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Below is the German interview translated into English

Understand the artist. Or better said: Understand this artist. There is a man in the former Grunge city of Seattle, that produces concert posters for acts such as Radiohead, Blur and Stone Temple Pilots, and although he is an admitted Marilyn Manson Fan, his greatest wish is to be allowed to make a poster for Pink Floyd.

The man is Justin Hampton and is now making covers for the "New Voices" CDs for Rollingstone here in Germany. The 33 year old, Hampton was born in Santa Cruz, California. He spent his youth in Oregon and then moved to Seattle, where he studied at the Art Institute. After his graduation in March 1990 he began as an illustrator with the music magazine "The Rocket" and naturally became acquainted with some of his future clients.

Justin has been drawing since he was a child: "I grew up with the pencil in my hand. My dad would bring home new Comics for me - from Batman to Captain America to the Fantastic Four. Not only did I read them-I copied them. Sometimes I would create my own scenarios." Later, he created comics similar to the ones of the 60's San Francisco scene: Zap! Rip off press and Underground Comix.

In 1994, Justin left the Rocket magazine. "I worked for a concert promoter that I knew thru the Rocket and I was hired to draw a few flyers for him. The public and the different Seattle bookers really liked my flyers. I gradually started working with other promoters and record companies and the jobs for concert posters started fluttering in.

" To date: Pantera, White Zombie, Thrill to Kill Kult, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Marilyn Manson and Bob Dylan are among some of the posters Justin has done. Today, limited screen-printed concert posters are part of the collectable market and are hung in galleries all over the world. The Seattle Experience Music Project Museum purchased the complete collection of his posters and are part of the EMP's permanent collection.

Perhaps in some small way Hampton's posters appeal to the public due to the fact that he does all his work by hand, not computer. Justin: "I wouldn't go as far to say that posters completely done on the computer are lame, but I personally must have a pencil or a brush in my hand. I create the whole picture from A to Z. I do use a computer in a small way, it does make my life easier to figure out the color schemes in Photoshop, but all of my color separations are done by hand by cutting rubylith with an Exacto blade." And what does he listen to mostly while he works? Justin: "Hard rock, because the images come to me much faster than with anything else. Music is all about mood for me though, and my tastes vary quite a lot as does the selection in the CD player."

In addition to making rock posters, Justin does quite a bit of commercial illustration work. His work has appeared in many major magazines including, Sports illustrated, Vibe, Maxim and countless others. He has been doing more advertising work these days as well, inluding a two page ad for Doc Martin shoes in FHM and a full page ad for Target in Source magazine.

He has also made a name for himself as well as a Comic Book illustrator. Justin: "I drew two books. One, Rat, appeared 1997 and is unfortunately out of print. But I hope that to finish the trilogy and find a new publisher soon and reprint that 1st issue. The other one, Twitch, was published in 1994 to rave reviews is to still available for sale on my website".

But the artist is also busy with other projects: he created a Web Cartoon that has become a favorite on the Internet. Justin: "I produced the pilot for a series called "The Jaded Monk" in Seattle with the company, Fringe City Electric Productions www.thejadedmonk.com. My friend, Brian McDonald and I co-created the concept for the project. Brian is a hopeful film screenwriter and director, he won the audience choice award for his short film "White Face" at the Slamdance Film festival last year. It has recently been picked up by HBO and Cinemax and can be seen on both channels in regular rotation. Brian is also an accomplished Comic Book writer, we had wanted to collaborate for some time and this project just came together. We both had full creative control of "The Jaded Monk" and are quite happy with how it turned out. And what should the viewer of "The Jaded Monk" expect? Justin: "It's about a monk named Chang, who lives in a Zen monastery, which is loosely Tibetan. Chang's a surly chain-smoking bastard who's destined to have the secret of Zen always elude him. The setting of the peaceful monks contrasted with Chang's salty wit makes for great comedy."

Justin finds the today's music scene in Seattle no longer as exuberant as days of old: "Back in the day, it was really fun here, it was a very exciting time. There is still a lot of really good music here, but the days that you could discover the new Nirvana every week, are unfortunately long past. Grunge is long dead, but now there is a new group of bands that have cropped up that are leading the way back to real rock." The Fakes are among the top of the heap and are actually managed by Justin. What got him into the game of managing a band? Justin: "I've known these guys forever and my brother's in the band, but believe me, relation or not I wouldn't be doing this unless I thought these guys had the serious goods and they have it in spades. I designed their logo, I do all their artwork for posters and flyers as well as book the shows. They had a local booker who was getting them awful shows and I offered to step up and take over using the connections I already had with promoters from doing posters to get them gigs. It takes a lot of time out of my schedule, but I know I won't be doing it much longer as these guys are about to launch into the stratosphere and they'll need an industry manager and I'll get back to just doing my art, a lot of which I'm sure will be for them."

Justin has a big desire still: "I would like to meet Blur. I made a poster for an L.A. show in '97 for them. We worked very closely together in coming up with the Children of The Corn theme for the poster. I received a number of very kind faxes from Graham (the guitarist). They thought that I lived in LA and invited me to hang out with them at the show and I thought they meant when they came to play Seattle. I'm bummed I missed the opportunity as they didn't end up touring up here. Maybe they will play in Seattle again in the future?" Perhaps together with Pink Floyd...

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These are the "New Voices" CD covers