Tusken Raiders – Bantha Trax (unused)

• RELEASED: 1995
• FORMAT: 12″
• LABEL: Clear
• CAT No.: CLR407
• DESIGN CREDITS: Openmind
• PHOTOGRAPHY:
• SPOTTERS DELIGHT:
• EXTRA ZEN: Discogs page

Back in the early 90′s I did a fanzine with my housemates (the beginnings of Openmind actually) called ‘MindFood’ which focused on ambient and electronic music. It only got to 4 issues but in that time we featured a cookery recipe from Richard D.James, features on Irdial and Scanner and an interview with Mike Paradinas aka Mu-ziq / Tusken Raiders / Jake Slazenger etc etc.

I went to his house in Wimbledon (I think) shortly after he had released ‘Tango N Vectif’ and ‘Bluff Limbo’, did a short interview and took some pictures of his set up and general bedroom/studio. I cut these up and made a montage for the fanzine and reused the images for this cover that I knocked up on spec for Clear’s second release. I’d gotten the Tusken Raiders tag lettering from Hal, who did their general layout, and did an opposite to their first release – the Jedi Knights -  an all black cover with white lettering instead of the other way around. The Bantha Trax lettering was supposed to look like tracks made in sand and I was pretty pleased with it overall but they had their own ideas.

Incidentally Mike P released a second Tusken Raiders single on another label later on that was very black in general tone so maybe I was onto something.