| Artist | Antonymes |
| Title | Beauty Becomes The Enemy Of The Future |
| Label | Secondthought |
| Year | 2010 |
| Designer | Art direction by Ian M. Hazeldine; photography: Ian M. Hazeldine, David Newlyn, Kim Smith |
| Music | Measured, at times spectral. |
| Desktop | Download image |
| Notes | Photography has been a mainstay of music-related design for decades, from the high contrast images accompanying Reid Miles‘ flamboyant layouts to the sensitive curation of ECM Records. Beauty Becomes The Enemy Of The Future articulates another approach: the album literally becomes an album of photography. 19 photographs and a CD that lasts a whisker under 25 minutes. The music may be said to accompany the images or the images the music, there’s a balance of the two. The photographs themselves are crepescular, a tread upon the stair, light and near darkness, bullrushes against the sky. The presentation consists of fine typography and a slew of lacunae dotting Paul Morley’s text.
Antonymes’ statement: I’ve had the idea to produce something that was more than just a record for quite a while. Being a musician, graphic designer and photographer, I’ve always tried to combine my disciplines. I’d bought a lovely photo album a year or so ago and a plastic Russian camera. I had a vague plan to fill it with some of my shots, but never got round to it. When David Newlyn and I started on the cover for the initial release of Beauty Becomes The Enemy Of The Future on his label, Cathedral Transmissions, I mentioned the book idea to him. He sent me some incredible, dark photographs. I knew that these would be perfect for an expanded edition. I’d known Kim Smith for a few years and had always admired her work as a photographer. She agreed to be involved, so we set about shooting some “portraits”. Once the shots where chosen the format was developed and tweaked and a hand-made, numbered edition of 30 was released on my own label, Secondthought, early in April 2010. It sold out the week before release.
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This is perfect.