Gorgeous work by Franco Spagnolo
A couple of projects JG has been involved with recently have really caught my eye on the artwork front, both have a medical angle and lean on the black, white and red colour palette.
The first is Manorexia – ‘Dinoflagellate Blooms’, a double disc pack with X-rays and syringes. Click for larger versions. Buy it from JGT’s site here. It’s a double CD with regular and 5.1 surround sound version.
The second is a lovely 4 track 10″ under the name Hydrose Plus, a collaboration with Fred Bigot. The cover shows a face from a medical encyclopedia in profile but when you take the clear vinyl 10″ out of the sleeve you realise that the eyeball is printed on the label and fits perfectly into the eye socket on the front. Not only that but you also get an insert with the inside of the face cut away.
Buy it directly from the label here.
Both Henry and I are very pleased with this final image, a true collaborative effort in every sense. I came up with the concept of a cosmonaut hanging in space, strapped into an unfeasibly large backpack, the kind you could only wear in zero gravity. He was originally to be suspended from the huge cylinder from the ‘Shape Of Things That Hum’ cover but we needed a bottom to the piece.
I asked Henry to illustrate all sorts of protrusions to attach to the image and additional pipes attaching the cosmonaut. In typical Flint style we went way above and beyond and illustrated a whole circular machine! This changed the whole composition as I felt it would be stronger with the cosmonaut suspended in the centre and then set about colouring both elements.
I bounced a myriad of different versions back and forth to gauge his opinion, some very rough and messy, others clean. We both agreed there was something missing at the end and, upon hearing the ‘Colours Beyond Colours’ track from my album, Henry suggested some sort of light beam or prism. I went away and tried a ton of lens flares and light effects to finish it off.
Release date: Dec 3rd (Japan) / Jan 16th (Rest of the world)
Some images culled from graffiti books of pieces by Boris Tellegen aka Delta aka Mess
Well I wasn’t expecting that, Ralf Hutter guest editing Wallpaper magazine and a multi-page preview of their forthcoming 3D book. Even more surprising is that Christian Marclay features as well (there is an alternate cover by him on some issues too). The issue comes with a free pair of 3D glasses and you can see some of the spreads above.
[youtube width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwVadnNTWVY[/youtube]
[youtube width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35HtLs50Lbc[/youtube]
Check these out, a friend of mine made them, lovely work and tribute to Rydgren radio.
Oh BTW, that was the 500th post too.
Awesome show from Shadow at Village Underground last night, the Shadowsphere was great and his mix of old and new from his back catalogue was always entertaining.
Anyone else up for this? See you there
I think this might be one of my favourite designs for my own music, this is the track list for the album believe it or not. I’ve really been into circular designs for the last few years and I had this idea ages ago and had to save it for my own stuff. Such a shame artwork for music is getting smaller and smaller and I keep doing hyper-detailed stuff like this. Would love to see this on a 12″ picture disc one day, colours might change though…
Lovely work by Brooklyn-based artist Ulises Farinas
Another one, too light and grainy
This one didn’t make it, too messy, but still nice
The 64 Bar Challenge mix I did has finally gone up, 29 tracks in 52 minutes, the brief was for each track to be 110 beats per minute and last 64 bars. The series was originated on the Ninja Tune forum by Kovas and driven over 6 different challenges with entries from all over the world.
The quality was really high, largely leaning towards the electronic end of the spectrum, and with roughly 50/50 of the entrants being unsigned or never having released anything. Take a listen and see what you think and contact Kovas at [email protected] if there’s anything here you’d like to know more about, we’d both like to see some of this talent get a lot further. If you go to mixcloud you can see who did what as it scrolls through the mix.