'Cargaa 1 EP' by HelloMe

Link: HelloMe 
Link: Warp 

The first of three Cargaa EPs that represents emerging Lisbon talent is released by Warp next week. Available as as a 12" and download, artwork comes courtesy of Berlin's HelloMe: furthering - as the bottom images suggest - the palette and clean aesthetic of their refresh of Warp's website. Although this time, coupling that Designers Republic 2.0 style with some more expressively daubed detailing.

Autechre - Exai by The Designers Republic

Link: The Designers Republic
Link: Autechre
Link: Warp

Exai is the 11th album from Rob Brown and Sean Booth
Released March 2013

17 tracks - 2 hours 32 seconds

- Deluxe Vinyl Edition
- Compact Disc
- High Quality Download

Made in The Designers Republic™ 


Deluxe Vinyl Edition

• 4 x heavyweight 180gram vinyl, each disc packed in its own printed inner sleeve.
• Housed in a rigid slipcase wrapped in Cairn Eco Kraft stock with clear foil block to front.
• Includes Download code redeemable at Bleep.com

CD Edition

• 2 x cd, each packed in its own printed cd wallet.
• Housed in a CD slipcase made from Cairn Eco Kraft stock with clear foil block to front.

Included free with all Vinyl & CD orders on Bleep.com

• Your choice of 16bit / 44.1kHz or 24bit / 44.1kHz WAV version of the album
• Plus a 320kbps LAME encoded MP3 version of the album for your portable player

• These digital versions will be available to download direct from Bleep.com on day of release

Preordering now.

Flying Lotus - Until The Quiet Comes artwork by Stephen Serrato & B+

Link: Warp 
Link: Stephen Serrato
Link: B+

The new album from Flying Lotus - featuring guest appearances from Erykah Badu, Laura Darlington, Niki Randa, Thundercat & Thom Yorke - is set for release on October 1st via Warp Records. The artwork has just been revealed and it's designed by Stephen Serrato (who did the Reset EP). Although this time he has been working with some stunning photography by the lauded LA-based B+.

Flying Lotus vinyl reissues

Link: Bleep

Following the Sony/PIAS warehouse fire during last year's riots, all of Warp's stock was reported as destroyed. There was also the suggestion that many of the releases would not be re-pressed. However that physical back-catalogue has just expanded with the reissuing of four Flying Lotus vinyl releases.

Both FlyLo's Los Angeles and Cosmogramma albums are available again (complete with their artwork respectively by Build/Timothy Saccenti and Leigh J. McCloskey). Additionally 'Pattern+Grid World' (with its sleeve illustration by Theo Ellsworth) and the 'Reset EP' (Stephen Serrato and Seth Ferris) are now also up on Bleep.com.

 

Clark - Iradelphic material visualised by Julian House and The Vikings

Link: Julian House
Link: Ghost Box
Link: Clark
Link: Warp
Link: The Vikings

The latest long-player from Clark was released by Warp this week - complete with artwork from Julian House.

Part of the Intro partnership (where he has created sleeves for the likes of Can, Primal Scream and Oasis), House has additionally been busy with his own Ghost Box label. The imagery for the Iradelphic album appears to touch on the hazy memories triggered by his more recent projects and some of that crackled nostalgia recounts elements found embedded in the words and pictures of The Focus Group and Belbury Poly. The irregular 'Clark' text additionally appears to be related to the type he applied to Broadcast's The Noise Made By People.

With a rather different aesthetic, a film featuring Clark's melancholic 'Black Stone' was additionally released today with direction by The Vikings.

For The Record #5: Jeroen Erosie

Link: Jeroen Erosie
Link: 3024world
Link: The Designers Republic
Link: Autechre 

Co-running the brilliant 3024 label with Martyn, Jeroen Erosie also maintains a career as a lauded street artist. Recently bringing the two together through a series of beautifully chaotic collage-like sleeves for the likes of Mosca, Redshape, Julio Bashmore, Addison Groove and Jon Convex, he reveals that his own favourite record cover is the minimal/maximal solution by The Designers Republic for Autechre's Tri Repetae.

"Plain from the outside," he observes, "visually linked to the music on the inside: it made a big impression when I first saw and heard this. And still does. It seems it all came from the same weird planet, so consistent and subtle."

Gonjasufi - MU.ZZ.LE mini album

Link: Gonjasufi
Link: Warp
Link: MR. IMD

Gonjasufi's new mini-album, MU.ZZ.LE, is released 23rd January 2012 across four physical formats. Choose from a screenprinted A2 poster that's limited to a hand numbered run of just 500, the CD version, double 10" vinyl or a bundle featuring the latter plus one of the posters. MP3s are included with all purchases.

Great stereoscopic artwork by MR. IMD throughout.

YCN/Warp Records design by Oli Marsh

Link: Oli Marsh

University of Salford MA Communication Design student Oli Marsh provided a winning response to YCN's Warp Records brief.

His concept was based around an ever-evolving album artwork that involved a release's title being die-cut into an outer sleeve before being customised by further complimentary imagery released via the web. Marsh chose to illustrate the idea by using Flying Lotus' Cosmogramma long-player with his inky example of text and image (top) having a nice relationship to his Droplet font (bottom). Other work of particular note by Marsh includes his text based on audio waveforms that he utilised on a poster design for the Sonar festival.

Artwork by Optigram

Link: Optigram

Optigram is the design company operated by Manuel Sepulveda whose commissions include sleeves for Steve 'Kode9' Goodman's Hyperdub plus the similarly lauded Warp, Planet Mu and Citinite labels.

Some of the work involves tessellated shapes akin to Andy Gilmore's art whilst a few of Sepulveda's Terror Danjah sleeves have a 1980's-ish retro-futuristic feel complete with the kind of geometric monoliths not a million miles away from La Boca's work for The Emperor Machine. Much of the Optigram output is playful in its use of colour, but I'm also liking these moodier monochromatic offerings including the imagery that adorned Ikonika's album.

Plaid - Scintilli package

Link: Warp
Link: Plaid
Link: Scintilli microsite
Link: Pre-order at Bleep.com


Already being a much-delayed album, the Warp label is hopeful that the Sony/PIAS warehouse fire won't be affecting the release of Plaid's Scintilli too much - meaning that it should be in stores 26th September.

Sadly, some of Warp's back-catalogue will not be physically available again following this week's loss but this offering from the London-based duo is busily being manufactured alongside new albums from Rustie and CANT. There's also a limited edition version currently being offered via pre-order of a ‘Muda na Mono’ puzzle pack: that name taken from a Japanese phrase meaning ‘pointless object’. It contains two die-cut rings and a CD which can be assembled as per the featured diagram. If correctly aligned, the completed sphere allows the track titles to be read.

"The packaging reflects a desire to give the CD an ornamental function, beyond its one use as a basic storage device for music."

Battles artwork

Link: Warp

The latest from Battles is the Gary Numan featuring 'My Machines'. Release date is 15th August. Warp is issuing the track on silver limited edition vinyl [mirroring the 'flavoured' versions that accompanied, last single, 'Ice Cream'] while its sleeve furthers the 'pile' motif of the Gloss Drop album.

The design is uncredited for the more recent offerings but the long-player's cover was photographed by Leslie Unruh with the art itself courtesy of the experimental rock/math rock band's own Dave Konopka.

Work by Andy Gilmore

Having already created imaged for Gold Panda and Africa Hitech, Andy Gilmore is perhaps the go-to guy for lovingly-crafted tessellated artwork. He additionally produces complex Spirograph-like images, but it's these more angular works and their tasty colour palettes that have grabbed my attention most. More can be seen at his site: http://crowquills.com/

[By the way, a copy of the Africa Hitech album - which is due out in May - actually arrived the day after I posted this.]

Autechre - EPS 1991 - 2002

Autechre
EPS 1991 - 2002
(Warp)

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This 47 track collection brings together material from Autechre's EP releases (now mostly out of print) from between 1991 - 2002 years. Including:

Cavity Job (1991 - First Autechre release from before they signed to Warp and not available on CD before)
Basscad EP (1994)
Anti EP (1995)
Garbage (1995)
Anvil Vapre (1995)
Peel Session (Transmitted 1995, released 1999)
Envane (1997)
Cichlisuite (1997)
EP7 (1999)
Peel Session 2 (Transmitted 1999, released 2001)
Gantz_Graf (2002)

All versions come with 3 High Quality Videos:
Second Bad Vilbel (Chris Cunningham)
Gantz_Graf (Alexander Rutterford)
Basscadet (Jess Scott Hunter)
_________________________________________________________________________

AVAILABLE NOW

320 MP3 and Video

WAV and Video
_________________________________________________________________________

PRE-ORDER NOW -
5x Deluxe CD Boxset
Designed by The Designers Republic

CD version comes with WAV and 320 MP3 Downloads and Video


CD SHIPPED & RELEASED 11TH APRIL 2011


Amazon Link: EPs 1991 - 2002

For The Record #1: Lone

Link: Lone
Link: Boards of Canada
Link: Magic Wire Recordings

Lone is Matt Cutler - a production talent whose deep and tripped-out electronic compositions have found their way out via labels like Actress' Werk Discs.

Asked to select his favourite artwork for Plastic Circles, he has opted for Music Has The Right To Children by Boards of Canada. Cutler has repeatedly cited this duo as a major musical influence, yet this design [by Boards of Canada themselves for release on Skam and, latterly, Warp] also appears to have a visual connection to, his own current long-player, Emerald Fantasy Tracks. The similar use of the hazy holiday snaps perhaps then being an ideal accompaniment for a sound that audibly reconfigures past memories into something that is simultaneously strange and familiar.

Warp20

Links:
Warp20: Chosen
Warp20: Unheard
Warp20: Recreated

I posted some of these before but never together. This particularly shows the variations in the 'Mobius band' set created for the Warp20 release(s). Designed by YES Studio with photography by Dan Holdsworth. Print editions also available from YES. (The deluxe box set sold out ages ago, by the way.)