- RELEASED: 1 Sept 1999
- FORMAT: 12″ / Ltd 12″ promo
- LABEL: NINJA TUNE
- CAT No.: ZEN1284 / ZEN1284P
- DESIGN: Openmind
- SPOTTERS DELIGHT: Etched one-sided promo 12″ with Arc remix of Channel One Suite
- EXTRA ZEN: ninjatune page / BUY
Essentially a double A side, I wanted this to have two covers, one for each song rather than a front and back. With the new Cinematic typeface I had fun overlaying different sizes and then printing them out on tracing paper before overlaying them and rescanning it all for some background texture. ‘The Big Sea’ in the title was actually John Coltrane (Big ‘C’) but J didn’t want to allude to that and, one night in a local restaurant eating a seafood salad, I found a whole baby squid in the dish. I wrapped it up, took it home and scanned it for a version of the sleeve that I still like but didn’t make it. As with most of J’s covers I went through lots of versions of things before arriving at something he liked.
The ‘Channel One Suite’ side was always going to be a mixing desk, initially echoing the receding lines of the ‘Diabolus’ cover and still not a million miles away from it. I experimented with having faders in circular formations and a load of different things before we were both happy with the designs.