Artist | 1-3: Tim Catlin; 4-6: Francisco López; 7-10: John Duncan and Carl Michael Von Hausswolff; 11-12: Chop Shop; 13-14: Zbigniew Karkowski; 15-16: various; 17-18: Joe Colley |
Title | 1-3: Radio Ghosts; 4-6: Live in San Francisco; 7-10: Our Telluric Conversation; 11-12: Oxide; 13-14: Antimatter; 15-16: Variable Resistance; 17-18: Desperate Attempts at Beauty: Conceptual and Research Exercises |
Label | 1-16: 23five; 17-18: Auscultare/Ground Fault |
Year | 2002-07 |
Design | Randy H.Y. Yau |
Music | Sound art |
Desktop | Download image |
Notes | Randy Yau is active in an impressively wide range of roles: graphic designer, practising sound artist, sonic curator, broadcaster and executive director of the label 23five. The quality I most appreciate about his work is its understatedness. In combination with a keen sense of subtlety, the result is a series of highly elegant designs. Yau’s use of standard jewel-cases is highly distinctive. Where this form of packaging is generally disparaged, he makes convincing use of it. This may in large part be attributable to his use of card slip-covers (a la ECM) as a device to both mirror or enhance the design and provide tactility.
Each CD identifies and utilises a particular motif, whether it be an embossed logo (Chop Shop), die-cut lettering (Zbigniew Karkowski), darkness (Franciso López’s CD comes complete with blindfold) or touch (the upper face of the John Duncan and Carl Michael Von Hausswolff CD not only presents a line of Braille, but the outer case also feels almost like skin to the touch). There is never a sense that any of these devices is contrived, but instead that each is presented as a thoughtful response to the artist’s work. Randy Yau writes:
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Listen | – Tim Catlin – Mirage [mp3] – Chop Shop – Oxide [mp3] |
Visit | The 23five website |
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