Artist | Talking Heads |
Title | Remain In Light |
Label | Sire Records Company |
Year | 1980 |
Design | Concept: Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz; Tibor Kalman, M&Co.; Computer images: HCL, JPT, DDD, Walter GP, Paul, C/T |
Music | Art house fourth world new wave dance dream pop |
Desktop | Download image |
Notes | This is one of those designs that make you just want to say – ‘look at it… LOOK AT IT!’ It’s just so graphic. And powerful and threatening and downright weird. After all, what’s happening here? Are the members of the band hiding their identities? Are they suffering from some form of digital malaise? The red masking makes them look like terrorists – Byrne looks even more unhinged than normal, Frantz is clearly your neighbourly serial killer, Harrison knows what’s going on, but does it anyway and Weymouth with her painted-in lips looks like the mask became her face long ago – which is pretty apposite given the subject of one of the album’s many great songs, Seen And Not Seen:
Then there are the planes on the back cover and inside sleeve, glowing video red with green stars on their wings and fuselages, flying in perfect formation over snow-covered mountains, but they don’t quite look right, is the image a collage? Are the planes on the attack? It’s hard to tell. Nothing is certain and nothing’s quite right. There’s no space dividing the two words of the group’s name and the ‘A’s are inverted but read correctly at a glance; they’re the Talking Heads, but they’re just staring at us knowingly from behind their makeshift masks. The planes are American, but look non-Western. There are four planes, one for each of the four members. Bold, graphic, stripped-down, memorable and strange: Remain In Light is a brilliant visual accompaniment to one of the greatest albums of the 1980s. |
Listen | |
Also | Lengthy Wikipedia entry about the album |
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