you’ll be able to read what they all say!



Also, I’m not going to tell you which specific details line up with which specific track, that’s your job to find out! But the track listings are as follows:

1. Weird Trees
2. Sirius Express
3. Ancient Beacon
4. Trans-Substantialities Across Potentialities
5. Wait, Why Don’t We Just Fly Around Each Other?
6. Robochase!
7. Suns-set Over Terminus Station
8. Solstice Festival

“Layover in Tar’hai IV” is available to purchase by clicking here, on Ocular Bats’ BandCamp page, be sure to check it out!