Fennesz – Black Sea
Author: Colin | Published: 9/5/09
| Artist |
Fennesz |
| Title |
Black Sea |
| Label |
Touch |
| Year |
2008 |
| Designer |
Design and photography by Jon Wozencroft |
| Music |
Gorgeous/melancholic/brooding |
| Notes |
I visited the wonderful Rough Trade record shop on Brick Lane today. Browsing the racks I saw this record on a small Touch display. It’s an absolutely lovely thing. If you think the images look rather dark that’s how the sleeve actually appears. Using Photoshop and Lightroom I was very careful to get the colours and tones right (well, at least as they appear on my MacBook Pro screen)*. The photographs match the music perfectly and significantly enrich the experience. There are two fewer tracks than the CD version, but that’s okay. Interestingly, they are named in grey on the white section of the the inner sleeve – you can just see the titles in the last image, above. My only small wish would be that Black Sea had been released on heavyweight vinyl, less for any supposed audiophile reasons than that the sense of weight would have accorded with the visual and sonic experience.* Even though you know that this sleeve is 12″ x 12″, these pictures still lack a sense of scale, something I have to work on. |
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Comment?
View from Southend seafront, Essex, UK, looking across the Thames Estuary to Kent coast
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dubmill/129666072/sizes/o/
Stunning
I think you’ve captured everything very well, and I’m using a Philips PC monitor looking at a CD digipak copy of the same release! While it’s standard printing industry dogma that the monitor should never be used for color accuracy, I have always found that you can get pretty close if you calibrate your monitor according to a particular output device, or professionally printed sources (such as high quality CD packaging) under normal daylight conditions. After a while, the monitor might need to be re-adjusted from time to time, so it’s good to periodically check it. Ironically, it’s my old iMac that I haven’t been able to calibrate the colors properly, due in large part to very limited color controls built into the system. I say “ironically” since the dogmatic use of Macs in the printing/graphic design industry is well known.
GD – despite living in east London I’ve never made it to Southend – looks like I should. I had assumed that the images were taken around the Black Sea, that they weren’t is unsettling.
and/OAR, thanks for the feedback. It’s something that’s an ongoing concern. Now that Snow Leopard has changed the default gamma to match Windows I’m wondering what the images will look like.