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I love me my music, I do. I think that's been well established by now- I'm sure I've opened articles with sentences exactly like that one multiple times, actually. Today though, I'm slightly shifting focus; rather then talking about songs on their own, I'd like to talk about the artwork that accompanies them as well.
The art of the Album Cover is one that tends to be somewhat under appreciated, in my experience. A great shame, really, given that a great many albums feature some really phenomenal artwork, capable of standing up on it's own in addition to representing the feel of the songs contained within. So, today, I'm gonna be taking a look at some of the bookier album covers within my music library, seeing how they hold up as individual art pieces and how well they capture the feel of the music they represent.
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Brutal And Aggressive by YERZMYEY
cover produced by N/A
YERZMYEY is a chiptune producer that primarily works with sound hardware from micro computers rather then consoles, with the AY Sound Chip used by later models of Sinclair's ZX Spectrum machines being a favourite of theirs. According to the album notes, all the music was composed using AY Interface software on a Spectrum 48K (which didn't support it natively, but could be modded to do so). Despite the odd comparison to the SID chip used in the Commodore 64 micro computer, the AY definitely has a grittier, dirtier sound; it doesn't quite hit as hard as, say, the oomph of the Game Boy's sound hardware does, but the sounds it produce are very rough and- for lack of a better word- mechanical. Brutal And Aggressive definitely makes good use of the chip's natural sound, fusing the harsh tones with plenty of morose melodies and dense rhythms. To that end, I feel the cover does a very good job and betraying exactly what the album is all about. Not only is a stylised representation of an angry dog vomiting laser goop(?) out of it's maw very good visual shorthand for both the words "Brutal" and "Aggressive", the fact that the style is evocative of how many ZX Spectrum games looked- down to using a selection of the extremely garish colours contained within the original hardware's colour palette- is a nice touch.
Example Track: Dark Galactica
In Sides by Orbital
cover produced by John Greenwood
Both me and Dio are big fans of Orbital, one of the many English acts who responded to the glut of hardcore rave music with a hearty "sod this, we're gonna do our own thing". Broadly defined as IDM, their style sits comfortably on the boarder between "weird and abstract" and "incredibly danceable", sometimes leaning more one way or the other depending on the song. This was the duo's fourth album, and it consistently occupies the space between the two extremes from start to finish- well, unless you count that last track, a cover of the theme song from The Saint, but it's such a good cover I can overlook the slight mood whiplash. It still rates as my favourite album of theirs, from the fan favourite, filter-and-squelchy-bass heavy P.E.T.R.O.L. to the dreamy, slightly melancholic vibes of The Girl With The Sun In Her Head. The cover is a perfect fit for their style, with it's psychedelic, airbrushed colour vomit of shapes, but it's inclusion on this list isn't solely for it's inherent surreal-ness. No, it's 'cus all those shapes are bizarre interpretations of things that are, indeed, inside you. And me. And all of us. Veins, Cells, Microbes, various bits of assorted viscera are all upfront and on display. Something about the cover's combo of subject matter and artistic style seems very evocative of the mid 90s, or the wave of "Gross Out" cartoons that Nickelodeon pioneered around about that time frame, which makes it a very "of it's time" cover. I think ultimately that works in it's favour, though.
Example Track: Out There Somewhere? (Part 2)
Fabric 17 by Various Artists (mixed by Akufen)
cover produced by N/A
The 17th entry in one of two compilation series put out by Fabric, possibly the most famous and prestigious nightclub in London, Fabric 17 is an incredibly bizarre listening experience. All of the music on could be broadly defined as Minimal Techno with subtle influences of IDM, but that doesn't really fully capture how out there some of it is. It's not like Aphex Twin or Venetian Snares weird, though; there's no breakneck fast or dense ambient to be found here. No, the songs are weird because of the sample and instrument choices the producers elected to go with. There's lot of indeterminate sound effects, chopped up vocals, weird synthy noises, and odd little melody lines layered over dance beats, and in many cases there's not much else going on but only one or two of those elements at any given time. Makes sense, given the mix was compiled by Akufen, a Canadian producer who works with a similar Abstract Minimal House style, and is probably mostly known for The Dragonfly Who Thought He Was A Mockingbird, a song he did for the 2004 Appleseed anime. It makes for a fantastically drunken-haze kind of listening experience, of the kind that makes you go "huh?" your first time through. In that sense, the cover represents the music quite well, as you're also likely to go "huh?" when you first set your peepers on it. Typically following that "huh?" with questions like "is that a lizard butterfly?" or "will whatever it is come for me when I sleep?" if you're especially easy to spook. The covers for both of Fabric's mix series' go through different design phases roughly every six or three releases, and some of them are especially bizarre.
Example Track: Ample Slacks by Crackhaus
Get To Heaven by Everything Everything
cover produced by Andrew Archer
I first discovered Everything Everything on an episode of the 2010 series of Later... With Jools Holland, a long running and very well regarded music show that's played host to acts of all genres, big time and independant. Hell, at the time of the performance I saw, Everything Everything were just gearing up to release their first album. They're roughly categorised as Indie Rock, but I'd describe them as "what might happen if you take a New Wave band out of the 80s and bring them into the modern day"; there's plenty of guitars and fragile falsetto vocals, but they're offset against a lot of synth work and odd little sampling tricks here and there. They also play around with not particularly happy subject matter- heck, some of the first lyrics in one of the singles from this album, Regret, include "first I'll see you on the news, and then never again". Of their three albums, Get To Heaven currently stands as my favourite, if only because the glitzy synth-laden alt. rock style they play is arguably perfected here, and the songs are incredibly catchy and well constructed, if a tad melancholy. Ok, very melancholy. It's hard to really say how well the cover fits, in a way. Though it is a very moody album that sometimes veers into unsettling from both musical and lyrical angles, I'm not entirely sure "melting man besieged by arms" quite conveys exactly what the album brings to the table; you can make the argument that the "bright colours offset with weird and unsettling subject matter" does fit the music very well, however. As an art piece on it's own, it's spectacular; the grasp of colour theory is right on the money, the colours themselves are vibrant and really pop, and the melting effect is done extremely well.
Example Track: Fortune 500
The Masquerade by Doomcloud
cover produced by Animal Style
When it comes to 8bit chiptune, I can be very hard to please. In part due to the style's ubiquity, it's often the stuff that stands out and does something different with the genre that grabs me the most. That's where Doomcloud comes in; one of a few aliases musician Carl Peczynski operates under, Doomcloud's sound is roughly what happens when you shove a copy of Avicii's True into a front-loader NES. Electro House inspired chiptune has begun to raise in prominence in the last few years, but Doomcloud's take on it manages to hit that glorious sweet spot of still having video game inspired melodies alongside it's grungy 2A03 bass warps. The end result is an EP that's as good for the dance floor as it is to play Castlevania by. Like a number of chiptune releases, the EP features a cover rendered in a pixilated 8bit style, but man, the commitment to style is something that need's to be commended. The slightly bubbly looking borders, the eyes and mouth jutting out from the background, the dripping-blood Doomcloud logo, it's a perfect fit for the music without a doubt, and it's a really nice piece of grisly Halloween-esque art in it's own right. Although I have to admit, part of why I like it so much is because it really reminds me of Ghoul School and Monster Party from a visual standpoint, both of which I have a lot of love for. Whether either game bore any influence on the art direction I can't say, but hey.
Example Track: Raw Data
Moods 2: A Contemporary Soundtrack, by Various Artists (compiled by Virgin Records)
cover produced by N/A
There's nothing even remotely booky about this cover. I just thought the mere fact someone actually owns one of these "Moods" albums was scary enough in it's own right. It DOES have a radio edit of Tubular Bells Part 1 on it, though, so that counts for something.
Example Track: Tubular Bells
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ROTTERDAM TECHNO IS HARD HARD HARD!! by Various Artists (compiled by Avex Trax)
cover produced by N/A
Ok, I know I normally start off with the music, but Jesus H. Christ, check out that orgy of needlessly brutal (and amateurishly depicted) violence. I'm a big proponent of individual artistic interpretation when it comes to capturing what music "looks" like, regardless of whether or not I see it myself, but I have to admit; I can't think of a better way to visually represent the aggressive, roughly produced, often cartoonishly vulgar (or in the case of one song included on this compilation, cartoonishly stupid) sound of early Rotterdam Techno then this. That it looks like something doodled on the back of a Maths Textbook by some snot nosed Year 9 kid makes it even more fitting, and was almost certainly a deliberate choice on behalf of Rotterdam Records- the label Avex Trax compiled and released the album alongside- and the artist they hired to make it. Hell, theystuck with the style over other compilations in the same series (and their own Best Of Rotterdam Records compilation series), to varying degrees of gross and unsavoury. As for the music itself, it's very hit and miss for me; all the songs but one are some of the earliest Rotterdam Techno tracks put out, so they're not exactly stupid-fast (which is one of the things that draws me to the genre). And, simply put, some of them are just not very good musically, although that could be seen as a quirky charm not unlike the appeal Outsider Music has for some. The ones that are very good, though, absolutely satisfy the need for angry, gritty, or just goofy electronic music that I get occasionally. Fun fact; the copy of Holy Noise's track Nightmare [Power Mix] from this years Halloween Mix was sourced from this album.
Example Track: Utter [Turbulentie Mix] by King Dale
Attack Of The Mutant 50ft Kebab by Space
cover produced by Tommy Scott
Space were a fairly huge deal during the mid to late 90s, and for good reason; their sound drew influences from Alternative Rock, Hip Hop, Rock 'n Roll, a bevvy of different Electronica Styles, even a bit of Jazz and Folk here and there. There was really nothing else quite like them at the time, and I can't think of any acts quite like them since. Unfortunately, struggles with their Label and internal conflict within the band during the early-to-mid 2000s eventually lead to a split around 2005 after a string of bad luck. It's only upon the death of the bands original drummer, Andy Parle, that various members from throughout the bands history came together to reform the band. And boy howdy, their music had changed significantly; broadly defined as Post Punk, their new sound combines elements of Psychobilly, Ska, Indie Rock, and very early Electronic music circa the 60s and 70s. And it's awesome. Though the band always danced around with slightly grim themes- in part due to lead singer/songwriter Tommy Scott's penchant for name drops and heavily referential wordplay- but now those lyrics are combined with music that, as I've said before,is basically what the soundtrack to a Mega CD port of Zombies Ate My Neighbors could've sounded like. If any album on this list can be counted as a "Halloween" album, it's this one. The delightfully demented cover suits the equally offbeat music like a dream, particularly with it's hodge podge of different artistic techniques; there's a bit of collage in there, lots of marker colouring, and even a bit of watercolour paints here and there. It seems Tommy's approach to art is similar to the bands music; throw a lot of different things together and see how it works together.
Example Track: Fortune Teller
Sleeper by Receptors (CD Version)
cover produced by Videogramo
I honestly don't know much of Receptors' work outside of this one album, but according to the artists' Discogs page, the man behind the name- Jeremy Kolosine- is something of a big deal in chip music. His accolades include being involved in the first performance of circuit-bent music alongside a full symphonic orchestra,performing at famous chip music events such as Blip Fest, and even being commissioned by LCD Soundsystem to reinterpret songs from their "Sound Of Silver" album as 8bit-style ringtones. I can see why; though upon first hearing it harkens back to more typical 8bit chiptune fare, there's two things that make it stand out. Firstly, all the tones and sounds were generated using Korg DS-10, an officially licenced software synthesizer produced for the Nintendo DS (as a joint venture between Korg Inc and Detune Inc.), rather then the typical 2A03 or Game Boy chip sounds most expect. Secondly, it's arguably not very videogame-y; it has a lot more in common with experimental techno ala LFO or the prior-mentioned Orbital. The cover is certainly one of the cooler ones on this list, but then I've always thought distorted, low-poly 3D artwork has a certain unsettling charm to it. Especially when the distorted, low-poly 3D artwork in question is a fucked up head with bits of polygon flying all over the joint. Though the music isn't all that spooky itself, it sounds warped and glitchy enough in places to go hand in hand with the image from that perspective.
Example Track: I'm Mellow
Purchase Here / Deluxe Version
that the album seems to have at least three diferent cover variations is a tad annoying
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The Saviours Of Electronica by The Synth DJs
cover produced by N/A
So, funny story about this album; I came across it pretty much by accident about six or so years back, when I went on a bit of a 80s synth binge. It's an extremely niche release put out by a very small independant label- enough so I had to post the example track to my tumblr- with packaging that hails the eponymous Synth DJs as the greatest thing since sliced bread (much akin to the ballsy album title). I think it's fair to say the Synth DJs were not the saviours of Electronica; in fact, the album is actually kinda bad in places. Lots of off-beat notes and hits, not the greatest singing, and a couple of songs that just don't work compositionally- for me anyway. When the songs do work though, they work pretty well, so it's more a "deeply flawed" album then an outright terrible one. It is fairly unique in tone too, blending influences from oldskool techno, synthpop, electropop, and even some freeform/progressive elements. Fucking hell, that art though. MS Paint text aside, the actual background image is really very good; very surreal and otherworldly, with a real "spooky painting" air about it- I like the ghostly figure's screaming face particularly. It... really doesn't fit the tone of the album, though. Like, at all. Whilst the songs aren't necessarily all "upbeat", they're all rich in bright synths and glitzy melodies, none of which match the tone of the cover at all in my honest opinion.
Example Track: OK UK
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Well, I hope you enjoyed that trip through my music library, and I likewise hope you've gained a greater appreciation for album art in the process (if you didn't already have one).
~ Decon (04/10/16)
all images sourced from Discogs, except for the Saviours Of Electronica album, which was sourced from Amazon
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