By JOSHUA THOMAS

C-S-E Editor

Recently, I had the honor of creating the promotional material, album and single art for an extraordinarily talented, Utica-based musician/singer/songwriter, Anthony Bianco. The art I created was for his solo musical project, Waails. The most recent Waails album, Paradise I — the cover for which I shot locally — was released Tuesday, so I thought it was an appropriate time to talk about the album cover and its creation.

If you’re from the area, you may instantly recognize the location on the cover of Paradise I. It was taken in Yosts, between Fonda and Palatine Bridge, at the fire training facility. I was driving home from The Recorder office on a Wednesday morning, taking a route I usually don’t, as I normally take the NYS Thruway, when I glanced over and noticed the most striking scene. The lot, which normally only contains a concrete building with a wooded mountain behind it, looked a bit different. There was a wrecked car sitting out front, and with everything covered in fog, I saw a scene that was instantly striking — both atmospheric and haunting.

While it was just luck, to some extent, that I stumbled upon this scene, I’ve actually been wanting to photograph that cement building for years. I never got around to it, weirdly enough, because I’m terrified of rattlesnakes. I had a conversation with my friend one evening where we joked that a rattlesnake would bite me as soon as I got the perfect shot, and I could never get that image out of my head. That morning though, the rattlesnakes never crossed my mind. All I could think about was capturing that otherworldly scene.

By this point, Anthony had already written Paradise I on a reed organ, and had begun programming skeletal beats for the EP on his computer. Because I’ve been a good friend of Anthony’s since the beginning of his musical career about five years ago, he invited me over the evening after I shot the photo to preview the album in an intimate, live setting.

Playing the five songs from the EP for me on the organ, he conjured post-apocalyptic landscapes, bent metal, fog and morning air. Realizing that the landscape he captured sonically was eerily reminiscent of the one I captured visually, I showed Anthony the picture. He was instantly enamored and asked me to create a cover image for the in-progress album.

At this point, our artistic collaborations have finally reached a level of synergy I’ve not previously experienced. I used to create visuals for his old band Draculatron, and photograph his live shows, but our Waails collaborations have been truly inspiring for both parties, the music informing the imagery, and vice versa.

If you’re interested to check out the music on Paradise I, or in viewing the full-length album cover I created for Anthony’s self titled release (shot in Nelliston, released October 31), all of Waails’ music and album art is available for free download at www.waails.bandcamp.com.