Edited and designed by book artist Thad Higa, It Billows Up is an art book created as a companion to the eponymous record by Sontag Shogun. Thad & Sontag asked artists to generate image and text in response to sections of the album. Thad then collaged these submissions using both digital and analogue techniques (cutting, crumpling, typewriting, drawing, etc.) similar to the processes involved in compositions of the album itself. The book’s form and materials (vellum, Japanese stab binding, risograph) also speaks to the pastiche of disparate materials that when arranged, designed, and bound together creates a landscape.

The book originated as a response to sound and grew into a meditation on listening, on hearing, on humanity and the pains and complications of existence. It is the hope for slowness, attentiveness, care for the environment one dwells in and how our created environs affect and interact with others.