I think what i look for in a cover for a record is how well it can describe the sound and ethos of the music. this album cover is just as messy and frantic and DIY as the songs on this project. for that i love it.
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Too tough to pick just one, I mean LCDās self titled, Obscured By Clouds, All Things Must Pass, Crush, Longwave, The OOZ, pretty much every Kurt Vile recordā¦ all goated in my eyes. Iāll use my cop out answer to highlight 2 of my favorite contemporary album artists.
First, local dude Perry Shall, who has designed many releases on Dan Auerbachās label Easy Eye Sound. Some great Shannon & The Clams covers, an overlooked but incredibly solid Radiator Hospital album ā I especially love his portrait style covers. I certainly ripped that template when designing the bootleg cover in the pinned post on my page. Which leads into artist #2ā¦
Andrew Savage of Parquet Courts fame has also designed each of the bandās releases, plus an Ultimate Painting split on Woodsist, plus Iām pretty sure both of his solo albums. Light Up Gold, Human Performance, Wide Awake!! Cāmonā¦ check out the portfolio section on his website, too, for some paintings from over the years. Asked To Leave and In Texas No Less are two of my faves.
Aug 22, 2024
this isn't a particularly rare vinyl release at all - it's still widely in print and very affordable. it's an album very very widely considered a classic. but it is, I think, the moment when I realised what makes buying music more satisfying of an experience than the lifetime of piracy I'd built up to that point.
it comes with a handful of prints and illustrations that really expand upon the feeling of the album. the record itself isn't even labelled, there's no tracklist, the sides are engraved with their descriptions "nervous, sad, poor" and "bleak, uncertain, beautiful". but most notably of all, each of these releases comes with a penny flattened on train tracks behind the studio it was recorded in. I've heard stories of copies of this album coming with handwritten notes of thanks from the label.
it was the first time I think I realised the love and the immense effort that goes into putting music out independently like this, even long after the recordings are done. I mean, I get that this one's a very special case - a lot of high-effort touches to really drive home the art, and to keep doing them decades after the album released. but I think picking this up is a big reason why I'm still buying vinyl ten years later.
the album still absolutely rips, of course.
Jan 10, 2025
janet perr is crazy she also designed the world of echo cover art which is honestly my favorite album art of all time
Apr 6, 2025
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Really adds texture and personality, iāve been inspired a lot by twee and mod culture recently and i find these posters really fun and exciting.
Apr 8, 2025
Alright hereās a quick look at hand processing 16mm motion picture film. The stock I shot for this film is called Kodak 3378, itās a high contrast black and white reversal film stock, which basically means it doesnāt develop as a negative but as the actual viewable image. The process of āhand developmentā is an interesting one. First 100 ft of film are loaded into a light proof tank. The chemical process I used is called E6 and it consists of a few steps that can be performed at room temperature: first developer, second developer, rinse, bleach, fixer, photoflow. Exposing the film to these chemicals four particular times results in the final image. This step is the rinse, the 3378 stock is the slightly purple film.
Hand processing creates strange patterns and aberrations, disturbances created by a process that is inherently imperfect. It allows the artist to play with the parameters of 16mm image making but maybe more importantly, its results are a direct effect of the artistās hand on their work. This is why we shoot film in a digital world: itās something we can physically affect as true human beings.
Mar 19, 2025
Composing a short film about childhood at the moment and Iāve been leaning heavily on this Casio PT-1 keyboard I picked up at a flea market in Barcelona. They were manufactured starting in 1985 as a simpler alternative to Casioās LV-1, hailed to be the first commercially available synth. Anyway love this sound itās so tactile without feeling too boxy, Iāve really enjoyed playing it through my Tascam 414 as a preamp.
Mar 10, 2025