Hardformat

Artist: Various including Yazoo, Depeche Mode,
Title: Mute Audio Documents 1978-1984
Label: Mute
Year: 2007
Designer: Adrian Shaughnessy
Type of music: Various
Notes: Elegant file card approach to archival documenting of the early Mute years. It’s arguably a shame that the tabs couldn’t be die cut and the individual CD packages weren’t card or digipak. On the other hand there’s something about the representation of the filing system in iconic form that, when combined with the anonymity of the industry standard jewel cases, makes for an intriguingly subtle tension to the whole design.

Thanks to Caps who just let us know about the following:

Interesting article I read yesterday about Jeff Jank at Stones Throw who has been doing a series of album covers for Madlib over the years which are literally decomposing: http://stonesthrow.com/news/2008/12/madlib-beat-konducta-dirty-beats-and-dirty-covers

They really are stunningly beautiful.

I um’ed and ah’ed about whether or not to buy the special edition of this release. On the one hand, it seemed to make for ideal material for the site, on the other the reviews sounded unpromising and $69.99 seemed/seems like a lot of money. In the end I bought the regular edition for my partner for Christmas. My first listen made me think I probably made the right choice, but I’ve been known to be wrong about first impressions all too frequently. Anyway, the nice people at Creative Review have posted some pics, a few of which I’ve nicked for your edification below. I’m not overwhelmed by the design, despite it being by Stefan Sagmeister. It looks kitsch and all the extra elements suggest some kind of toy or game, which may be the point. Anyway, here are the pics, what do you think?

Everything That Happens website
Creative Review post with more images
Sagmeister Inc.

Artist:Patrick Bell, Max de Mara, The Joy of Living
Title: Travel Notes, Classist, The Beyond Within
Label: six inch records
Year: 2008
Designer: Designed and made by Stanley Donwood and Richard Lawrence
Type of music: various
Notes: Limited to 333 copies of each. Lovely hand-made feel as detailed in the insert illustrated above. I also really like the way the CD is held by its surround.

Artist: Sleeparchive/Antti Rannisto
Title: Sleeparchive/Antti Rannisto
Label: No name, only catalogue number: ZZZCD1
Year: 2007
Designer: Not specified
Type of music: Arctic/ambient/electronic
Notes: Sleevenote states: “Front photograph shows Lupoid, a sledge dog of Ernest Shackleton’s South Polar Expedition (1914-1916)”

Aaargh! Would you believe it, the 11,060th and last piano roll was produced by QRS Music Technologies recently.

Via: Retro Thing
Story: The Buffalo News: ‘The Day The Music Died’

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.

Here’s hoping you had a lovely Christmas and New Year and that 2009 is a happy and fruitful one for you all.

Hard Format is 20 months old – we’ve published 98 album posts and 40 news posts to date and hope to bring you many more. We’re thinking of expanding the site a bit in the coming year and we’d love to hear from you if you have any ideas or contributions you want to make – email us. We also love to receive comments on the posts, so please don’t hesitate to do that if you’re so inclined.

Justin’s working on his end of year list of favourite music, my own one runs to two posts. It might even be three if I get round to writing about all the fine things I’d missed and am now catching up on via other people’s end of year lists. Here they are, comments always welcome!

• Looking back at 2008. Part The First, being recordings released this year
• Looking back at 2008, Part The Second, being music released before the year in question, but favoured these past 12 months