Hardformat

There are some wonderful box sets currently on sale:

• Charley Patton – Screamin’ and Hollerin’ The Blues (Revenant)
• Albert Ayler – Holy Ghost (Revenant)
• Various – Mute Audio Documents 1978-1984 (Mute)

The two Revenants are £45 off list price and the Mute is reduced by £30. All are available at Boomkat and Cargo (the latter’s higher price is offset by free shipping). In case you’re wondering, we have no affiliation with them. The subject of our next post is the Ghost Box (which nearly brought tears to my eyes when I opened it) and some time in the near future we’ll cover the Mute box. The only reason I’m not doing the Charley Patton is that I already own the recordings in a cheaper box set – but I’m really tempted to buy the Revenant set anyway!

Update: Pay day came along and I sprang for the Patton box so there’ll be a post on it in the not too distant future…

Artist: Asmus Tietchens + Thomas Köner
Title: Kontakt der Jünglinge
Label: Die Stadt
Year: 2002
Designer: Unspecified, possibly J. Schwarz (the name on the Die Stadt website)
Type of music: See noes below
Notes: Strikingly elegant presentation of a series of gorgeous atmospheric/tectonic collaborations. If memory serves, the individual CDs were released at intervals and then the box (and mini CD) was announced at the same time as the fourth one.

In Adrian Shaughnessy’s latest book, one of the questions asked of each of the designers he interviews is whether they have any examples of interesting digital musical presentation. The responses were generally uninspiringly meagre. Given the migration of music into the digital realm, this lack of creativity is worrying. It’s possible to take the view that services like last.fm, Mog, YouTube, Idiomag, blogs, etc. make for a patchwork quilt far richer than the isolated album cover, but there is something enduringly attractive about the concentrated focus and potential for tactile interaction of the cover. That, after all, is what this website is all about.

A short-lived project I pursued last year was a blog devoted to music in the digital realm: Music Interfaces focused on music applications, recommendation services and so on. The most used digital music programme, I assume, is iTunes. At least I hope it isn’t Windows Media Player which is horrifically unintuitive. Anyway, iTunes received an update (to version 8) recently. I wasn’t particularly enamoured of the incremental improvements until recently, when I realised that the space for the cover had been significantly increased, as illustrated in the above screenshot. On my laptop screen, that cover is larger than a CD. Apple has already delivered Coverflow which mimics the act of flipping through album covers, there’s also a full-screen mode and the latest version also delivered gridview, illustrated below:

These interfaces, combined with touch screens (and in the not too distant future, haptic ones) and all that latent computing power aren’t a substitute for physical media, but nevertheless they do make me hopeful. For example, Coverflow is the iTunes view when the iPhone is turned to landscape, touching a cover flips it to reveal the tracklisting – it’s a small, but pleasing interaction as is the swiping of covers to progress through one’s library. If things have moved this far in the space of a few years, I’m reasonably optimistic about the potential for further developments. I’d love to see Adobe Lightroom-style collapsing menus in the next iteration of iTunes so that covers are foregrounded all the more.

There’s also the not inconsiderable subject of the graphical element of recent developments in interactive music facilitated by the iPhone’s accelerometer and touchscreen. I’ll write more about this in another post, but in the meantime read the relevant posts on Peter Kirn’s excellent Create Digital Music: RJDJ and Bloom. Colour me a fan of both.

Greetings to guest author Piotr Tkacz! “I was born in 1985 in Poznan (PL) where I still live, listen to music, watch movies, read books and write about this (& other stuff) on my blog.”

Artist: T.S. Hoeg aka Dane T.S. Hawk in collaborations (John Tchicai, Scanner, Goodiepal and many more) & his various projects (Cockpit Music, Great Mongo Dilmuns, Somesax, Tapehead, Sods)
Title: Moods + grooves. Unreleased 1978-1998
Label: Ninth World Music
Year: 2000
Designer: Graphic design and typesetting: Jens Kruse; Pages printed by: Repro & Tryk, Skive; Cover printed by: Allingham & Hansen
Type of music: Improvised, from free-jazz to electronics & beyond to something quite unique
Notes: Hardcover 2cd set of previously unreleased music from 20 years’ activity of T.S. Hoeg – Danish multinstrumentalist (but mainly saxophonist), old tapes mastered by Goodiepal.

Artist: Icarus
Title: Carnivalesque
Label: Not Applicable
Year: 2005
Designer: Ollie Brown, Sam Britton
Type of music: Improvised
Notes: This might look hand done with a magic marker, but it’s all printed. The choice of an ambient natural sounds CD booklet for defacing is a particular pleasure. The outer wrapper emphasises the appropriation and co-opts the listener into the process by forcing him/her to cut through it to gain access to the CD. A great example of anti design to place alongside Tortoise’s winningly nonchalant TNT CDR cover.

My review of this CD.

After corresponding with Isambard Khroustaliov aka Sam Britton about this release, it turns out each cover was in fact unique, not printed. Here are a selection of the other covers. I like the whole thing even more now. Check out the label’s excellent sampler NON010.

This isn’t exactly music-related design, but it is an interesting example of a music-related information service. It’s a map using Google Maps’ API to enable people to add locations relevant to album covers.

Link: Word Magazine: Album Covers Map
Via: Memex 1.1

Nice, iconic vector artwork.

Via Hicks Design

Starflyer 59 – Dial M.

Hello again to Simon Cummings, who previously wrote about The Hafler Trio.

Artist: Operations
Title: Cold Months
Label: Self-released
Year: 2008
Designer: Chris Anderson
Type of music: Electroacoustic, drone, experimental
Notes: Chris Anderson’s Operations project has already seen some interesting packaging, but this is his most imaginative yet. A 3” CD-R together with a slip of paper containing credits and an enigmatic photo, lovingly wrapped in a felt case & sealed with a safety pin. According to Chris’ MySpace page, the labels were “sewn on by hand by my girlfriend and her mother”. It’s a very limited edition (“about 30ish”); details about procuring a copy are available here. His music is very interesting, enveloping the listener in drifting clouds of electroacoustic drone & shimmer.

Extremely fiddly to use(!), but lovely to behold.

Artist: pic 1: Plant 43, pics 2-3: Najemsworb, pics 4-6: Various Artists, pic 7: The Third Man
Title: pic 1: Grey Sky Cracks EP, pics 2-3: Hydrocarbon EP, pics 4-6: Bluedots LP, pic 7: Before We Begin EP
Label: Ai Records
Year: pic 1: 2007, pics 2-3: 2007, pics 4-6: 2008, pic 7: 2008
Designer: Jason Smith
Type of music: Quality electronic dance music
Notes: These records seem like objects from an alien culture. That has little to do with the gradual flight of music from physical media and a lot more to do with the vivid, glowing colour and the playfulness of Jason Smith’s approach. As autumn segues into winter and darkness increasingly encroaches on grey London days, these 12s shout out that summer, fun and modernity can exist anywhere and are in fact a state of mind. Buy these records and you’ll see what I mean.

Thanks again to J.

See also: Ai Records – part 1

Artist: pics 1-3: Various, pics 4-7: RUR, pics 8-9: Various
Title: pics 1-3: Sampler 06 Quality Electronic Music, pics 4-7: Random Unreleased Records, pics 8-9: Montage EP
Label: Ai Records
Year: pics 1-3: 2006, pics 4-9: 2007
Designer: Jason Smith, pics 4-7: image by Andy Lomas, pics 8-9: Geoff McFetridge
Type of music: Quality electronic dance music
Notes: Ai Records’ designs are mouthwatering. Despite bumping up the colours, these photos don’t do the vibrancy of the designs justice. The label marries high quality, visually striking design with great Detroit-influenced dance music. Part 2 next week.

Via a post about vinyl cover art on NYLVI.

Check the Ai Records website for more details. Sincere thanks to J.