Thankfully all of the images were safe, and so here we are on a new (hopefully more professional!) host with as much data manually retrieved from archive.org as possible. Over the next week or so I will be relinking all of the releases on the front page - so please bear with me whilst I put it all back together, and work out how to force Wordpress to do what I want it to do.

A big thankyou to anyone who commented on the posts, sadly all of those comments are gone but not forgotten. Also anyone who contributed photos if you could resend your information so we can credit you for your work that would be great.

On the plus side; inspired by the number of emails we recieved containing interesting snippets of design info we now have this news blog to cover anything outside the realm of the photographed releases.

Justin.

Artist: Autechre
Album: Quaristice
Label: Warp
Year: -
Designer: -
Type of music: -
Notes: -

Artist: Various

Album: Audiolab
Label: Lucky Kitchen
Year: 2001
Designer: Laurent Fetis (aide par David Valy)
Type of music: Experimental, electronic

Notes: Review here. Thick card box, textured and opaquely reflective, gold CD sleeves which when unfolded reveal bright pink and green colours = a visual and tactile treat.

Artist: David Sylvian
Album: When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima
Label: Samadhisound
Year: 2007

Designer: Art direction: David Sylvian, Yuka Fujii, design: Chris Bigg, artwork: Sachiyo Tsurumi
Type of music: Site-specific installation soundtrack
Notes: About to be released at time of writing, this is a rather gorgeous limited edition CD clothed in a horizontal DVD digipak. Drawings of bowls of feathers and clouds of bees (a lyrical touchstone for Sylvian) almost obscure photographs of water and coastline. I haven’t quite screwed up the courage to listen to the music yet - the prospect of an ensemble comprising Sylvian, Clive Bell, Christian Fennesz, Akira Rabelais and Arve Henriksen is such a mouth-watering prospect that I’m afraid of being disappointed!

Artist: Eivind Aarset’s Electronique Noir, Bugge Wesseltoft
Album: Light Extracts, Moving
Label: Jazzland Recordings
Year: 2001
Designer: Hakon Kornstad

Type of music: Electronic jazz
Notes: When it comes to Norwegian new music, most of the attention’s paid to Rune Grammofon and Smalltown Supersound. Which is unfair because Jazzland Recordings, run by pianist Bugge Wesseltoft, has been responsible for some brilliant hybrids. Guitarist Eivind Aarset melds breakbeats, electronica and ambience with Eno-esque cloudform guitar and occasional, delirious freeform noise squalls while Bugge’s delightful mix of house and jazz is as infectious as the day it was released. But I’m forgetting that this is a design blog… We’ve featured Hakon Kornstad’s work before, this is some of his earlier work. I particularly like the front covers which only reveal the titles when the light hits the spot varnished text at the right angle, while the imagery of urban, neon-lit underpasses suits the music to a tee.

Artist: The Focus Group, Belbury Poly
Album: Hey Let Loose Your Love, The Owl’s Map
Label: Ghost Box

Year: 2005/6
Designer: Julian House
Type of music: Analogue electronics
Notes: I ordered these CDs via the Ghost Box website and had only seen the booklets reproduced in The Wire. They’re gorgeous pieces of design: self-conscious and resonant in equal parts, courtesy of the hugely talented Julian House who’s done so much wonderful work for Intro. I hadn’t seen the physical packaging before, but 110% expected to receive three covetable card digipaks. Imagine my disappointment when, upon opening the bubble-wrapped envelope, I found standard plastic jewel cases:

When stacked together, as above, there’s some suggestion of a newly minted ’60s modernist housing project. But mostly the inability for this packaging to age more or less gracefully, unlike the music it contains which is so deliberately refracted through the prism of time, is a major let-down. Even the paper stock of the booklets is, to my mind, too glossy for its purpose. I originally posted about these designs on my personal blog, to which Justin commented that the original releases were CDRs and Gutterbreakz pointed out that the ideal format by far for Ghost Box would be vinyl. Imagine the thick card sleeves they’d come in and they’d preferably have magically acquired record library lending sheets and rubber stamps…

Artist: Various
Album: Extract - Portraits Of Soundartists
Label: Non Visual Objects
Year: 2007
Designer: Raphael Moser

Type of music: Minimal
Notes: A 2 CD set, enclosed in a 96 page hardcover b&w book with a spot UV varnish cover. Numbered, limited edition of 500. Each artist has contributed text, photos or drawings to accompany their tracks, giving a real insight into the creative process at work. Care and attention to music and the people who make it.

Artist: Venetian Snares
Album: Horse And Goat
Label: Sublight Records
Year: 2004
Designer: Trevor Brown

Type of music: Breakcore, experimental
Notes: Celebrating art rather than design. The only release I own that has been censored, coming packaged with the overlay black cover to hide Trevor Brown’s pedophilic artwork from view.

Artist: Fennesz
Album: Endless Summer

Label: Mego
Year: 2001
Designer: Tina Frank
Type of music: Melodic noise
Notes: Tina Frank’s a genius. This is the limited edition version of the popular classic.

Artist: Matthew Herbert Big Band
Album: Goodbye Swingtime
Label: Accidental Records
Year: 2003

Designer: art by Hopper, portrait photography by Ali Mahdavi
Type of music: Skewed big band jazz
Notes: Not an example of great design per se, but consider my hat tipped to the playfulness of the silhouettes and the gusto of the silver squiggles indented upon the shiny black cover.