For their third release, [DARYL] moved to Idol Records and again asked me to design the artwork. The self-titled album included new recordings of several songs from their debut EP, Communication:Duration. I can't recall whether the band intended it as a fresh start, but the design certainly went in a different direction from the first two releases.

By this time, I'd become increasingly interested in layering and manipulating images, and allowing for happy accidents. The artwork is full of inverted and blurred photographs, reflections in large expanses of plate glass, and scenes that are difficult to identify—especially inverted and especially in black and white. The retro-futurism of the first two albums was still there, but this time it was considerably less recognizable.

Across the imagery, an amorphous field of rhodamine red appears to be taking over, obscuring photographs that were already difficult to make sense of. Reversed out of the field is the dot-matrix lettering "DEFENDER 01." I don't remember where I found the original lettering, though I do remember being drawn to its vaguely technological appearance and its connection to the old arcade game Defender. I'm not sure I considered whether the pink was meant to be a force for good or something more ominous—it might be protecting us from whatever's behind it; then again, maybe it's just another layer of obfuscation.

What strikes me looking at the finished package is how different it is from the band's first two releases, even though I was still playing with many of the same ideas. I can't reconstruct the conversations or decisions that led to it, but I know this: For good or ill, I've never seen another album that looks quite like it.