THE ROYAL RITUAL –
PLEASURE HIDES YOUR NEEDS
Full Length Album Released on Vinyl and CD
Brand Identity
Photography
Album Artwork
Merch Design
Website Design
Songwriting
Music Composition
Audio Engineering
Mixing
Videography
THE BRAND
The Royal Ritual wanted a brand that felt steeped in legacy. Something with a distinctly English sense of history, carrying the weight of old cathedrals, aged manuscripts, and wrought-iron craftsmanship. We built that foundation through a classic serif typeface with just enough irregularity to evoke the character of historic English lettering and metalwork.
At its core sits the Old English “R.” Rather than leaving it intact, we broke it apart, reconstructing it from a lowercase, upside-down r and a cross. The cross serves double duty: forming a “T” while symbolizing the fall and re-examination of faith. The result is a mark that feels sacred yet defiant. A perfect reflection of the tension and duality that defines The Royal Ritual.
THE ALBUM ART
For Pleasure Hides Your Needs, two visual interpretations emerged. Rather than choose between them, we embraced both: one for the CD and one for the Vinyl, each capturing a different facet of desire and identity.
The CD artwork explores the multiplicity of self. Using shutter drag photography, we captured the artist mid-emotion: anger, reflection, confusion, all bleeding together in a single frame. The result is ghostlike and raw, revealing the fragmented apparitions of who we become when confronted by our own wants and needs.
The Vinyl artwork shifts from psychological to visceral. Inspired by Marilyn Minter’s provocative intimacy, it captures the artist nude in the shower—pressed against the glass, blurred by water and breath. Each close-up magnifies the collision of pleasure and pain, beauty and vulnerability. Open the vinyl sleeve, and a distorted portrait waits within.
Together, both visual directions trace the emotional arc of the record. Two sides of one story—mirroring the music’s dive into longing, tension, and self-discovery.
THE SOUND
Pleasure Hides Your Needs represents the closing of three personal chapters in musical form. Six new pieces crafted from the foundation of a themed collection of found-sounds, along with two reworked songs that were created long before The Royal Ritual existed, came together with a wide variety of contemporary electronic and acousmatic techniques. The result is a more widely varied sonic palette when compared to the debut album MARTYRS.
The album demonstrates a cinematic approach that is usually more aptly adopted for commissioned compositions, along with an imaginative sound design ethos. The resulting product, however, is a very listenable collection of songs, rather than an exercise in production prowess.
It goes without saying that the songs benefit from being heard in order, as a concept album from start to finish.
Credits
David Lawrie: Song Writing, Music Composition, Audio Engineering, Mixing, Videography, Website Design
Vara Pappas: Art Direction, Brand Identity Design, Photography, Album Artwork, Merch Design
Katie McHardy: Guest Appearance in ‘Modes of Violence’ Video
Andy Wilson: Mastering