Kevin King

0:14[Applause]

0:20hello, I'm Kevin. Or as I now like to be known, the man with the most wanted seven ines in London. I'm I'm not here to talk about my body parts. , but something I I started up 5 years ago called Secret 7. It's an annual event that combines music and art for a good cause. I'm going to talk about it history, reveal a few of my favorite stories, and touch on what we've got in store this year. So, first about the concept. Each year, we take seven tracks and press each one 100 times to a 7-in vinyl.

0:56We then invite creatives from around the world to interpret the tracks in their own style. 700 one-of-a-kind sleeves are then exhibited and sold on the final day of the exhibition for £50 each. The trick is that you don't know who's created the sleeve or which song it's for until you've parted with your cash. And this is a first come, first- served affair. And this is a snapshot of our queue the morning of the sale last year. And this is a nice moment where someone discovered that they bought Underworlds Born Slippy last year with artsy courtesy of Martin P. And so yeah, every penny profited from Secret 7 goes to a charity each year. But to start with, I just wanted to look at the musicians that we've worked with over our five years or four here.

1:53So we've had mainstream favorites from the cures fried him in love and Elton John's Benny and the Jets to emerging artists like Ben Howard and Lord. So it's back in 2011 that I was working at Universal Music in the Insight team when as a group of staff we were tasked with thinking up how we might raise extra money for their charity partner that year. And within the company, we did a lot of things like cake sales, , bingo nights, and I foolishly signed up for a three peaks challenge once that I thought we were missing a trick, not making more of our greatest asset that was the recorded music. So, inspired by a trip to RCA's postcard sale, the idea for Secret 7 was born. And that's when I was introduced to Jordan here.

2:40Back then he was a designer at an agency in Manchester called Music who worked with Universal. Both of us were encouraged to work on the project. Though neither of our employers or for us for that matter knew quite how much time it would consume. Quite quickly I was at the office every day and dragging in my friends at the weekends to help. And this photo was taken as we were setting up the show last year.

3:07I think we look terrible. We're knackered and Jordan's also wrapped up even though it's springtime in London and that's because after the first year he moved to Sydney. At that time he sold it to me that he'd be living in the future and everything would be done ahead of schedule. I'd wake up and it would be there for me. It's not quite panned out like that but we have managed to make it work with the help of Skype. It's actually quite funny to think that I've met this guy literally a handful of times even though we're five years into the project now. So working at Universal put me in a great position to approach huge names like The Cure and Jordan's handiwork made us look like we knew what we were doing. We really didn't. , I read an article by Alex Culwood, the co-founder of the Ace Hotel, in which he spoke about his team's blind ambition, how the ACE venture was led by naivity and instinct, and how they just executed things as they thought they should be executed.

4:12And that really rang true with Secret 7, how we set it up, and to some extent how we continue to grow it. So, I was well positioned on the music front to make approaches, but it was the opposite when it came to designers. I'm really not exaggerating when I say I knew nobody. , and it's something that we've really developed in ways that I never imagined over the past four years. These days, roughly half the designs in our show are sourced from people we invite directly to contribute. From the beginning, I was really strategic about this. I'd mind sites like It's Nice and approach agencies like Hansen Frank to open the door to large numbers of people. I then found people like Peep Show Collective and Pete Fowler and that their involvement naturally spread to others and the greats just started coming from word of mouth and and so on. So in the first year getting David Shrigley on board was a really huge moment for us.

5:09This was one of the seven sleeves he did for the cures Friday I'm in love. All different but essentially the same crude image of Robert Smith's iconic face which when I showed to Robert because he liked to approve everything he hated and had to plead with him to have them in because it was a big deal for us to have Shriley's name attached to the show. The second year exploded as I honed my detection skills, persistence and persuasion. I met these guys over a kebab and I handed them our our design pack.

5:49I also saw that Elton John that year dedicated a gig to Iwwayiwayi.

5:54So I asked their management to hook us up and that's how that one unfolded as well.

6:00So the list of unbelievable names does continue to grow each year. And we've also got better at making some content with them. Like this cute picture of Paul, though we've not quite perfected it.

6:15So we were invited to visit the Chapman Brothers studio one year to get a press shot. And as you can see, Jake was there. But Dos wasn't, which we didn't realize until we got there.

6:24So that's me behind the sleeve thinking on my feet and trying to channel Do Chapman's body. , and with a press deadline looming, it was pointed out to us that in the background of this already failure of a photo was a child with a penis on his head. And raising money for Warchild that year, I was strongly advised it would have to go. So, I think I rang Jordan at 3:00 a.m. His time, asked him to retouch the dick out of the shop.

6:57, and by the time he'd finished, we just thought it was getting a bit silly. So, needless to say, we didn't use this shot, but the show's more about the show is more than just a handful of established names. , you're not going to be able to read this, but it just is there to sort of illustrate the scale of the project and the number of people that we get involved designing artwork. So, the other half of our exhibition comes from an open submission, fans of the musicians and designers that we're just not aware of to invite. So, we now get an incredible 5,000 submissions a year, which Jordan and I pick from, which is never an easy task. In fact, last year, one genius who failed to make it into the show made a Tumblr called Reject 7s seeking out and promoting the work of all those who didn't make it into the show, which we thought was brilliant.

7:51I think the fact that anyone can be involved and the anonymity behind the project really contributes to the appeal and success of Secret 7. And have a few nice stories about the open submission process that I wanted to share. , so this is a full page article we got in the Guardian on a Saturday. I sent them a selection of sleeves that I thought just look nice together with no regards to who was behind the artwork. And he about a year later, we got a great tweet from a lad called Phil whose artwork would featured here. And it turned out he was just a six former who just likes Photoshop. ♪

8:27[Applause]

8:29And then there's Carl, who in 2014 became our youngest ever sleeve designer, age 10. And on the right here is Mark. And that same year, he started our longest ever queue for the sale, sitting down 36 hours ahead of the doors. And Mark's always looking for those bigname contributors, which this was mission accomplished for him as he got Jake and Dos Chapman's artwork for Massive Attacks Karmakoma, but he also got Carl's interpretation of the same track, which I just think was brilliant. And but he is looking slightly less smug. And this is a guy called David who comes down from Invenesse every year.

9:17, Light Mark is one of about two dozen overnight campers that we've become quite close with. And his, this is him with one of his purchases in 2014. And later on, we became aware that his partner Caroline actually made him a Lego record store. And in this, she recreates all his secret seven purchases to go inside. And this is Lego David. [Applause]

9:40This is him with a sleeve by felt mistress. And this is Lego David recreating the photo booth. And so Caroline picked up a design pack from her local record store last year. And with a bit of art direction from us, she created this 3D beauty that went into our show. And over the years, we've seen and encouraged a rise in unconventional notions of what a record sleeve can be. We've had them made from wood, felt, metal, hair, and all sorts of other materials. So, I just wanted to flick through a few of these with you.

10:14This was a lenticular pair by Matt Dong and Orlando from the McBaes last year. And it's her own eyes that creepily followed you around the show. This clever one revealed a lovely marbled artwork when exposed to the heat. I thought this was a great use of type and texture from the counter press. And wrapping this one in the morning was a bit of a shock.

10:42, this was our heaviest sleeve which actually saw the record set inside a solid concrete block. And it's really hard for me to pick my all-time favorite. , this one by Boneface last year always comes to mind when I'm asked the question. I just think when you compare this to nonformats effort which I just showed you, it just illustrates how wonderfully different two people can interpret a track. So, in our time, we've gone from exhibiting for a weekend anywhere that would welcome us with open arms, like here at Mother to putting on a month-long show at Somerset House last year, where we welcomed over 22,000 people.

11:25We also developed a program of events, including a screening of a film, four talks, and something we called the public records, where visitors to the exhibition were invited to cut a performance life to vinyl. Another mad idea that we weren't sure would come together. , but it did and it produced some more really lovely moments.

11:44We also took on a few new partners to accompany Universal like Monotype. Again, this is with little personal experience in the world of partnerships, but together we made some beautiful typographic prints from last year's track titles. Eric Spieman and Spin were amongst those invited to work on these and they really complimented our show by giving us a new story to tell and product to sell for the charity during our extended exhibition. Which brings me nicely back around to the root of Secret 7. To date, we've raised over £130,000 for charities we admire, including Teenage Cancer Trust, Art Against Knives, Warchild, and Nordof Robbins. And this is a girl called Helen, who is supported by Nordof Robbins. , she was a really great character who made me kiss her hand every time we met, which I felt quite uncomfortable about. , but I like to think we've developed Secret 7 , as a sort of fundraising with an emphasis on fun, a conscious opposition to fundraising with buckets for loose change, something people can participate in, whether it's their time, their skill, or their cash, and pushing to create greater awareness of our cause through genuine engagement.

12:56And finally, as I mentioned at the start of the talk, earlier this month, we launched details of our 2016 project. And this year, we're pressing the following tracks and raising money for Amnesty International UK. We've also moved back home to Shortorditch with Sonos Studios just around the corner just to keep the project feeling fresh. We'll be starting our residency there on Sunday where we're doing a sleeve making workshop with Pete Fowler in which anything made in the workshop can go into the exhibition in April. So if you'd like to get involved designing a sleeve, you've got until the 2nd of March. Full details are on our website for digital submissions and we'll be putting a few packs in Sister Ray, Sonos, and Rough Trade. They look a bit like this if you want to pick up a blank sleeve. Cheers. [Applause]