Artist: Martyn Bates
Album: Your Jewled Footsteps
Label: Sub Rosa
Year: 2006
Designer: Concept and photo by Dominique Goblet, design by Twin Peaks Mount, ‘musicians environment series, Nuneaton, May 2006′
Type of music: Folk, sort of
Notes: Putting aside the deliberately mis-spelled album title (which doesn’t sit well with me at all!), what fascinates about Your Jewled Footsteps is the domestic focus of the imagery. We’re privileged with a view into Bates’ ordinary, ’50s suburban semi. The heavy saturation of the colours, the rain, the oblique portraits and the focus upon light combine to create a subdued, but powerful setting for the singer’s impassioned music.
Artist: Various
Album: Sub001CD
Label: Suburb. The Record Label
Year: 2006
Designer: Build
Type of music: Electronic
Notes: Editon of 1000 copies in a custom-printed plastic sleeve, with the web address on one side and the SRL logo on the other.
Read a review of this release on themilkfactory.co.uk
Artist: Pan Sonic
Album: Kesto (234.48:4)
Label: Blast First
Year: 2004
Designer: Bente Schipp, Pan Sonic. Photography: Anne Hämäläinen
Type of music: Musique concrète, noise, ambient, drone.
Notes:
Artist: Food
Album: Organic and GM
Label: Feral Music
Year: 2001
Designer: Dave McKean
Type of music: Anglo-Norwegian ambient/folk/jazz, sort of.
Notes: I do like these boxes, they’re so much more of an occasion than the standard jewel-case, opening it up is somehow a little event.
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
Artist: Boards of Canada
Title: Geogaddi
Label: Warp
Year: 200
Designer: Marcus Eoin and Michael Sandison (front cover photo Iain Campbell)
Type of music: Electronic
Notes: -
Artist: Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto
Title: Revep EP
Label: Raster Noton
Year: 2006
Designer: Unidentified
Type of music: Elegiac
Notes: -
Artist: Porter Ricks, Maurizio
Album: Biokinetics, Maurizio
Label: Chain Reaction
Year: 1996, 1997
Designer: Unidentified
Type of music: Minimal techno
Notes: As somebody once described it: “packaging heaven”. This, despite several reports that expansion of the metal in hot weather has resulted in broken CDs. I’d definitely agree that it’s utilitarian design heaven, rivaled only by The Designer’s Republic’s sleeve for Autechre’s LP5 (upcoming). These metal cases perfectly reflect the concrete minimalism of Berlin’s Hard Wax store. Maurizio is technically not on the Chain Reaction label. Oh and the missing tin on the shelf is Compiled… which I’ve lent to someone.