Hardformat » DVD

Underworld – Barking

Colin — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 07:00:43 +0000

Artist	Underworld
Title	Barking
Label	Cooking Vinyl
Year	2010
Design	Art direction, photographs and paintings by John Warwicker, Tomato
Music	Techno/Dance/Vocal
Desktop	Download image
Listen	Underworld – Scribble:
Notes	Underworld’s connection with left-field design agency Tomato is well-documented. That relationship has resulted in a number of challengingly abstract, monochromatic cover designs that are defiantly anti-taste and as attitude-rich as Karl Hyde’s curated stream-of-consciousness engagement with Greater London and its environs – Underworld are the chroniclers of this contemporary metropolis par-excellence. The brilliantly titled Barking (second only in the title stakes to the unbeatably moniker’ed Second Toughest In The Infants) goes all technicolour on us while retaining the anti-design aesthetic of previous releases. With latter-day Underworld much sunnier in its disposition, the bright colours make a lot of sense. Bright may be an understatement though: there are times when you can hear the colour without looking at it. It’s as visually noisy and unruly as a shopping street on a Saturday morning. This is the deluxe version of the album and the physical packaging is great, consisting of a sturdy 10″ slipcase with a hardbound book containing the discs and a multi-page glossy attachment in magazine format. There’s a second CD of alternate mixes/sketches that are enjoyable if inevitably less impressive than the final versions, as well as a DVD of films for each of the album’s songs which are ultimately a little disappointing. At an Amazon price of £30 it’s an affordable deluxe edition which better suits the idea of the industrialised democracy of music presentation than the increasingly ubiquitous limited and highly expensive editions. Below: - Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994) - Crocodile (2007) - Second Toughest In The Infants, vinyl (1996) - Oblivion With Bells (2007)

Cristopher Cichocki

Colin — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 07:55:18 +0000

Artist	Cristopher Cichocki
Title	1-4: Elemental Shift, 5-6: I Heart Lung/Warm Climate
Label	The Table of Contents
Year	2010
Design	alaska!; Salton Sea fish bone construction: C. Cichocki
Music	1-4: preview; 5-6: preview
Desktop	Download image
Notes	All of the work featured on Hard Format is packaging of some kind whose function is to enclose and protect larger or smaller disks or tapes. Just occasionally, these packages also offer up tube tickets, keys or leaves and guitar strings. Video artist Cristopher Cichocki has the minor distinction of including the most exotic substance yet seen on this website, namely crushed fish bones from the Salton Sea, a ‘saline, endorheic rift lake’ in southern California. Salton Sea suffers from rising salinity resulting in the death of fish stocks. For more information see the Wikipedia entry. The other release here almost fails to be a package with its DVD stuck onto a rectangle of aluminium, but the printed tracing paper placed over the top narrowly saves the disc’s modesty.

Tannhäuser – Sterben und Das Tod

Colin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 09:52:51 +0000

Artist	Tannhäuser
Title	Sterben und Das Tod
Label	editionmutation
Year	2009
Designer	Daniel Berwanger/Emmanuelle Wilhelm
Music	Video
Desktop	Download image
Notes	This is a design that’s much more impressive when held or seen in the flesh. The cover feels pleasingly solid and the texture of the materials used, as well as the quality of the printing, is really nice. It’s a surprisingly tactile experience. I also like the muted, allusive design that’s derived from stills from one of the videos on the DVD. There nothing ‘shouty’ about this design, it’s muted, modest, but all the more impressive because of that. Each cover is unique in the limited edition of 100:

Sklotz_Kolgen – Silent Room

Colin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 07:38:34 +0000

Artist: Skoltz Kolgen with various others including Akira Rabelais, Steve Roden, Ryoichi Kurokawa et al
Title: Silent Room
Label: Skoltz Kolgen
Year: 2007
Designer: design and photography Skoltz_Kolgen
Type of music: Ambient
Notes: Sincere thanks from me (if not my wallet!) to Isauro Gonzalez M for the heads up about this release as I’d not heard of it at all. It took more than two months to come by land from Canada in which time I almost gave up on it, but it finally arrived and I’m glad it did. The whole thing is beautifully designed and comprises a large book of images and texts, DVD (both NTSC and PAL formats) and two CDs. There are only a 1000 of these so if you’re tempted, don’t hesitate too long.

Here’s Lucinda Catchlove’s description of the project from the booklet:

The two sound projects, Apartment Music and Chamber Music, were conceived five years after the original concept for Silent Room. Created to accompany the DVD version of Silent Room, both are conceptual extensions of the original project that offer additional meditations upon intimacy, idiosyncracy, isolation, interior space, formal structure and informal fluidity. Both sound projects reach out to other artists for intimate material, whether it’s a fragment of music to be played with by Skoltz Kolgen or an invited artist’s interpretation of their own living room.

Kraftwerk – Minimum Maximum

Colin — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:33:05 +0000

Artist: Kraftwerk
Title: Minimum Maximum
Label: EMI
Year: 2005
Designer:
Type of music: Kraftwerkian
Notes: Yet more proof of Kraftwerk’s playfulness. This is the luxury version of the standard separate DVD and CD releases of their live double album. Confession: I own a promo version of the CD release in a card sleeve (for review purposes), the standard DVD release (review purposes again) which is a handsome thing in its own right and the 4 LP vinyl version (for the hell of it).

Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand: Camera Lucida

admin — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 20:23:52 +0000

Artist: Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand
Title: Camera Lucida
Label: LINE
Year: 2007
Designer: Update: Design: Richard Chartier Photography: Gelfand/Domnitch (Thanks Taylor)

Type of music: Ambient / noise
Notes: The fractal-like waves and shapes across the cover become more intriguing once you read the notes and realise they are generated by the music contained within – causing “…the formation and implosion of micro-bubbles that reach temperatures as high as are found in the sun” all of this in a mixture of 97% sulfuric acid doped with xenon gas, which had been ’sonicated’ – marvelous.

Click here to view a low quality extract hosted on the LINE website