‘It's the newness and optimism of it. Then it starts going grey and rainy and decaying.’
- David Nolan
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Grief, coincidence and Asterix the Gaul - how artist Michael Cooke became the go-to illustrator for the Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan electronic music project.
The aesthetic of Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development - aka electronic musician Gordon Chapman-Fox - is a vital part of the appeal. The sound is a series of curated soundscapes - 'a musical experiment in civic planning ' according to Chapman-Fox. The album covers and inner sleeves show a hopeful, brochure-esque vision of an ideal for living that never quite arrived. Glossop artist Michael Cooke has collaborated with Chapman-Fox on three Warrington-Runcorn albums, including the forthcoming Industrial Growth. Astonishingly, before the collaboration, Michael had barely lifted a pencil since leaving Manchester Metropolitan University in 1997. Michael and Gordon talk to Cult Manchester’s David Nolan about their developing working relationship.
Michael: I went to Manchester Met to study illustration. I left in '97... then I didn't draw in any serious capacity for more than 20 years. Why? Because my dad died. It was two weeks before the birth of my son, Kyle. It was an emotional time - I just stopped and became a father. I did draw occasionally and tried to get back into the art world, but my heart just wasn't in it. In 2019 I came up with an idea for a short story, a graphic novel. It was about my experiences growing up in Runcorn New Town. I was mad on Asterix and I used to imagine that he lived in my village. I wrote a story and sent it off to the copyright owners of Asterix the Gaul. They told me to stop in no uncertain terms, to never pursue it. Copyright is copyright. So, I changed my story to the history of Runcorn New Town. As I was doing research, I came across this website. No explanation of what it was; turned out it was for Gordon's forthcoming album. I contacted him and said, by sheer coincidence, I'm doing a graphic novel about Runcorn New Town and showed him some illustrations. He liked them and said, will you do the next album for me? So, that's how I got involved in it.
Gordon: Michael contacted me after the release of my first album, Interim Report, March 1979 in 2021. He told me how much the music captured the sensation of Runcorn he remembered as a youth, the sodium lights, the factory glare, the rain, the quickly fading glow of the new. Michael’s comments really validated what I was doing and also encouraged me to dig deeper into the research of the New Towns movement, and how it particularly worked in Warrington and Runcorn. I didn’t grow up in Warrington or Runcorn. I’m a Chorley and Wigan lad. But I remembered the occasional visit, so having Michael’s knowledge behind me really pushed me as an artist.
Michael: I moved to the Runcorn New Town in '76 when I was five years old, and our estate, Brookvale, was just being built. I remember the brand-newness - the tarmac had just been laid. The concrete was white, it wasn't grey. The trees were little shrubs. So, that's what I got from the first album - it's the newness and optimism of it. Then it starts going grey and rainy and decaying.
Gordon: When I’m working on a new album, I often have a general concept for a theme for that album, such as community or public services, and I’ll ask Michael to develop some ideas for artwork based on those themes. Michael has contributed artwork on two of my six albums so far - Districts, Roads, Open Space and Your Community Hub, and he really captured the themes I was trying to capture.
Michael: He says, just draw the illustrations. Only line drawing, no colour. And he'll colour it and design it. So, he does all the design work and the lettering.
Gordon: He’ll often put details in the illustrations that surprise me and I adore. On the Your Community Hub album, there’s an illustration of people sat on one of the moulded plastic chairs in Runcorn Shopping City, and there’s a punk reading 2000AD, and that’s his brother. It’s such a real memory of that place.
Michael: When we moved to Runcorn, that's when punk was coming out. My brother Dave started getting into punk. And I remember the day when he bought a radio back and was listening to John Peel playing The Damned and The Clash.
Gordon: As well as making the music, I also design my own album sleeves, and that can often happen quite early in the process - having a visual concept can help form the music. It’s an ouroboros of inspiration! So having ideas from Michael can really help feed into the creative process. Normally, Michael will send me some rough sketches and flesh them out. For the upcoming album, Industrial Growth, Michael had worked on some more abstract illustrations with shadowy figures, splatters of ink drop and an almost German Expressionist heightened realism. This really, really suited where I wanted to go with this album - in fact, I insisted I wanted to use Michael’s first sketches before he developed the idea any further. They just really clicked with me. It’s the first album that doesn’t have any vintage photos of New Towns on the cover; it’s all Michael’s artwork. It was so strong and really worked with the darker mood I was aiming for with this album, it was such a perfect combination.
Michael: I had a life changing event last year. My son Kyle passed away very suddenly. It's a shock to the system. I’m still getting over it… well, I’m never going to get over it. And it changed my artwork style. I just got a spray can and started spraying things in black paint. And Gordon said, I like these. I really want to use these for the next album, because it's darker. It just came about because of what I was going through. The music's shifted, the album's all black, rather than yellows and greens. And it suits the mood of how Runcorn has changed. After I had the graphic novel idea in 2019 I haven't stopped drawing or being creative. I'm doing this to honour the loss of my son.
Michael is still working on his Runcorn New Town graphic novel. You can follow his progress on Instagram here.
The new Warrington-Runcorn album Industrial Growth will be released in October. Details here.
