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.

More work from Alex Jenkins

Link: Alex Jenkins' Tumblr
Link: Alex Jenkins' Twitter

I previously posted some artwork by designer Alex Jenkins and have since been sent some better quality images by the man himself - including a number of projects that I hadn't picked up on.

As in-house designer for XL Recordings, Jenkins produced a series of memorable sleeves for The Prodigy dating back to 'Firestarter'. His Tumblr documents some of this material alongside additional photography credits and the stories attached to their creation - including the un-used 'Kebab' cover for Fat of the Land that involved a £13,000-£14,000 shoot with the surplus doner meat finding its way into the stomachs of London customers. [Doubt the same fate was dealt to the crab that was used for the finished album.] Another meaty offering also came in the shape of his cleverly vacuum-packed 'salami' CD that featured a sample of tracks from XL's roster.

Anyway, it's a diverse collection that followed on from Jenkins' uni hand-in that consisted of his re-imagining of the packaging for Orbital's first album, and - as a single body of work - appears to be united by the employment of gritty textures. The most complete sets have to be the beautiful deteriorated and stained Breakbeat Era campaign (complete with budget-busting bookbinding materials) plus his collection of nocturnal urban imagery for The Streets (including that iconic Clipper lighter logo that knowingly taps into stoner culture). The latter was developed for 679 Records as a freelance project while Jenkins' other non-XL commissions have come from the UK garage-oriented Locked On label, the progressive house-biased Y2K imprint and Freskanova Records' The Freestylers. However, what's not featured below is a succession of Jenkins' identity/branding assignments for other industries that only further demonstrate his ability to shift from fairly niche products to design for high-profile clients.

Mute Audio Documents by Adrian Shaughnessy/This Is Real Art

Link: Shaugnessy Works
Link: This Is Real Art

Re-visit of an Adrian Shaughnessy design for a retrospective of the entire output of Mute Records that catalogues distinct periods in the history of the company as documents.

It's posted here as a reminder that Adrian Shaughnessy also has a publishing company, Unit Editions. The latter has a week left on its sale with 50% off selected items including the Supergraphics and Studio Culture books and a number of Wim Crouwel posters.

Link: Unit Editions

Kosmik Kommando - Analogue Android limited edition box set

Link: Machine Codes

With a run of just seven box sets, Kosmik Kommando's Analogue Android album is a proper limited edition. The small number demonstrates how much time and effort has gone into each one with its series of hand-painted labels. The standard vinyl is also a bespoke offering with an airbrushed cover plate and vinyl containing individual messages.

[Thanks to Marc Bessant for pointing this out on Twitter.]

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.

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - 'Garden' by Big Active

Link: Big Active
Link: Maurizio Anzeri

A track that has really done the rounds having previously been released in different forms on Greco-Roman and Play It Down, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs' 'Garden' has cropped up all over the place including its re-emergence as the soundtrack to the latest Nokia advert. This may be due to a major label push/its re-issue through Polydor.

Artwork for the latter incarnation (top image) is by Big Active with the art direction and design handled by Mat Maitland, photography by Stephanie Sian Smith and embroidery added by Susie Cowie. I haven't seen any mention of Maurizio Anzeri as being attached to the concept despite the artist's embroidered photographs (bottom image) being what could only be described as "rather similar".

Coverscaping: Discovering Album Aesthetics by Asbjorn Gronstad and Oyvind Vagnes

Currently I'm reading Coverscaping: Discovering Album Aesthetics by Asbjorn Gronstad and Oyvind Vagnes - a book that's a truly critical study of album artwork.

As its authors note, many publications about sleeves tend to be of the coffee table variety but this has got some real academic depth. Personally, I always liked Adrian Shaughnessy's introductory text within Intro's Sampler series of books. This takes some of those sorts of discussions further while also delving into a whole range of other ideas about audio-visual relations.

Amazon link: Coverscaping: Discovering Album Aesthetics

Massimiliano Pagliara - Focus For Infinity by Doeller & Satter

Link: Doeller & Satter

2011
Massimiliano Pagliara:
Focus For Infinity
Live At Robert Johnson Records
Various
Record Sleeve, CD Packaging

Andy Votel prints

I last posted something about Andy Votel when his work graced Demdike Stare's Tryptych. More often found rummaging through weird old vinyl, he has seemingly put some time aside to dig through his own visual archives and has subsequently got together a series of prints that are now available from illustrator Stanley Chow's print shop.

See them, plus work by Chow and Barney Ibbotson, via the link:
The Stanley Chow Print Shop

Massive Attack vs Burial - 'Four Walls/Paradise Circus'

From: VF Editions

Massive Attack vs Burial - 'Four Walls / Paradise Circus'

Inhale Gold / The Vinyl Factory

£ 25

Given the limited nature of this product we are limiting it to one copy per user.

The subject of prolonged rumour and intense speculation, Inhale Gold and The Vinyl Factory are proud to present Massive Attack’s long awaited collaboration with Burial, Four Walls / Paradise Circus.

These new Burial mixes of previously unreleased Massive Attack track 'Four Walls' and Heligoland favourite 'Paradise Circus' are available exclusively as limited vinyl edition of only 1000 copies worldwide.

Pressed on heavyweight 180g 12” vinyl housed in a stunning, hand numbered, gold glitter screen-printed sleeve designed by Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja (3D), this edition has been crafted by The Vinyl Factory, and is sure to become a highly coveted collectors item.

As you’d expect from these two acts these are no ordinary remixes and Burial has completely rebuilt both tracks in his own unique style providing a masterclass in production. Listen to 'Four Walls' here.

At around 12 minutes each, both 'Four Walls' and 'Paradise Circus' have been given the time and space to evolve and develop going way beyond the scope of normal remixes, with the end result two highly original, in every sense of the word, pieces of music.


Product Details:

* Both tracks exclusive to this limited edition
* 1000 copies worldwide
* Artwork by Robert Del Naja
* Screen-printed cover with gold glitter
* 180-gram heavyweight vinyl
* Each edition hand numbered

Creating music samples with vinyl records by Ishac Bertran

From: Ishback

Analog Vinyl Sampling from Ishac Bertran on Vimeo.

"Music sampling has been done for years using different techniques. Currently samplers (either as a piece of hardware or as software) is the most extended tool for playing samples that can come from digital formatted music, live recording, vinyls or tapes. One of the most old techniques for sampling was cut&paste the audio tape. I love this video from Delia Derbyshire using reel-to-reel recording, creating loops by cut&pasting the audio tape, and sync the samples to create music.

Driven by my devotion for vinyls and analog processes (perhaps a bit of Dj wannabe too), and emulating the audio tape cut&paste technique, I tried to make the vinyl sampling a bit more analog – literally cut and paste pieces of vinyl to create samples.

I bought some second hand vinyl records, different music styles: Supertramp, Wagner, Paul Anka, Chicago, Lil Jon and some random ones to make the first tests. I spend a couple of hours browsing and listening to old records – I remember thinking “all projects should start like this”."

Full details of the project at the above link.