Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Third Eye View Documentary - EP#3: Concept & Design

Our intention was to create a timeless piece of work, creating our own universe.

Whether it's 100 years ago or 100 years in the future [this album still rocks].

It's a literal work of art that was created by the three people who call themselves Slot Machine.

I listened to the music and let the mood and feelings lead the way. And I knew this is how it should go.

How crazy do we have to be to put so much into this?

It was because of how stubborn and ambitious we are that this album was born. It needed to happen.

Third Eye View talks about our ideas and worldviews on nature, the world, society, love, hatred, and whatnot.

'Third eye' here means every spect of being human. The purity of human emotion.

To me, Third Eye View is all about wisdom, knowledge, and awareness.

It's a third-person perspective.

Like in a movie where we see the story from the all-knowing narrator's point of view.

We're not the lead characters, but the God-like being who knows everything.

This album consists of 14 tracks, and it ranges widely in terms of music styles from light to heavy.

But every song was born out of the questions we asked ourselves: What are we feeling? What are we doing?

Every track talks about some philosophical or thought-provoking concept, not unlike Slot Machine's previous work.

We talk about a lot of stuff: love, politics, and utopia, among other things.

Every time we make a new album, we aim to create a timeless piece of work, our own universe of sorts.

From this latest album to our earlier work, we want them all to be connected.

This is where Odd came in. He and I have known each other since our university days.

He knows my style and my way of thinking, so he can tell what works for us and what doesn't.

I started working for Slot [Machine] because I'm friends with Foet.

We went to the same university and majored in the same field.

And we have a lot in common, like our preferences in films and music.

Foet saw that we speak the same language, that I could translate his ideas into art.

That was when he asked me to work on Grey, and I've been working with them until now.

I want my friend to help out with the art direction that would fit with the music we make.

He has his hand in everything from fonts used for the band name and the song titles, logos, colours,

as well as the albums' packaging: the hexagonal Grey package is a masterpiece, and the triangular Cell, for example.

We saw that it worked very well, not only for us as artists, but also in terms of commercial success, getting recognition and awards.

We want to make that again.

The first time I talked to Foet about this album, he was playing me the demos of the tracks.

After a few songs, I thought, this sounded familiar. And I liked them instantly "Bangkok" and the rest. Then I realised, they have a hint of Cell.

Foet confirmed it, telling me that many of these tracks were written during the making of Cell.

I listened to the music and let the mood and feelings lead the way. And I knew this is the direction we should go.

Fans are familiar with the idea of 'Eye of Wisdom' that we talk about a lot. They know what the triangle hand sign we do means.

Foet has always wanted to use 'eye' symbolism, from the albums Cell to Rainbow.

This 'eye' that we see now is actually an ongoing representation.

But when we were making Rainbow, there was a twist in the concept, and the eye didn't fit with it.

That's why we put it aside. Now for Third Eye View, Foet wanted to bring this eye back.

When I was working on the first single from Third Eye View, "Know Your Enemy", I thought the look should be more modern, more minimal than Cell.

The old design of the eye logo wouldn't be appropriate, so I streamlined the previous logo to get this current one, which gets mocked a bit that it resembles the sharingan from the anime Naruto.

This minimal version fits well with the album fonts and the overall design concept of this album. And that's where the 'Eye of Wisdom' came from.

I've been trying to revamp the Slot Machine font ever since working on Cell or Rainbow.

Even before making this album. But it turned out that the font from Cell fits perfectly well with Slot Machine's personality.

It's become a well-known and recognisable logo. Foet then suggested we make a Thai version of the same font, but that didn't work.

We tried for so long, but couldnt get it to work. That's why we decided to come up with a totally new one.

What was important was that Slot Machine had to be hip.

Next, we made another Thai font to use for all the other album artwork. This was designed by a member of our team, Ham.

The alphabet used in olden times in Thailand was the Khmer script.

It appeared commonly in inscriptions and religious scriptures. This gradually developed into Yantra patterns commonly found today.

I took inspiration from the old script and the current script to create the font for the album artwork.

I also combined the Slot Machine logo and the art style of Yantra to create a new pattern that has never existed before.

You can only find this pattern on the Slot Machine CDs.

"Since the photo set is so beautiful, I want to frame it and hang it on the wall," was the general idea when designing this Box Set.

I wanted to design it based on the idea of having it framed.

That's why the artwork looks a little decorative. Actually, we only have one original ambrotype photo, which the band kept for themselves.

But why should the band be the only people who get to keep it? Other people deserve it, too.

This led to the idea that we should make a miniature frame on the packaging design.

Now every fan gets to own this iconic piece, too.

We want everyone who buys the physical CD to have this photo. So we printed it on acrylic.

Instead of a glass plate, we printed the photo in colour on an acrylic plate. Now everyone gets to own one.

It works.

We're not stingy with the photos. I included more photos from the shoot in the Box Set so you can change the cover photo to your liking.

You can change the photo to Foet, Vit, and Gak in the same frame.

Once you open the cover, you'll find the DigiPack, or the CD package. This was something I continued from Cell.

First you see the jacket, then the triptych package with the members' portraits, which look like old photographs of Foet, Gak, and Vit.

We also include a 52-page photo book.

52 pages? How crazy do we have to be to put that much in there? What was there to put in?

It's a photo book and also a lyric book, with the credits of all the people involved in this album.

You'll see that it took a lot of people to get this done. There will also be extra photos that have never been released before. But there's more.

The actual CD sleeve imitates vinyl packaging. It includes two CDs, one for the English tracks and the other for the Thai versions.

They're gold and silver, mimicking the Thai superstitions of colours that bring wealth and luck.

But my ultimate gift is the souvenir, which is the Slot Machine pha yan (talisman/Yantra cloth).

This is available only to the people who pre-order the album.

It's very special for me because I commissioned this piece of art from an actual pha yan factory.

BNK48 has a handshake event and a photo book? We, a rock band, have pha yan!

There's more. A 40-cm poster is also included in the Box Set, which is the enlarged cover photo of the album.

Now you know how seriously we worked on this album. But Slot [Machine] has to be serious. Anything less than this wouldn't be us.

The photo that uses an ancient technique to take, combined with the modern experimental music, creates a new dimension that, whether it's 100 years back in time or 100 years in the future, will still rock.

Making a physical CD is crazy, but making a physical CD package of this scale is beyond madness.

Maybe we're selfish or too demanding, but it was because of how stubborn and ambitious we are that this album was born. It needed to happen.

Only Bt1000 or so and you get to own the ambrotype image of the band, everything previously listed, and most importantly, you get to listen to all 18 tracks.

After seeing the Box Set, I feel like I should keep a lot of sets with me so I can give them away to the people around me. Because this is the best of Gak.

It's a memoir, an autobiography, for Slot Machine. It's a literal work of art that was created by the three people who call themselves Slot Machine.

We wanted this piece of art to be the connection between the people and the artists. Let's go to the future. Let's build our ideal future.

Rad, hip, exceptional.

[bass noises]

Oh, this song is just confusing. What the heck is it?

"Huh? What the hell?" That's my concept.

This song makes you go, "Is this Slot Machine?" I think it's more like BlackPink or Billie Eilish.

It's a hit on the head right from the opening. Go all out and see what happens.

I'm fine with you only listening to the intro and then just going straight to the next track. I love the intro that much.