Damn! Any regular reader of this blog knows that this combines two things I dearly love. There are 5 Lego maps of the London Underground on display around the capital until the end of the summer. More details and locations over at BuzzFeed.
Design
Fantastic flyer for a Sun Ra gig from an excellent set of old Post Punk flyers I found on the reinvigorated Flickr the other week.
Shortly after Storm Thorgerson died I did an interview with Matt Meuse of CBC Music about why sleeve art matters and where it will go next. Also in the interview are Jeff Jank who designs for Stones Throw and David Jones (pictured) who owns the Vinyl Records store in Vancouver.
Want one of these? The new single from The Simonsound in a special 25 copy ‘Pilot Pack’ with 10″ colour vinyl, two sided colour map, sew on ‘The Simonsound Transit Authority’ Pilot patch, 1 of a kind 1/4 inch tape loop, mini booklet, Monorail ticket, all housed in a beautiful letter press printed sleeve? Better be quick – pre-orders happening NOW.
If they’re sold out or your budget doesn’t stretch to business class you can still catch the monorail in a more regular and affordable standard class version. 10″ colour* vinyl of ‘The Beam’, comes with two sided colour map. (*Colour to be confirmed.) Also, if you’ve not tried the debut LP from the group (Simon James and DJ Format) then you could do a lot worse than grab ‘Reverse Engineering’ while you’re there.
No more to be said, read the story behind the cover here.
After posting a circular version of the London Underground map earlier this week, this version was bought to my attention. Everyone knows that the traditional map has locations forced into places that they aren’t so as to make them fit a cleaner, clearer design. Mark Noad decided to make a geographically correct version of the map in September 2011 and his excellent website has various versions available for download inc. step-free access, journey times and walking links.
Things have been so manic this weekend that I’ve only just found time to write something about Storm Thorgerson who passed away last Thursday. As part of the design group Hipgnosis, alongside Aubrey Powell and Peter Christopherson (also no longer with us), they pretty much defined the look of the rock album sleeve in the late sixties, seventies and beyond. You will know their work even if you don’t realise it; Pink Floyd‘s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ being the most famous if not their best (as Storm used to admit). 10cc, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Scorpions, Peter Gabriel, The Who, Black Sabbath, Yes, ELO, AC/DC, Paul McCartney and many more… without their work it’s doubtful magazines like Mojo and Record Collector would have much to fill their pages with these days :).
Seriously though, it’s hard to think of anyone else who dominated sleeve design more in the seventies with such a distinctive brand of photographic surrealism, all made pre-computer, on budgets most designers could only dream of these days. It was the age of the gatefold sleeve, Led Zeppelin led the way in deluxe packaging and the sleeve as canvas was in its heyday. Even though Hipgnosis disbanded in 1983 Thorgerson made the transition out of the rock seventies and into the flasher, poppier eighties, still designing for Pink Floyd but adding XTC, Def Leppard, The Cult and more to his portfolio. After Hipgnosis he moved into video direction before returning to sleeve design in the nineties and noughties for bands like Biffy Clyro, The Mars Volta, Muse and Dream Theatre, all wanting some of that retro record sleeve surrealism.
Pick up any book of album cover art and it’s a sure bet that he or Hipgnosis will feature, in some cases heavily although he did co-author the 6 Record Cover Album books in the 80’s so that’s no surprise. His sleeves for Peter Gabriel and The Scorpions used to freak me out as a kid first visiting record shops and I absolutely loved the tribal mask constructions on the Ellis, Beggs and Howard ‘Homelands’ LP sleeve. He’ll probably best be remembered for his work with Pink Floyd and I get the sense that he was at his most relaxed and playful with them, especially is the various compilations and re-imaginings of his past work he was called upon to do, the best being the ‘Echoes’ compilation imagery.
These days the art of the record sleeve is getting reduced to a thumbnail, hidden away, then forgotten, in pdf ‘booklets’ attached to download packages and lower resolutions for the web. When budgets are so tight that album design duties are relegated to online competitions for fans to enter, it’s important to remember and recognise how important the work of Storm is and was. He and others like him shaped the visual language of parts of the music industry and showed that artwork can be as important, controversial and powerful as the music it surrounds. * Special mention for the excellent Hipgnosis Covers blog too, I could spend all day there.
This debuted in January this year apparently but I only just saw it, I rather like it as a new take on the standard London Underground map. The redesign isn’t official however but was done by Dr Max Roberts, based on concentric circles, partly inspired by the orbital London Overground. He posted it on the Going Underground blog earlier this year because he felt the regular map was becoming too crowded with the recent addition of new lines like the East London Line. It’s probably not geographically correct but then neither is the regular tube map, it does show however, show unbalanced the South of London is in relation to the North where transport links are concerned.
Tomorrow sees a double whammy in Madrid where I’ve been invited to talk about my design work in general for a meeting at Café Molar. It starts around 7.30pm and should last for an hour with a Q&A session.
Later that night I’ll be playing a 2 hour AV DJ set at the Skills Club before heading back to the UK on Saturday for Record Store Day.
From an issue of i-D magazine dated Aug ’86, this recently turned up in an expedition in the Secret Oranges archive (incidentally it’s Steve Cook‘s birthday today). A rather risqué ad for Sigue Sigue Sputnik‘s debut album, ‘Flaunt It’, which I seem to remember got banned from most publications at the time. I’m a big fan of Sputnik, especially this Giorgio Moroder-produced album and its surrounding singles, so you’ll occasionally see posts about them featured here.
Tony James, band leader and general mastermind behind them recently wrote up their history at length on their newly-launched website and it’s a candid, no-holds-barred read. As with any history, it’s his version of events and I’m sure there’s another side to it but he’s very forthcoming about the failings of the second album and the record industry crap that went with it. There are also all sorts of outtakes and demos up online under the heading ‘Demobomb’ which are pretty illuminating in terms of how they got their sound.
Also below is the news piece from Sounds the week the band signed their ‘million pound’ deal. This was quite something at the time as the band had a lot of hype surrounding them without a recording to their name but had managed to get the sort of double page features in the music press usually reserved for established artists. Also if anyone has a sealed copy of the cassette on card version of this album, (see above) packaged to look like a toy, then I’m still looking for a copy.
The new Demdike Stare 12″ has a nice twist to the packaging and design. It comes in a paper sleeve, housed in a second thin PVC protective cover with an A4 insert and labels that are either black or white for sides A and B. On the front are instructions that customers would see if they had ordered their own set of test pressings to approve before a release.
For those that don’t know, once a record is finished it goes to a cutting house where they make a master ‘lacquer’ of the disc on a large lathe in real time. That lacquer is then sent off to the pressing plant and a small number of ‘test’ pressings are made, usually called ‘white labels’ due to the fact that a white label is pressed onto the centre where the regular label would go. These are then sent to the artist or record label to check that ‘the cut’ was OK and that everything sounds fine before proceeding with the full run of the pressing. It would be foolish to go through such a delicate and variable process without checking a sample copy before pressing hundreds or thousands of discs only for them to all be defective.
The new release is the first in a series of ‘Test Pressings’ by the duo and the cover sets out the various steps you should take when getting such a pressing yourself. Only the catalogue number appears on the front, no titles or even the group’s name (that’s on the insert) and the same thing is repeated in German on the reverse of the sleeve. I think this is their best release in a while, dark and sinister as usual but more beat-orientated this time around, in an industrial meets jungle kind of way.
Getting a copy of this little release has been a mission, by the time I found out about it it was sold out on pre-order. I put it on my Piccadilly Records wishlist and hoped, badgered the label to repress it but they couldn’t afford to. Eyed up copies on eBay but didn’t want to give the flippers the satisfaction but finally succumbed when the label – Sonic Catherdral – put up one of their final copies to raise money for Red Nose Day a couple of weeks back. I think it was the most I’d ever paid for a 7″ (two actually) but it’s going to a good cause so fuck it.
‘A Psyche For Sore Eyes’ is a beautifully realised package, designed by Heretic, to house two coloured 45s, a pair of 3D glasses and a whole heap of psychedelic imagery. The paper engineering is particularly clever in the way it accommodates each component and the glasses aren’t just a gimmick. Rather than have ‘look I can touch it’ 3D the red/green balance works more in an op-art sense, similar to the 3D underground comix designs I posted two years back.
Musically I wouldn’t call it ‘psyche’ as such, – it’s a compilation that swings from indie rock to shoegazing drones to electron-noise. Lead track, ‘The Correspondent’ by Hookworms, is so reminiscent of ‘A Storm In Heaven’-era Verve that it’s hard not to imagine ‘mad’ Richard Ashcroft on vocals. The Vacant Lots have been worshipping at the alter of Suicide but in a good way and the fuzz bass and reverb of Lorelle meets the Obsolete reminds me of both the 60’s and the 90’s simultaneously (see ’60, see ’90, go! anyone?*). Even though it’s hard to find in stores you can listen and buy digitally.
*(bad Bow Wow Wow joke – sorry)
The poster, designed by Luke Insect, for Salon des Refusés V – a pop up shop/gallery initiated by Scraffer, coming this April in West London. I’ll have prints for sale and work on display – more info soon…
Another zoetrope picture disc – this time for Kate Bush‘s Record Store Day release of ‘Running Up That Hill’ (2012 remix). This will be on a 10″ but it’s not known yet how many copies will be pressed or how you’ll actually see this animate on the turntable. The design was put together by Peacock who also did the same for her last year – and check out the lovely homepage for Kate’s site here.
Astrophonica end their trilogy of VIP 10″s with Machine Drum‘s take on ‘Jungle Juke’. It works a treat and sits alongside the other two rather nicely. Each sleeve is screen-printed in two colours, hand stamped and the whole run is limited to 300 of each disc. Fracture and Om Unit head up the first two releases and they can be bought from here.
In other news, Machine Drum just signed to Ninja Tune! 
GOAT tour T-shirt by Luke Insect, available in 3 colours on the band’s US tour.
When the cover image for David Bowie‘s ‘The Next Day’ appeared earlier this year I was firmly in the ‘dislike’ camp. Designer friends raved about it but I just couldn’t agree, although it was nice to have a debate raging over a piece of graphic design – brilliant PR move there. Jonathan Barnbrook‘s defacing of Bowie’s classic, ‘Heroes’, did nothing for me visually despite being a bold move from Bowie for allowing such an act to become the cover of his new album. Supposedly signalling a need to move on and obscure the past from which any artist is always judged, Barnbrook said, “The obscuring of an image from the past is also about the wider human condition; we move on relentlessly in our lives to the next day, leaving the past because we have no choice but to.”
Fair enough, I can get with that but the result is dull and ugly to me, the casual scoring out of the original title and insertion of a white square seemingly designed to provoke. The use of a classic image reminds me of lesser designers who take other’s established icons as part of their own to bolster their visual cred, the equivalent of someone wearing a faux-distressed Led Zeppelin T-shirt they bought in Top Shop last week. The dull typeface across the middle… there’s just nothing to say about it. I would have liked it if they’d have physically stuck a white square with the title onto actual Bowie albums from the past, not just ‘Heroes’ but any of them, that would have had some impact.
The moment passed, as all internet ‘storms’ do, and the first single emerged to rabid fanfare, which I was also unmoved by. I like Bowie but I can’t say I could remember a song he’s done since the ‘Let’s Dance’ era if I’m honest and I stopped checking him out a long time ago. Then, last week, I was at dinner with some friends and one recommended I listen to it as it was, ‘the best thing he’s done since ‘Scary Monsters’. Really? But the single was a maudlin ballad, sung by a man who sounded like he was reminiscing about his glory days – although excessive plays on 6 Music over the past month have softened me to it somewhat. ‘No, that’s the only thing like it on the record, the rest is just a great rock album, said the friend. So I went home and checked the stream on iTunes. My god, he wasn’t wrong.
After hearing the single, the album is a revelation, not only is it full of killer hooks and inventive arrangements, it’s Bowie in full flow. Opener, ‘The Next Day’, kicks straight in and within 70 seconds roars into the chorus with Bowie hollering for all his worth, “HERE I AM, not quite dying, my body left to rot in a hollow tree!” As opening tracks on a comeback album go, that takes some beating and immediately silences all the pundits who were sure the album would be a melancholic glance back at the past by an aging icon. You’d never know it was the same record to feature, ‘Where Are We Now?’, which is a huge curveball of a lead single if ever there was one. ‘Dirty Boys’ skanks along sounding like he’s being backed by Fishbone at a New Orleans wake, ‘If You Can See Me’ is just intense, his voice pitched into alien dimensions whilst navigating a time signature that would tax any competent player. ‘Dancing Out In Space’ recalls the best parts of the 80’s pop like ‘Modern Love’, a joyous, bouncy song with doo-wop backing vocals whilst ‘Boss Of Me’ alternates hard and soft that even the saxophone can’t spoil. There are shades of both 70’s and 80’s Bowie, the ghost of Robert Fripp‘s guitar (although he doesn’t actually play on it), the mood is generally uptempo and his band is tight as… It’s chock full of singles and you wonder whose idea it was to lead off with what is essentially the breather you get after the first five tracks. The closing track, ‘Heat’ sounds like ‘Low’-era Bowie meets Scott Walker doing ‘The Electrician’, a chilling piece to end the album. If you get the deluxe download edition there are three bonus tracks too, none of which are filler in any way.
All that to say, I love it, I’ve played virtually nothing else all week and, inspired by the music, I decided to do my own take on defacing ‘Heroes’ which I’ve posted above.
A digital recreation and remix of an early Designers Republic sleeve for The Orb who are doing some sort of gig performing their first two albums at Brixton’s Electric venue on April 5th. Tickets and event page are here.