Is it just me or is all the innovative cover art being done for the least likely bands. Does being popular dictate that you must be safe? Beck would be the only mainstream artists who are doing anything innovative. Moldover, Menomena, ALB, Bright Eyes, Beck and Pine Bender all have innovative covers and yet they would be the bands you’d think would have little budget to do anything but a standard 4 colour jewel case.

Zinplaat’s 4th album Mooi Besoedeling is another innovative album cover. The cover and back are printed with scratch off ink. Like an instant scratchy. The cover appears to be a very simple design and yet hides a very different cover under the ink.

The designers at Fanakalo gave me this brief overview of the covers design.

Zinkplaat is an Afrikaans pop-rock-blues-fusion band from South Africa. The name Zinkplaat is the Afrikaans word for corrugated metal. This, their fourth album comes shrink-wrapped with a scratch-off ink layer on the front and back, as well as a guitar pick to scratch the ink off with. The album’s name ‘Mooi Besoedeling’ translates to ‘Beautiful Pollution’. Their brief was to create a universal artwork that didn’t form one central image, plastered on the front, which serves as a metaphor for the album title.

We responded by creating a colourful collage that represents the band’s various diverse influences coming together to create something new. The silver scratch-off ink resembles corrugated metal and we also designed the actual disc to have the unpressed silver form part of the design. We believe this is a very good functional solution to the fact that a simplistic clean cd cover design stands out most from all the clutter on a store shelf, yet is very boring once bought. We leave the concept open to interpretation, as it can be read as the silver layer being pollution or the fact that by scratching off the ink you ‘damage’ your packaging. However one wants to read the album as a concept, at least it’s very interactive seeing as people seem to love the scratch-off ink…

I have a copy of the album with me (I requested it ASAP after seeing the video below) but now I’m too precious to scratch it off. Luckily there’s already a good set of photos. I prefer the half scratched off look personally. The random montage of images works best when revealed through frantic scratching. I bet anyone seeing this half scratched cover on my desk at work could not resist having a scratch.

I’d love to get a poster made of this scratch off ink.

The back cover also got the same ink treatment.

I asked Rohan at Fanakalo if the printing was expensive, which for a small band not doing hundreds of thousand copies might be a major issue. Also was it was tough to convince the band to go forward with it?

The band signed off on it immediately because they briefed us wanting something ‘never done before’. We printed through an agent (hybrid media solutions) who outsourced the printing to Asia, so the cost wasn’t ridiculously expensive.

I guess it’s the band are willing to spend the extra money on the final product. When not looking solely at profit, you have the vision to think about the package as a whole (experience and the music) rather than just the $$$.

I also asked what the response has been in South Africa and record shops.

South Africa’s music industry is very small and monopolised (there’s only 2 big stores/franchises) – and the other thing is that Zinkplaat is an Afrikaans band, which makes it even harder for them to get shelf space because they compete directly with international albums. But after printing and selling the first batch the record store ordered an extra batch about 3 weeks after the album was launched, which is quite a feat in SA. Normally the record store doesn’t request music from local artists.

I asked about the language, as this is the first Afrikaans band I have been exposed to. Why not sign in English or is it like Rammstein?

In a country where we know Afrikaans and English we love having music that is only Afrikaans and only we can understand. Afrikaans is also a very beautiful language which is often much more descriptive and poetic than English.

Some bands from south africa worth checking out:
dear reader
aking
new holland
thieve
die heuwels fantasties

All credit to the band for putting the album together but you have to give credit to the designers for creating something which gives the band a point of difference.

I also like the inside band photo by Mark Reitz. I can’t help but think of The Hangover when I see this.

We were also sent some work in progress artwork for what the cover could have been. Rohan said;

the two montages was the direction we went first and realised it was too ‘picture’ – so we went more abstract and got to the final design. the montages sort of ended up being mood boards

And the designers also made a wine label (for the launch party and merch) and T-Shirt design from the cover.

Seeing the wine label gave me an idea, only to find that it had already been done with Wines That Rock. To make it worse the company only launched in October this year. Damn! I should ask for a freebie for pimping it here :)

You can check out more on Zinkplaat on their Facebook page or Myspace page.

It’s the interactivity of the cover that I like. Like all the covers I mentioned at the top of the post, they all give you something to do with the packaging once you hold it in your hands. It’s not just an elaborate packaging job whose sole purpose is to not fit in your CD holder (do people still have CD holders?) This is something you can’t experience just by looking at it. Even the best piece of typography can be experienced by looking at a jpeg however these need to be held, opened and played with.

Now updated.

This striking cover from hip-hop maestro Jay-Z immediately caught our eye and we featured it yesterday. However our readers were quick to point out that we’d only scratched the surface in our review. So thanks to our learned, intrepid and (let’s face it) sexy readers, here’s an updated feature.

This month sees the release of The Blueprint 3 by Jay-Z . The legendary rapper is in top form, with the usual emphasis on slick production and collaborations with big names that include Kanye West, Timbaland, The Neptunes and Rihanna. In many ways, it’s business as usual for this consummate businessman – with the exception of the cover art.

It’s not a new thing to bemoan the paucity of quality hip-hop sleeves, which is what makes The Blueprint 3 so refreshing. Check out the behind the scenes video to appreciate the craft that has gone into making it.

Many have noted a passing resemblance to the muted cover of U2’s No Line on the Horizon.

While others point to Now Here is Nowhere by The Secret Machines.

Or Kingdom of Comfort by Christian rockers Delirious?.

But the album’s aesthetic and concept owes its biggest debt to the previous work of photographer Dan Tobin Smith. The assorted of junk is also reminiscent of his work for Athlete’s Tourist album.

Tobin Smith worked with art director Greg Burke and set designer Nicola Yeoman to create the mod, minimalist cover art for Jay-Z. With its gathered assortments of white instruments and electronic equipment, it makes me feel like I’ve stepped back into some avant-garde gallery in the 70’s.

And in a way, it turns out that’s the decade where Jay-Z wanted to take us.

Referring to the gathered instruments he says: “These things are like the forgotten pieces in hip-hop. It’s still about music. It’s not about radio, making gimmicks — it’s still about making music. Those things are piled in the corner. These are the forgotten things about music. It’s still about music. It’s not about radio, it’s not about making gimmicks, it’s about music.”

The three red stripes are also a symbolic call for a return to simpler times.

“The three stripes that everybody is asking about is made from the original [number] three. The first three they made on the wall was someone carving. If you look at [the number] 3, all they did was connect lines. The whole thing about this album, how I approached it, is that I wanted to make a new classic to start that all over again — to go back to making classic albums like the ones we grew up listening to.”

At this stage of his career, it’s a worthy goal to set out to make a classic. It’s also admirable that he would put so much thought and effort into a concept cover. After all, the sentiment that hip-hop needs to return to the ethos and integrity of a bygone era is nothing new – it’s just surprising to see it expressed in such a lateral and subtle way.

Update: there is a great interview with Dan Tobin on Itsnicethat.com who goes into great details about the cover and the process.

Here’s a quick excerpt.

This is one of the most anticipated albums of the year, and the first album Jay Z hasn’t appeared on the cover, how did you get involved in the project and what was the reasoning behind a much more sculptural approach?

Greg Burke, the creative director on the project at Atlantic records had seen the Letter ‘E’ I had shot with the set designer Nicola Yeoman and I guess he had it in the back of his mind when he was thinking of ideas for Jay Z’s new artwork for Blueprint 3. I think Greg and Jay Z had lots of ideas about what the album meant and it seemed to be about taking it back to the source, in terms of the music itself and then subsequently the artwork. For the album and the idea was it was very much about the music and all the things that make music. The 3 is represented by 3 bars which is of course the old way of writing ‘3’ so that seemed to work really nicely with the idea behind the album and the set design that evolved. We all liked the idea that the installation was almost machine like, like all these things were interlinked. That’s why everything is packed and jumbled together. Like it had kind of grown out of this corner.

I think it was a brave approach for Jay Z as all his previous albums have had him on them. I love still life, and the way I shoot is quite old school. It took 3 days to shoot, was all shot on 10×8 inch film, so the quality in the whites is fantastic, so much subtle tone. We worked long and hard on the colour work on the post and even in a single page mag advert I can see that effort. You could blow the image up to the size of a building and it would still hold up. It seems the album is about that old school crafted production so its nice that that same method went into the shoot.

Here is the letter E piece Dan refers to

I’ll leave it to the designers to argue over the merits of including the artist name, website and album title on the cover. This could simply be a clear case of Jay-Z the artist making one compromise with his old friend Jay-Z the businessman.

Note: This is the first album cover to not feature Jay-Z. Lucky as it would have been hard to quick change into this one.

And for those interested Alex Goose has released for free “The Blueprint 3 Outtakes” album with tracks that didn’t make the initial cut.

It’s always good to see the designers behind classic album covers getting critical and commercial recognition. And few designers could boast of a career as celebrated and prolific as Storm Thorgerson.

Taken By Storm: The Album Art of Storm Thorgerson was published by Vision On in 2007. It’s a selection of some of his best work from the past 30 years. The book also spawned a traveling exhibition of the same name.

Sleeve lovers in Brisbane can still catch Taken by Storm, which is showing at Artisan Gallery until August 1.

The same show toured to Sydney at the Global Gallery last December. For more information about this legend of cover art, there’s a nice article in the Courier Mail and an interesting interview that featured in in Time Out Sydney from late last year.

This is one of only two albums I have bought without first listening to them and both were just for the CD cover. I got this in 1999 or 2000 and have listened to it once. I’ve since lost the CD but have the case and from memory it was a dull journey into an abient wank factory. But upon my tastes relaxing a little, I’ve found the Adlib track on the artist’s Myspace page enjoyable.

What drew me to the cover was the stark barren design. A few pixel representations of OS8 UI elements scatter the cover and the 8 page booklet. There’s very little info about the album and the website of the label Kraak. The musician is Kristian Peters a German who also works under the alias Novisad which seems to be the most active alias as it has the Myspace page.

The back of the booklet is a tiny radio button.

The booklet itself seems like a waste of paper.

The back cover has some info.

The white cover reminded me of a 1998 or 1999 cover of Wired that was all white with a Braille. It stood out like dogs balls in a sea of multi coloured magazines and that’s what this cover did in the record shop. It was the absence of design that made it work. Now with digital downloads being the big thing and people shopping for their music online, a cover like this vanishes into the background.

Note: I’m too young to have seen the Beatles White album in the shops :)

While searching Discogs I found this 1999 reissue which was limited to 50 copies and sent to friends as an Xmas present. It’s cover is the complete opposite of the original. I wonder if there was more to it than the simple wrapping paper sleeve?

The designer for this was the founder of Kraak records and can be found on Twitter as @DaveDriesmans. For those interested I can be found on Twitter here as @100ftzombie but I don’t Tweet that much about music or design.

Side Note: This is my first post in a while as Alex our new editor has been pumping out all the great the reviews lately. So you’ll notice a sudden drop in the writing skills and grammar.

Seminal British band The Stone Roses released their self titled debut album in 1989. The cover features artwork by band member John Squire, who was largely responsible for the band’s visual identity.

Squire is an accomplished visual artist who at the time was heavily influenced by Jackson Pollock.

The painting featured on the cover of The Stone Roses is titled Bye Bye Badman, as is one of the songs on the record. Both the song and the painting are about the May 1968 riots in Paris, which explains why the tri-colours of the French flag are featured on the cover.

“Ian (songwriting partner Ian Brown) had met this French man when he was hitching around Europe, this bloke had been in the riots, and he told Ian how lemons had been used as an antidote to tear gas” Squire told Q magazine. “Then there was the documentary – a great shot at the start of a guy throwing stones at the police. I really liked his attitude.”

The riots were the largest general strike to stop an advanced industrial country and it’s amazing how quickly their impact have faded from the public consciousness. Less than 50 years after revolutionaries overthrew the monarchy in Russia, students and workers looked for a moment as though they might overthrow the de Gaulle government. It was a revolt against the modern consumer society, with a utopian left-wing fervour that was as critical of Stalin as it was of capitalism.

It’s hard to imagine such a popular wave of discontent and civil disobedience today, which is probably why The Stone Roses sought to evoke the fury and defiance of that fleeting period. The rioters were not louts or thugs, rather Parisian students that found a poetry amid the aggression. As they ripped up paving stones to throw at police, they saw sand underneath, giving birth to a memorable chant that translates as: “Under The Paving Stones – The Beach”. You’ve got to hand it to French people.

The song Bye Bye Badman features incendiary lyrics.

I’m gonna make you bleed
Gonna bring you down to your knees
Bye bye badman
Ooh bye bye

Choke me smoke the air
In this citrus sucking sunshine
I don’t care you’re not all there

Ian Brown explained: “Imagine a protester singing in a policeman’s face during the Paris riots. Then you’ll get some idea what it’s about.” I really like the final verse.

I’ve got bad intention
I intend to knock you down
These stones I throw
Oh these French kisses
Are the only way I’ve found

It’s amazing how finding out the story and inspiration behind any piece of art or design can suddenly make you love it. When I first saw this I just assumed it was a playful and kind of unattractive pastiche – some lemons casually chucked on a post-modern artwork. Now I can see the way that Squire has once again found some poetry in the chaos and anger. “Under The Paving Stones – The Beach”.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”, reads the inscription on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. Dedicated in 1886, it welcomed immigrants as they arrived by ship and fast became a potent symbol for the ‘land of opportunity’.

Visitors arrived by air in 1979 and it’s through a plane window that we see Supertramps’ re-imagined New York. Manhattan is now a giant diner – it’s buildings replaced by ketchup bottles and egg cartons; its famous icon a matronly diner waitress who holds aloft a glass of orange juice.

Breakfast in America was the band’s first LP after moving to the US and it would go on to sell 11 million copies worldwide (4 million in the States alone). It also won the 1980 Grammy Award for Best Recording Package

Art Director Mike Doud took his inspiration from the title and worked up various sketches of surreal images and visual puns. One of the rejected concepts involved giant Cheerios rolling down Arizona’s Monument Valley in a flood of milk. Just imagine.

If Doud had the vision and ambition, cover designer Mike Haggerty had the chops to pull it off. He assembled the cornflake box, ashtray, cutlery, eggboxes, vinegar, ketchup and mustard bottles and spray painted them all white. Haggerty’s original instinct was to cast a busty young stunner as the waitress but the band preferred Kate Murtagh, whose bingo-wings and manic smile contribute so much to the cover.

It’s the first time I’ve thought about what an important American archetype the diner waitress is, almost as ubiquitous as the cowboy, the cheerleader and the policeman. Sometimes she’s beautiful and sometimes she’s motherly – but she’s always street smart and careworn.

While Kate Murtagh’s advancing years are key to the cover’s success, it was a strange and cautious kind of vanity that kept Supertramp off their own record covers. “We wanted to be around a long time, and we didn’t want people watching us getting older” says keyboardist Rick Davies. It’s an interesting concern and one that makes more sense when you realise that back then record covers were a band’s primary form of self promotion. As it is, fans could check the band out on the back cover, being served at “Bert’s Mad House.”

Photographer Aaron Rapoport captures the long-haired band in a relaxed moment, seemingly unaware of the time warp that has transported them back to the American fifties. It’s a nice touch that they all read newspapers from their home towns in Britain, even though they were never as popular in the UK as they were overseas. In many ways they are just another group of immigrants, finding rich inspiration and a warm welcome in the creative and popular culture of America.

This record cover from 1981 is a homage to Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (“The Lunch on the Grass”).

The large scale oil on canvas painting by Edouard Manet was finished in 1863 and caused instant controversy, due to the scandalous combination of a naked women next to two fully dressed men. Their casual, relaxed demeanor underscores the pervading sense of weirdness the canvas exudes – particularly for its era. While today it looks like a relatively tame juxtaposition, at the time it was a provocation to say the least. Of course, Le déjeuner sur l’herbe can now be found in the venerable Musée d’Orsay in Paris and is an important part of any syllabus discussing the modern art period.

Bow Wow Wow, meanwhile, are now little more than a footnote of the 1980’s New Wave movement. They were founded by Malcolm McLaren, former manager of the Sex Pistols and New York Dolls, to promote the New Romantic fashion lines he released with partner Vivienne Westwood. McLaren must be one of the great post-modern operators of the last fifty years, an artist and promoter that combined aggressive opportunism with a sharp eye for the next big thing. To put together this band he stole most of the lineup from Adam Ant and then auditioned vocalists to join as the lead singer. After many fruitless months he eventually discovered his vocalist in 14 year old Annabella Lwin, who was working behind the counter at a dry-cleaning shop. The band would go on to create an eccentric and noisy combination of 80’s pop and world music and today they are most remembered for their amazing cover version of “I Want Candy”.

Note Lwin’s nudity in the single cover above, because it was McLaren’s enthusiasm for showing his lead singer in the buff that would land the band in trouble. She was only 15 years old when the photography for the cover of See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy. was taken. Her outraged mother cried exploitation and involved Scotland Yard in an attempt to keep her daughter from leaving the country with McLaren. After all, who would let their underage child be sexualised just to sell records?

McLaren’s powers of persuasion resulted in a compromise, with Lwin able to remain in the band on the condition that she was not marketed as a “sex kitten”. An alternate cover was issued in the US and UK (while the offending cover art was still released in many major European markets).

Bow Wow Wow would attract further controversy for “referencing” African music a little too closely – with many suggesting that it came closer to plagiarism. And in more than one case you could accuse them of unoriginiality.

But the cover for See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah. City All Over! Go Ape Crazy. is still considered a classic today. The composition and photography are beautiful and the performances and fashion perfectly update Manet’s iconic image. It also neatly encapsulates McLaren particular genius – in updating a once reviled but now canonised painting, he succeeds in refreshing its controversy. The viewer is again shocked at the woman’s presence in the picture, only this time because of her age.

Is it creepy? Brilliant? Both? Would it even raise eyebrows today?

For Bob Evans’ (aka Kevin Mitchell) third album, he took a decidedly different approach to the artwork. Goodnight, Bull Creek! alludes to his native suburb outside of Perth and his departure for new terrain. The artwork is a departure as well from his first two albums: Suburban Kid and Suburban Songbook.

The new look, while still nostalgic and romantic, has more of a storybook, hand-crafted quality to it. The liner notes are an excerpt of Bob’s studio diary from the recording, with lyrics being placed on his website instead. All captions to the booklet illustrations are Bob’s own.

Sleevage caught up with Kareena Zerefos, the illustrator of all GNBC!-related artwork. The artwork is based on a series of photographs by Andrew Christie, a Perth friend of Bob’s, and re-interpreted by Kareena. Her other album artwork credits include Sparkadia and The John Steel Singers. And if you’re a regular at venerable Sydney live venue, The Hopetoun, undoubtedly Kareena’s work gracing the walls has given you a moment’s pause over your schooner.

Q: What type of illustration & design work do you typically do? How do you describe your style?

KZ: Most of the work I do involves hand drawn illustration, which I often work in with some computer generated design elements – particularly for commercial projects. I love working for clients within the music and fashion industries, and I’m lucky to have the opportunity to do this quite a bit.

I would describe my style as being delicate, nostalgic and whimsical.

Q: How did you get involved in the Bob Evans album artwork?

KZ: It was back in December last year that I received a lovely email from Kevin, he had come across some of my work while looking for inspiration for album art and after having a bit of a chat about it all, I ended up working on the artwork for Goodnight, Bull Creek!

Q: What was the brief for the artwork?

The brief was fairly open, I suppose the main criteria basically was to draw “a simple walking picture” of Kevin. This was great because I was able to have a bit of a play, which allowed the artwork to evolve in its own way. We ended up deciding to show this evolution with the artwork for the first single release from the album, Someone So Much.

Photo by Andrew Christie

Someone So Much – single

Q: How did the music play a role in the artwork?

I think Goodnight, Bull Creek! has a really honest, personal feel to it – similar to the older Bob Evans raw folkish sound [but I suppose a little bit more rock and roll!] and I wanted to sort of tie everything together like a storybook through my illustrations. The most important thing to me was to try and capture the honesty, but also the energy and, to some extent, earthiness.

Q: How did you go about creating the artwork?

The artwork was created with a multitude of hand drawn and painted layers. It started out as a sketch to get an idea of composition and also posture, then it was really about finding the right expression in the face and finally bringing in more colour, texture and movement. I worked with all of these elements in photoshop to evolve these as the ideas developed.

Someone So Much – EP

Q: Tell us about the font choices.

We became quite interested in the idea of the artwork being a little bit like that of a vintage storybook [a bit of an obsession of mine!], so when playing around with different ideas for the type this was what I had in mind. I based the type on an existing classic serif typeface, but tweaked it a little to make it a little more personal and unique.

Q: What were the biggest challenges with the project?

Working with portraits is generally one of the most challenging things to do, particularly when there is a tight deadline and a small number of reference images to work from. Finding the right expression, depicting a realistic likeness and making this work with the overall figure and composition was quite difficult with this piece.

Q: What’s next for you?

I’m about to head over to Sweden and Denmark for a little inspirational trip, there are some fantastic artists and designers from that part of the world, and I’m also really interested in the landscape and history. When I return I’m hoping to have a bit of time to explore new ideas and materials for my personal artwork… and besides that, I’ll take it as it comes .

Kareena’s artwork is being featured alongside that of Daniel Boud and Greedy Hen at the World Bar in Kings Cross.

This striking piece of action photography heralds the third studio release from New York based post-punk act Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The new album It’s Blitz is a departure from their previous work, with more polish and dark hints of disco. Lead singer Karen O’s distinctive vocals are still the band’s signature and this cover art succeeds in capturing the tensions that make her so electric. As sexy as she as she is scary, you want to get her into bed even though you know she’ll eat you’ll alive.

Apart from the sheer beauty of the photography, this cover appears destined for iconic status because it conveys so much with so little. The aggressive fury in the fist plays in stark contrast to the sensuous colours and textures of the egg.

You could see this as a kind of boring feminist/female empowerment image but I don’t think that would be doing it justice. I think this image speaks more about destructive impulses and given the essentially feminine and fertile connotations of eggs, perhaps self-destruction. The chipped, unkept nails say sexy and screw-loose at the same time (once again echoing Karen O’s vocals).

If you want to make a cake, you’ve got to break some eggs. When I look at this cover I think of so many women I know – the one’s that revel in life’s messiness and extremes; that sometimes break things just to see if they can. I’m also reminded that I need more protein in my diet.

While we’re at it, here’s the cover for the album’s first single:

I was told about this album from someone I had just met via email. I dropped into the conversation that I ran Sleevage and he mentioned this was his favourite album sleeve. I should add Sleevage to my email footer as crowd sourcing sleeves to post about is much easier than real research.
I was happy enough that the sleeve was constructed out of sandpaper as that seems both impractical and expensive. However to find out it was a Factory Records design and actually assembled by Ian Curtis of Joy Division (who needed the extra cash) while the rest of the band watched porn in the same room. (source) made the sleeve even more interesting. Even if this last story is untrue it shows that an album with a story is much more interesting that one without.

Here’s the back cover which is also devoid of information.

FACT 14 refers to the Factory records number system which you can read about here. There were two FACT 14s the other being Martin Hannett’s “Testcard”.

The first edition on sandpaper was limited 2000. The sandpaper sleeve comes in various editions: Some with spray-painted FACT 14 in black or in white, some without spray-paint. This makes for a very rare collectors item. Sadly The Durutti Column isn’t as “cult” as Joy Division so don’t expect to pay off the mortgage with it.

If you were to buy the album from Amazon now sadly this is what you’ll get. An ugly interpretation of the sandpaper.

The official TDC site has this on the album’s page. I’m not sure if this is a photo of a limited edition re-packaging or the album itself was a photo. Anyone know for certain?

The credit for designer was hard to track down. Each site I went to credited different people. Discogs has Steve Horsfall, while Wikipedia has Peter Saville and Tony Wilson and the official The Durutti Column site has the designers as Dave Rowbotham and Anthony Wilson credited with the sandpaper sleeve concept.

So Peter if you’re reading this please set the records straight. For now I won’t credit anyone individually until I hear otherwise.

The one thing we do know for certain is that the cover was inspired by the 1959 bookMémoires by Guy Debord a Marxist theorist, French writer, filmmaker, hypergraphist and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International. Cover is below.

With a Wikipedia entry like that you can imagine what kind of dinner conversation Guy would have had. You don’t see ideas like hypergraphist or Psychogeography being theorised any more. I understand these concepts properly you could say Tomato’s work fits into this nicely. Especially projects like mmm… Skyscraper I Love You.

Compare this to a double page spread from Mémoires.

While I like to think my music knowledge as expansive, I’d be lying if I said I knew of The Durutti Column before this. It seems I say the same thing for almost every album that get reviewed here :) I’ve sampled some tunes on the official Myspace page and a fan page and it’s nothing like I expected. It’s quite chilled. I’m not sure if this is the same sound as they had 30 years ago though.

What I love about the cover and the idea behind the original Memoires is that the sleeve would leave it’s mark and potentially ruin other albums it sits next to. Like Stick Fingers, with the zipper that ruined the record, these impractical design solutions were created back in a period where experimentation in music and design for music was encouraged instead of feared.

Final Useless Fact: The Durruti Column was the most famous column of anarchist fighters during the Spanish Civil War. The band intentionally spelt it incorrectly.

Thanks Jon for the info on the sleeve.

Australia is falling in love with Empire Of The Sun, Luke Steele (The Sleepy Jackson) & Nick Littlemore (PNAU). Their track Walking On A Dream has been storming the airwaves here and to our excitement on a slow wet Friday, Empire Of the Sun have given us a look at their new artwork, we just had to share it with you. We will follow this up with a more detailed report shortly. But for now, we like what we see!

While you are waiting, make sure you check out their stunning new video for Walking On A Dream. The video was shot recently in Shanghai, China by Josh Logue from Mathematics.

To download a remix, or more info check out their: Official Site, or Myspace

While Dev Hynes aka Lightspeed Champion was a member of now-defunct noise-punk metal outfit Test Icicles, Lightspeed Champion isn’t so much an alter ego as much as it is just Dev, the crafty singer-songwriter. His debut album, Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, is Americana-tinged country-folk-pop with a warm sound helped along by producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley), and it is as straightforward musically as is the accompanying cover art.

But underneath the music are emotionally-charged and brutally honest lyrics touching upon racism, sexuality, and coming-of-age anxieties; and the same contrast goes for the package with a rather traditional, 1960s-style aesthetic for the front and back, with an inside that is a more complicated collection of collage and illustration.

The front recalls a bygone era of cover art with the artist as the central figure accompanied with snazzy colours, an”Artist” and “Title” heading, and a tracklisting — almost like a program for a concert or play informing the listener exactly what is included and presenting the album as a whole, complete work.

I found some images on Amazon and in the Retro Records group on flickr, that share the same sort of essence as this album.

You get the feeling Dev is referencing this look with a wink, especially with the big-eyed bunny, bright red cardigan, freshly starched shirt, and slightly askew gold bow-tie. An indie-rock Pat Boone who writes songs entitled “Everyone I Know Is Listening to Crunk”?

Elvis Costello’s covers and personal style are a nod to that era as well, especially his Greatest Hits with song titles alongside the front.

The cover photography of this album and the single “Galaxy of the Lost” were shot by British photographer Ophelia Wynne and seems indicative of her sharp and direct portraiture style that is featured on her website.

The booklet veers off a bit in its own direction with more contemporary photography by Dev in the front part. The last five booklet illustrations by Matt Cooper recall a future we thought was coming back in the 80s accompanied with lyrics in a Courier font from early computing days.

The back cover of the booklet gives us what seems like the “real” Dev in an vest probably found at a second-hand shop.

And the back of the case gives us the flip side of the front with the red, blue, and black combination and title giving a feeling of closure to the album.

No one belongs together in unholy 80′s union more than Duran Duran and Patrick Nagel. One look at a Nagel print I think of Andrew McCarthy knocking back a Chi Chi after a solid game of Frogger wondering whether to go with the white denim or white sports jacket with the pastel polo…or maybe the pink tee?…

Patrick Nagel designed the cover to Duran Duran‘s American top ten (Australian #1) album RIO in his innovative trademark fashion – commonly described as a distinctive mix of art-deco and Japanese style woodblock.“The Nagel Woman” became something of a phenomenon in the 1980′s, primarily from Nagel’s work being regularly featured in Playboy magazine and patronage by film studios, fashion/music magazines and corporate clients like IBM.

Nagel’s process is one of creating more with less. He is often said to have started with a line drawing of a photograph then taken out elements he found unnecessary (Nagel figures often lack detailed digits and extremities) then adding large blocks of matte pastel and cropping the frame at a slightly skewed angle.

An alternate Nagel cover for a 2001 re-issue.

Nagel was something of a contemporary art phenomenon in the 80′s – if you grew up in this era chances are you came across his art, or a derivative of it, without even knowing it. The squared eyes, pinks, puces, mauves (I swear to God he never used a primary colour – apparently Nagel used more Paynes grey than any other painter – for an excellent recollection of Nagel’s practices head over to The Art History Archive) off the shoulder poses, Brigitte Nielsen haircuts – it’s all Nagel.

If you want something to look like the 80′s, chances are you’ll borrow from Nagel – those of you who are familiar with the GTA Vice City artwork (you’re reading a blog about album covers, you’re probably supposed to be working, I’m sure you’ve never played a computer game) will notice Stephen Bliss’s homage in the awesome cover/booklet art from the game.

In a tragic, but morbidly humorous turn, Nagel (who apparently enjoyed his fair share of booze, cigs and fast food and hated exercise) suffered a fatal heart attack after a celebrity ‘aerobathon’. Thankfully he didn’t associate with the type of folks who might prop him up with sunglasses and run around pretending he was still alive, slamming his nuts into poles and pushing him from speedboats.

So who better to pair up with the 80′s biggest coke/glam mullet-fringe titans than the Toulouse Latrec of the skinny ties? Even Russel Mulchahy pulled a few Nagel moves in the video for Rio (pre – Highlander).

For those of you who really want to live like ’80′s guy’ – here is what I believe to be a reliable Chi Chi recipe – now go and conquer wall street.
INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup ice
2 oz vodka
1/2 oz blue curaçao
1/2 oz cream of coconut
1/2 cup fresh or canned pineapple
scoop of vanilla ice cream
chunk of pineapple for garnish
PREPARATION:
Pour all ingredients into a blender.
Blend until smooth.
Pour into a chilled margarita or highball glass.
Garnish with the pineapple.
If the mix turns out too thick add juice; too thin add ice or ice cream.

The artwork was also used for the single cover of “Hungry Like The Wolf”

Here’s a recent 2007 interview with Malcolm.

Design of the sleeve was done by Malcom Garrett of Assorted Images who also studied at the same school as Peter Saville.

I’ll leave you all with this Professor Farnsworth mashup.

Sydney band Faker settled in to Los Angeles during the past northern hemisphere summer to record their second full-length album, Be The Twilight. It’s a collection of songs about the space between day and night and lead singer/songwriter Nathan Hudson’s own fixation with twilight and facing your fears.

“I’ve had a fear of twilight ever since I was a kid,’ Hudson says. ‘Anything could happen.” That sort of sentiment is reflected in an album of chaotic, very danceable, somewhat brooding pop.

The artwork by Sydney creatives Debaser draws upon the album’s theme as well as a cinematic and literary connection to LA: there’s a noir-ish, something-might-be-lurking-in-that-swamp feeling to the cover image, with the band’s name standing out in striking contrast and looking a bit like the Hollywood sign. This setting was created on a small, intricate scale at Debaser’s studio and photographed, with cigar-smoke cleverly providing the haze — and avoiding the cost of a smoke machine!

The album’s booklet stays on theme with photographs, illustrations, and tightly condensed blocks of text. The booklet literally takes you inside, with the outside exterior scene peeking in through the window. The photos show what Barton Fink’s room and affects might have looked like if he was in rock band, with old-timey props painted and given a bit more of a sinister treatment by Debaser principal David Homer.

Booklet photos:

Still from the film Barton Fink:

Faker themselves are featured in a centre four-panel illustration that gives them a classic comic book rendering — they look like they are ready to take on the night one gig at a time in a J. Scott Campbell comic.

On the disc itself, the macabre skeleton paintings are front and centre:

The back cover tracklisting and credits are laid-out like titles on a film poster and give a strong and familiar way of laying out the fine print as well as effectively presenting the album as a whole piece.

Debaser has created album art for the esteemed likes of Paul Kelly, The Cat Empire, and Ben Lee. Their artwork for Powderfinger’s Dream Days At The Hotel Existence won this year’s ARIA award for best cover art.

Check out the Sleevage post on Faker’s first album, Addicted Romantic.

I’d never heard of Bright Eyes before, even with his huge back catalogue out there, but on my two day journey around Sydney to find the deluxe digi-pack version of this album I’ve had three people tell me they are big fans. This was one album I had to own, I had to experience the “Spectral Decoder” myself and also there was jack all imagery online for this album.

The album itself looks unassuming. It’s a white cover with tiny black lines on it like, which feels like an ultra complicated Unknown Pleasures or minimal Autechre cover. The central image is a sticker added to the shrink wrap or CD case which is then removed.

It’s only when you open the case and use the enclosed “Spectral Decoder” that the album really shines. The entire package contains hidden imagery and messages. I feel like a kid in the 60′s with a spy kit.

Cassadaga, is a 113 year old Spiritualist Camp in Florida. The place is known for its psychics and they’re probably overrun with Ouija boards too. Get a Bright Eyes Ouija board desktop here.

The patented technology was created by 3D Images in the UK and originally developed for “Instant Win” promotions.

Here’s a detail of the front covers lines. I have a headache from looking at this too closely.

Conner Oberst from Bright Eyes originally wanted a “Magic Eye” image for the cover, but due to the small size of the CD packaging had to find a different technique. This is one time the small size of the CD packaging paid off as I hate those Magic Eye pictures. It just reminds me of the mid 90′s in shopping centers with crowds of people around a frame saying “I can’t see it…. oh wait a dolphin jumping a teapot. Wow!”.

Where as lenticular covers can become costly, this looks to be the cheaper option (music to any record labels ears) priced between 15 – 3p per unit. I’m guessing a little more for the decoder insert but still cheap. And due to it being a new technology and underused in the industry it stands out from the pack. Look for this technology to use used in advertising campaign soon. Something for the defense force might be award fodder.

The album contains Victorian era spiritual imagery and messages in several languages. Conner Oberst wanted people to still have to decipher the text even after using the Decoder. You can read more about this in a great article on NME.

I’ve tried my best below to reveal how the Decoder works but you should really try it out for yourself.

Here’s a video someone made using it. Presented in Youtube’s blurry goodness.

Another pleasant surprise was the booklet for the album has a nice spot varnish on it. It’s nice to see they didn’t just rest on the cover’s “gimmick” and forget the rest of the package.

The cover was art directed by Zack Nipper from the band’s label Saddle Creek. Zack’s done quite a few covers for Bright Eyes (see here) and his name is perfect if he ever wants to become a porn star or Futurama character.

The album is also nominated for “BEST RECORDING PACKAGE” in this years Grammy awards. As is Menomena’s Friend or Foe we featured a while back. While it’s a tough call, I’d have to say this is my fav from the list.

See the full list of finalists here.

Here’s one of the singles Four Winds off the album.

Check the Wiki entry for the album to have all the secret messages revealed and more info.