Music Archive

The Design Process Behind Classic Album Artwork

By Dan Zambonini, April 2, 2010, 5:08 pm in Art, Design, Music, Photography, Present

Storm Thorgerson is a British designer and artist responsible for more classic album covers than you can possibly imagine one person could create in a lifetime. From Pink Floyd to Audioslave, The Cranberries to Muse, he has produced the most compelling and memorable album artworks of the last 40 years.

An excellent exhibition of his artwork runs in the east-London Idea Generation Gallery from April 2nd to May 2nd, 2010. Part of the exhibition highlights his creative process for a specific case study. Check out the exhibition yourself to see the process in action and in detail. For now, here’s a quick overview:

  1. The Brief. The designer listens to the music (possibly only demos at this stage), reads the lyrics, and talks to the band. These create a ‘brain soup’, from which ideas can be extracted to form the brief.
  2. Roughs. Over a number of meetings/days, the designer meets the band again for discussions, in an attempt to pin-down a theme or big idea. This stage is creative, with word-play, honest thoughts, and scribblings. The best are converted to more complete illustrations (the ‘roughs’).
  3. Tests. Once a rough is accepted and a budget agreed, a prototype is often created to ensure that the idea works. Depending on the idea, this could involve the creation of scale models from clay or polystyrene. If everything works, the final models are constructed.
  4. Shoot. A location is researched and booked, possibly for a long-time if outdoors and in uncertain weather. Models are erected and positioned, with help from volunteers if the shoot is big and complex. A wide range of photographs are then taken, under varying light/weather conditions and filters.
  5. Editing. This could be called ‘selection’, where the best shot from the shoot is chosen. This can take several days, if hundreds of similar shots need to be compared.
  6. Artwork. Finally, having chosen the perfect shot, any cleaning-up or final computer editing is performed, before handing over the final product.

Written down like this, the process seems so simple. When you consider that some ideas involve 700 or 800 iron beds arranged on a beach with the tide approaching, you begin to appreciate that it might not be so simple after all.

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Where’s The Love? Comparing Lyrics from 2010 and 1960

By Dan Zambonini, February 21, 2010, 10:26 pm in Culture, Language, Music, Present

The two images above (click for larger versions; created with Wordle) show the most popular words used in the US Billboard Top 10 songs from February 21, 1960 and February 21, 2010. I’m sure you can work out which is which.

(Note that this includes repetitions within the same song, hence the Imma.)

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The Love of a Powerful Woman

By Amy Thibodeau, December 26, 2009, 12:39 pm in Culture, Music, Present

imelda

Recently David Byrne announced a new collaboration with Fat Boy Slim called Here Lies Love inspired by the ‘steel butterfly’, Imelda Marcos. The collection, set to be released in February 2010 presents Marcos “meditating on events in her life, from her childhood spent in poverty and her rise to power to her ultimate departure from the palace. In particular, the production looks at the relationship between Imelda and a servant from her childhood, Estrella Cumpas, who appeared at key moments in Imelda’s life.” (source)

Marcos was the first lady of the Philippines in the late 1960s. One of the most hated women in politics in the last half century, she was appointed various powerful positions in her husband’s government after he declared martial law and abolished the constitution, allegedly squandering away money belonging to the people of the Philippines to buy property in New York, fur coats and shoes.

Marcos was criticized for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on high-profile infrastructure projects that did little to alleviate poverty and were beyond the reach of ordinary Filipinos … By 1985, it was estimated that the Philippine government had acquired more than $28 billion in foreign loans, much of it during President Marcos’ 20-year rule… On March 10, 2008, [Marcos was] acquitted of 32 counts of dollar salting (involving £430m in Swiss bank accounts) due to reasonable doubt. Marcos stated: “First of all, I am so happy and I thank the Lord that the 32 cases have been dismissed by the regional court here in Manila. This will subtract from the 9001 cases that were filed against the Marcoses.” Her lawyer Robert Sison said that she has 10 pending criminal cases remaining… (source)

Why Marcos? According to Byrne, “The story I am interested in is about asking what drives a powerful person—what makes them tick? How do they make and then remake themselves? I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be great if—as this piece would be principally composed of clubby dance music—one could experience it in a club setting? Could one bring a ‘story’ and a kind of theater to the disco? Was that possible? If so, wouldn’t that be amazing!”

Imelda Marcos image by Billypalooza.

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1000 Years of Popular Music

By Carl Morris, November 12, 2009, 12:13 am in Music, Past

richard_thompson

Richard Thompson is a solo musician and former guitarist in the folk rock group Fairport Convention.

When Playboy magazine blithely asked him to list his favourite songs of the last “millennium”, Thompson drew on his formidable knowledge of music to do exactly that.

The resulting list, spanning the years 1068 to 2001, was deemed unsuitable by magazine staff who decided to run more editorially viable charts by other personalities instead.

Nevertheless it gave Thompson a unique concept for a show – and album release. Live or on record, Thompson offers performances of one of the oldest known songs in the English language Sumer Is Icumen In, the Gilbert and Sullivan penned There is Beauty In the Bellow of the Blast and among other more contemporary songs Oops!…I Did It Again, originally performed by Britney Spears.

Despite the diversity, he admits to gaps in his coverage of the 17th and 18th centuries and “too much weight on Music Hall and Rock & Roll”.

Thompson’s background is in the folk tradition. In its original sense folk music happens in a live setting – songs are memorised, passed on and adapted, sometimes for hundreds of years. Often in our culture “folk” music has become a byword for a certain style of acoustic guitar music. But it originally signified a word-of-mouth community where ideas of authorship, strict copyright and “original” versions were secondary or non-existent. With that knowledge maybe it’s less of a surprise that Richard Thompson is a walking archive of songs ready to be shared, a commons if you will.

Richard Thompson photograph by 6tee-zeven

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Public Image Ltd’s Metal Box, Reconsidered

By Carl Morris, October 4, 2009, 8:23 pm in Music, Past

Public Image Limited: Metal Box

John Lydon recently announced the return of his post-punk band Public Image Ltd.

It’s a good opportunity to reappraise the band’s seminal 1979 album Metal Box. It’s a landmark record for all kinds of reasons.

Obviously there’s the music itself. It puts the disco into discontent.

Like anything described as “ahead of its time” it is, in truth, a direct influence for later artists. It’s the source of a throb and pulse which goes through a surprising amount of music which follows it. (For instance, listen to the tune Death Disco with bands such as LCD Soundsystem in mind, or for that matter certain other bands on DFA Records.) I’d hesitate to call it “experimental”, that might put you off. Let’s just say that, unlike most things which carry that word, it’s in no way an artistic dead-end.

Metal Box dates from a time when ALL recorded music had tangible packaging. And wow, what packaging.

Even though these were the days when physical media had a hope of being sustainable, this was a brave move. Virgin Records (at that time a maverick independent label) released it in the UK as three separate vinyl records in a metal film canister, hence the title. The whole thing has a heightened sound quality. Six sides in total playing at 45rpm certainly did justice to Jah Wobble’s cavernous basslines, as well as each scraping guitar sound and every shriek and wail from Lydon.

Once you managed to prise the thing open, that is.

Metal Box, in its original form, celebrates the awkwardness and clumsiness of the vinyl format. You can’t listen to it on your morning jog, nor your daily commute on the train.

Listening to it is a fully engaged activity. You can’t even do things around the house because the need to flip it over or change the record will keep interrupting you.

Although not too difficult to track down, it’s a cherished item for record collectors. (Overheard: “I just scored an original Metal Box on eBay!”, “Cool. How oxidised is yours?”)

Since the original, there have been several ways to listen to Metal Box.

For the USA version, the track list was rearranged and remastered it on to just two records in a cardboard sleeve. This made it look like any other album. Sound quality also suffered.

Then in the compact disc era, we were treated to a single CD housed in a little version of the metal box. Cute. But that’s not really a word you use when discussing anything associated with John Lydon.

At some point in recent years it made an appearance on iTunes. (And DRM was probably not the kind of contempt-for-audience the band originally had in mind.)

Now we can dip into it on Spotify, the licensed free music streaming service, adverts and all.

Often the music formats debate can come down to which is the more convenient. CD or vinyl? Or digital files? No question, digital is ALWAYS more convenient. But so is looking at the Wikipedia page for any given work of art, when compared to actually visiting a gallery.

The original version of Metal Box is a perfect marriage of content and packaging.

And who said content and packaging were even separate things?

Metal Box image by kenficara

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