Slightly Windy by José Ferrufino

From: Dezeen
Date: 26/08/10

Slightly Windy / Reuge (music box makers)


This was a project done at ÉCAL for Reuge in collaboration with the Campana brothers. Reuge is a music box manufacturer company since 1865. They possess an incomparable knowledge and craftsmanship in music box making.

Before visiting the Reuge manufactury, I had never seen nor heard an authentic 144 blade music box. I was moved by the beauty and the finesse of the mechanism creating the movement and the melody. It takes us to a world of lightness and gentleness.

There had to be a way to transpose and intensify this emotion into the new music box.

This is how the music box works:

The motor gives movement to the cylinder. The pins on the cylinder hit the blades of the keyboard. The pins are placed accordingly to the music chosen in order to play the right notes. It is this action that creates the melody.

The music box Slightly Windy uses this movement to animate the barley. It translates the lightness of nature being lulled by wind and music.

Since the power generated by the motor is just enough to create the rotation of the cylinder; one of the challenges of this project was to enable the barley to move without creating a resistance that could slow or stop the motor.

The mechanism parts are made of brass. It has a gold look-a-like effect and good machining properties. The resonance case is made out of peach tree wood known for its musical properties. It is used for musical instruments because of its resonance. Real barley painted in gold is used at the tip of the brass tubes.

The track ('Son of a Preacher Man' by Dusty Springfield) played by the box was custom made.

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I like this although I don't get the relevance of 'Son of a Preacher Man'. Maybe 'I've Got a Brand New Combine Harvester' or a piece of music more elegantly pastoral would have worked better? However, it did remind me of the very limited edition music box that Badly Drawn Boy produced back in 2000 that played eleven seconds of his 'I Love You All'. And I'd love to see one of these being used to translate some futuristic techno track via those cute enchanting chimes.

Motive Sounds releases

Another label that puts considerable effort into its music packaging is Motive Sounds. It even includes a directory of the designers/illustrators it has used over at http://www.motivesounds.com/.

Portishead - Third by Marc Bessant

Originally documented at: Sleevage.com


Designer Marc Bessant:

“After the ten year gap from the last record I knew the only visual which had stuck in the public eye had been the ‘P’ character, it was an established brand which I wanted to not only reintroduce but reinforce. We were keen to avoid anything ‘conceptual’, no puns or noir imagery, that was all dead to us, I wanted to present a box, which simply holds the music, with the least amount of information on it which would ultimately say everything – essential minimalism – which I felt captured the Eastern Bloc coldness of some of the music I was hearing in the studio.”

Pixies - Minotaur

Tash alerted me to last year's deluxe Pixies box set overseen by Jeff Anderson and featuring some new work by amazing 4AD visionary Vaughan Oliver and photography by Simon Larbalestier. One thing that strikes me about this project was how a process eventually led them to Oliver when I would have thought this would have been an obvious route if not completely inevitable. Certainly, I don't think of anyone else when I recount artwork for Pixies releases and the 'surprise' regarding his involvement is akin to that where someone decides that Peter Saville might be the right man to knock-up some New Order artwork.

Anyway, some info:

Five classic 4AD releases from Pixies are going to be reissued as both Limited Edition and Deluxe Edition collector's sets entitled Minotaur. Spearheaded by Jeff Anderson, founder of A+R (Artist in Residence), who has put together expansive and eye-catching versions of releases by Nine Inch Nails, Beck and Sigur Ros - Minotaur will be available for pre-order at www.ainr.com beginning Monday, June 15, 2009. The Minotaur Deluxe Edition will retail for $175, while the Minotaur Limited Edition will be priced at $450.

The Deluxe Edition will include all five Pixies studio albums - Come On Pilgrim (1987), Surfer Rosa (1988), Doolittle (1989), Bossanova (1990), and Trompe le Monde (1991) - on 24k layered CD and Blu-ray (five discs total), with reinterpreted artwork by Vaughan Oliver, the graphic designer who created all of the artwork that accompanied the Pixies' studio albums. Also included in the Deluxe Edition will be a DVD of a Pixies 1991 performance at the Brixton Academy in London, the group's videos, possible live tracks, and a 54-page book, all housed in a custom slipcase. The Minotaur Limited Edition version will include everything in the Deluxe Edition, as well as all five albums on 180 gram vinyl, a Giclee print of Oliver's artwork, and a 72-page hardcover book, all housed in an oversized custom clamshell cover.

Anderson explained the idea behind the set. "As a Pixies fan, I asked myself, 'How can we re-release this without making this just another box set?' I think we've all been down that road where you've purchased a box set and have been disappointed by only getting a few bonus tracks and a few extra photos. With the Pixies, because they remain such a contemporary band and their sound is still so relevant today, we wanted to re-introduce them to their fans, giving them something that they would truly appreciate and cherish. And also, how can we introduce the band to new fans? What soon followed was the idea of Vaughan Oliver."

Oliver - who was the resident album designer for 4AD - explains how he assembled the now instantly-recognizable album covers for the band. "My starting point would always be the music, reading the lyrics, talking with the band - what their preferences were, in film and painting. With the Pixies, it was work that was always close to my heart and my own personal aesthetic - the images that Charles [aka Black Francis] painted with his lyrics really struck a chord. His work is full of fantastic imagery that always appealed to me, and those were ideas I was trying to reflect with the packaging."

After discussing the project with Anderson, Oliver came up with an intriguing idea. "I said, 'That was then, this is now. Why don't we do a whole new body of work? It's all born of the same lyrics and albums - it would be evolving the ideas we had in the original packages.' I worked with the same photographer who I worked with back then, Simon Larbalestier. If there were a 'fifth Pixie,' it would have been Simon - his work so suited what they were doing. Simon's gone out and shot a whole new body of work. He was a bit panicked at first, he said, 'The old sleeves - with the topless Spanish dancer, the red planet - have become iconic.' I said to Simon, 'Don't be scared. You're 20 years on, you're a better photographer. Let's take all those same things and do a new body of work.' He shot some amazing images that I think surpass what we did first time around."

An occasional design tutor at the University of the Creative Arts in Epsom [Surrey, U.K.] whilst still running his v23 design business, Oliver called upon his students for some input for the Pixies set. "I selected a team of students under my direction to work with the titles in the track listing, in a three dimensional way. Cutting the track listing out of cards, shining light through it, making the track titles from nails - all very organic. We're using the type as 'image.' There's a link when you look at them visually with the images that I'm putting next to them in the book."

Upon seeing the gorgeous packaging and effort that has gone into both the Deluxe and Limited Editions of Minotaur, Pixies fans worldwide will get a chance to experience the Pixies in a whole new manner, thanks to Anderson, Oliver, and Larbalestier. "We design some interesting and innovative packages," adds Anderson. "We're not inexpensive, but I think there are still people out there who don't mind paying for great quality."

Blur - 'Fool's Day'

This year's Record Store Day prompted scores of vinyl fans hitting the 300 remaining UK independent music retailers to grab some limited releases. While successful in terms of drawing attention to what are potentially threatened retailers of physical music formats, the exercise raises some questions regarding the value of music formats and the figures attached to the actual music.

Blur's 'Fool's Day' was one title that was much in demand. The band's first studio material in years, all 1,000 copies sold out almost instantly. Equally fast, many of these found their way onto eBay with Buy It Now prices between £145 and £175. Yet the band also made the track available as a free download on their website. The Guardian subsequently pointed out that it wasn't the song that had value, but the 7" object itself: describing the process as "exploiting that obsessive muso band loyalty and the status that comes with getting a rare and in this case lo-fi collectable".

[Many thanks for Amy for directing me to this.]