Mount Kimbie - Cold Spring Fault Less Youth artwork by Leif Podhajsky

Link: Leif Podhajsky
Link: Mount Kimbie
Link: Warp

With that amazing Horrors box set recently unveiled plus an archive of visual material for names like Foals, Bonobo and Tame Impala, Aussie artist Leif Podhajsky's kaleidoscopic view of the world is well established. However his latest imagery for Mount Kimbie's upcoming long-player takes a more restrained graphic, almost mid-century approach yet it simultaneously appears to nod towards Matisse's collage work and, pioneer of the album cover, Alex Steinweiss. So while Podhajsky's more psychedelic offerings will continue to thrill, it's great to see the arrival of this other, cleaner but equally intriguing aesthetic.

Objekt/Cosmin TRG - 'Shuttered/Auster' by Give Up Art and Shaun Bloodworth

Link: Give Up Art
Link: Shaun Bloodworth
Link: The Green Series
Link: Bleep.com

The second in the Bleep.com co-curated Green Series is another highly collectable split release. Again boasting a die-cut, embossed and hand-stamped outer sleeve (with internal photography by Shaun Bloodworth), this one features music from the Berlin-based Objekt and Romania's Cosmin TRG (whose second album will be out in April via 50 Weapons).

The run of deluxe packages - complete with signed colour art prints - is already spoken for. The (still beautiful) standard version can currently be pre-ordered. Be quick though. Only 500 copies worldwide and released next week.

The Draughtsman - '1694 EP' artwork by Alex Egan

Link: Alex Egan

Renaissance man or control freak? Whatever, Alex Egan's release as The Draughtsman comes complete with artwork by the producer. Of course, Egan is more than adept at producing tasty music-oriented design with his output gracing labels including Phantasy Sound. However the polymath's double (green) vinyl offering is particularly special.

Evidently a homage to Peter Greenaway's The Draughtman's Contract, its depiction of ordered nature plays against some more haphazard type. With remixes from Roman Flügel, Cosmo Vitelli and Tim Paris, it's available to purchase from Phonica.

Dinos Chapman - Luftbobler design by FUEL

Link: Fuel Design
Link: The Vinyl Factory 

Limited Edition details:

• Four plate copper etching by Dinos Chapman, hand coloured on 300gsm Somerset Velvet soft white paper
• Five colour screen printed artwork across four panels of cloth-bound bespoke board
• Two 180-gram heavyweight hand etched records, containing the album's 13 tracks, pressed on the EMI 1400 in Hayes, Middlesex
• Limited to 300 copies worldwide, each hand signed and numbered by the artist
• One in every 10 copies contains an exclusive bonus track, pressed on an additional one-sided 12"
• Mastered for vinyl by Noel Summerville at 3345 Mastering
• Music written and produced by Dinos Chapman
• Original etching by Dinos Chapman
• Design by FUEL

One in every 10 copies also contains an additional one-sided 12" vinyl pressing of an exclusive bonus track, which will never be subsequently released on any format.

This limited edition is available to pre-order now. The Vinyl Factory will release 'Luftbobler' on gatefold vinyl, CD and digital formats on 25 February 2013. An accompanying, site-specific audio-visual installation will take place at The Vinyl Factory in Soho, London from 28 February to 3 March 2013.

Pricing:

• The first 100 copies of this edition will be priced at £200
• The next 100 copies of this edition will be priced at £250
• The last 100 copies of this edition will be priced at £300

DJ Rashad - 'Rollin' artwork by Optigram

Link: Optigram 
Link: Alex Trochut
Link: Hyperdub

Another sleeve from Manuel Sepulveda of Optigram for the Hyperdub label. This time it's a visualisation for an upcoming four track EP by DJ Rashad: a name synonymous with Chicago's footwork sound. Not that this is completely new territory for Sepulveda (he previously designed an album cover for, scene stalwart, Traxman on Planet Mu) but it is representative of Hyperdub's continued diversification.

This one sees the designer creating the sort of dark textures that typified Ikonika's 2010 album while also making use of a bold typeface created by Alex Trochut.

Getz/Andy Pain & Z Connection - 'The Wicker Man/Dive Ruv' artwork by Pyramid Studio

Link: Pyramid Studio

12" artwork for, Russian label, Interactive Music by Pyramid Studio's João Miguel Chaves. Nice.

Fort Romeau - 'SW9' artwork by Michael Cina

Link: Michael Cina
Link: John Klukas
Link: Ghostly

More beautiful Ghostly/Spectral work from Michael Cina that picks up from the painterly figurative style of his previous Matthew Dear sleeve. Only this time (for the 100% Silk-affiliated Fort Romeau) the paint adds a gauzy texture to a photograph of a woman by John Klukas with further veiling of the image via a more rigid graphic overlay. Cina pairs this with some sophisticated and carefully arranged type on the reverse. Out 11th March.

'Dalston Fried Chicken' from MarkJames_Works and Unbox Industries

Link: Mark James_Works
Link: Unbox Industries

Inspired by hazy late night visits to fast food outlets, Dalston is six inches of finger lickin’ fried chicken presented in vinyl. Delivered in a hand screen printed box, and limited to 200 pieces. 

DFC also comes with a deep fried orange 7” single featuring a brand new track, 'Chicken Rhythm' by Gareth Goddard, (Cherrystones)

Also available will be a limited edition screen print and T-shirt. 

 

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.

The Shee - Murmurations by Lillias Kinsman-Blake

Link: Full story at Computer Arts
Link: Lillias Kinsman-Blake

...Every copy of the album is itself unique. All 2000 of the CDs they've shipped have different patterns of starlings in flight on their covers.

"The conventional method for CD covers is lithographic printing but the flexibility of digital printing made it feasible for each cover to be different," says Kinsman-Blake...

 

Karenn/The Analogue Cops - 'Studio 3/OCPLX1' by Give Up Art and Shaun Bloodworth

Link: Give Up Art
Link: Shaun Bloodworth
Link: The Green Series
Link: Bleep.com

Following up 2009's North/South/East/West project, Bleep.com has again collaborated with the formidable team of, design company, Give Up Art and, photographer, Shaun Bloodworth. Again fusing artwork and music, 'The Green Series' has made its pre-order debut with a split techno-oriented single from Karenn (a.k.a. producers Pariah and Blawan) and The Analogue Cops (Marieu and Lucretio).

The standard version for this release is already pretty special - with its die-cut sleeve, embossing and hand-stamped details - yet there is additionally a numbered deluxe edition that additionally comes with two high quality art prints signed by Bloodworth. Both versions include MP3 versions that will be delivered on, release date, 19th November. Neither are going to be around for long: the pressing is limited to 100 copies of the deluxe vinyl available and a further 500 of the standard version.