Basic Channel – Radiance
Previous Exhibition – Spin: The Art of Cover Design Next The Journal of Popular Noise – Vol.1 Issues 4-6
Artist: Basic Channel
Title: Radiance
Label: Chain Reaction
Year: 1994
Designer: Unspecified
Type of music: Radiant
Notes: Beautiful? I don’t think so, but memorable certainly.
I’m glad you had the guts to say it, Colin, because I’ve never been impressed with the design work that’s come out of the Basic Channel camp (some R&S releases excluded). I know it’s from a different era, et cetera, et cetera, but, well, the visual work has never matched up with the quality of the music, in my opinion.
I will say this though: that is one gorgeous slab of vinyl.
I sort of like the unassuming design approach of the R&S stuff, kind of makes the wonder of the music more impressive, but maybe that’s just me being perverse! The BC releases, well, the tins I love and the grey anonymity of the digipaks that replaced them I guess is intended to be associated with the Hard Wax store. Not lovely, but I think the strength of the music creates a reality distortion field of some sort. What happened to you on last.fm Peter?
I do agree with you there Colin…the unassuming (and often time lackluster) nature of the graphic work from BC/R&S/R1-5 releases does make the music better because it places all the attention on the music. I guess another way to put it is that I would have never bought any of these releases based on their cover art, but I would have if I had heard them in a club, or how I discovered them (on-line) because the music was just so bloody good I didn’t care what the album covers looked like…
As for LastFM, well, I pulled another about face and just jumped ship. Started a new position, and couldn’t install the LastFM scrobbler, and didn’t want to go home and rip CDs or play music all night and try to remember what I played during the day to keep my stats up. Yeah. So, that’s the long & short of it.
Which fits snugly with the low profile ethos of their work.
Shame! I’m not able to install where I work, but what I do most days is play my library or similar artists or friends radio stations. I find I prefer that to having to decide what to play much of the time. You say “jumped ship” – have you signed up with another service?
Well, not to another service. Just jumped ship back into the lonely world of iTunes and playing tunes for myself. This might sound a bit silly, but, I always felt like I was playing music for my stats and not for me. Silly, I know. But, well, yeah. You know.
I like this onix effect!
[...] Format, or have a look at some of the releases below. Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto: Revep EP Basic Channel – Radiance Data 70 – Space Loops, Volume One and Two Kraftwerk – Neon Lights 12″ Kraftwerk: Pocket [...]