Essay 2:
These 3 album covers are personal favourites,
exemplifying a period of huge technological development. Bands and illustrators
explored the potential for mixing analogue/digital; the music scene
representing this experimentation both aurally and visually.
Revolver: Klaus Voormann 1966:
This Beatles album cover merges line drawings
with collaged photographs in black and white. The simple facial outlines are
drawn with confidence, only necessary marks are made. The subjects’ hair has
great line quality and tone, contrasting well with the sparse, more
minimalist faces. Collaged photographs, by Robert Whittaker, of an ear,
lips and eyes add depth to the faces. The image is busy but space and light
have been added through expanses of white on the faces/left side. McCartney
liked the variety of image sizes commenting that ‘he’d collaged things on a small scale while
the drawings were on a big scale.’ The faces portray the
subjects well; McCartney commented ‘he knew us well enough to capture us rather
beautifully in the drawings’. Whilst the different angles make the image look
less regimented, the collaged imagery provides a sense of unity through the
subjects’ shared experiences.
Voormann created this in 1966 at the
beginning of the psychedelic era. He wanted a cover to complement the songs on
the record, portraying the band’s experiments with LSD. Although Voormann’s art
work won a Grammy Award for Best Album Cover in 1967 he was paid only £40. His
simple but effective design combined the methods of pen and black ink drawing
by collaging with Whitaker’s black and white photos. This stood out against the
colorful albums of that time. The band struggled to come up for a name for the
album, settling on ‘Revolver’.
McCartney explains ‘We suddenly thought, ‘Hey what does a record do? It
revolves’”. The Beatles loved lyrical puns and the multi-purposes of the word
rang true.
Unknown Pleasures: Peter Saville 1979:
Joy Division drummer Stephen Morris showed
the original image, which inspired the cover, to designer Saville after
spotting it in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy. It was a 1967 computer
generated image of pulsar traces. Drawing on his Graphic Design skills Saville
inverted the colours, making the image more striking using white analogue lines
on a black background. Saville’s design choices, his approach to graphic design
and typography, were used to represent the band and its music. For example,
Saville saw clear links between Morris’ style of drumming and the repetitive
nature of the pulsar. Saville chose Helvetica for the titles furthering the
simplistic style; this concise font is known for being devoid of ornamentation.
This image of pulsar data looks simple but in fact is complex. Just as the
original image acted as a gateway to so much astronomical understanding, the
band wanted to represent what can be read between the lines.
Joy Division, a Manchester post punk band of
the late 70s and early 80s, were working class, northern white males who
created a new way of thinking/looking at the world. ‘Unknown Pleasures’ represents their statement against punk with a
new musical and visual style. It was released in June 1979 by Manchester’s
Factory Records, of which Saville was art director/co–founder. This business
also fitted with the post-punk era, protesting against mainstream,
commercial promotion. Joy Division were pioneers of electronic music, merging
analogue and digital music making. This is portrayed in their album cover
through this early digitally generated graphic. Their musical work was
described as having ‘the familiar rough-hewn nature of home-produced records’ (Brazier
1978). The music had an aura of its own, it
contained mistakes-it wasn’t perfect and the album cover-the line quality of
the record could easily have been smoothed and stylized but they decided to
leave imperfections. At the time there were other genres of music, especially
Elektronische Musik, centered around perfection and accuracy. This record
opposes this, making virtue out of imperfection, portraying accessible, real,
gritty authenticity-the essence of what makes analogue special.
Wish: Porl Thompsons/Andy Vella 1992
This cover of the Cure’s album ‘Wish’ foregrounds mono-printed. The
nature of this technique is that it happens once and therefore each print is
unique. It has a very handmade aura with loose lines, hand drawn border and
unedited smudges. Furthermore, the hand drawn eyes, continuous line drawings,
are almost rushed and child-like. The happy/warm colours suggest the band are
in a good, positive place. Additionally, the blue sky promotes positive
thinking and optimism. The composition of the cover is quite simple; the
off-centre circle an interesting contrast to the square of the record. The
cover also uses the band’s logo in the top right-hand corner, present on many
of their albums.
This record was commercially successful. The
band spent many years finding their characteristic sound captured in this
album, spanning Goth to Pop to Psychedelia in an electronic-rock-pop synthesis.
The Cure’s search for a unique sound saw them reaching a large audience. The
artwork was created by Porl Thompsons/Andy Vella in April 1992 at Parched Art
Studio for Fiction Records. This cover captures some of these influences and
inspired many Cure tattoos due to the iconic nature of the artwork,
specifically the eyes.
Conclusion:
Increasingly, trying to categorize something
as either digital or analogue has become difficult. This is more of an issue
now than it would have been pre-Benjamin and the Industrial Revolution when
analogue things would have remained analogue. Now the boundaries are blurred
because today even analogue images are scanned, printed and viewed on screens.
However there still remains what can be
referred to as an aura when you hold both an album sleeve and the vinyl itself;
a special feeling. The analogue object you are holding is unique. An album
sleeve offers a big image that you could frame and display - giving it what
Benjamin (1963) calls ‘exhibition value’. He discusses the ‘secularized ritual
even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty’ and I would argue that
these album covers are in fact beautiful.
Conversely, the process of scanning an image
and putting it on a screen changes the nature of the image; which Berger (1972)
said ‘everything around the image is part of its meaning’. We used to only see
art in galleries, involving a journey to visit the art, in cathedral-like spaces.
Now art is so accessible we can see it from the comfort of our sofa. But seeing
art from our sofa changes its meaning. It is less of a special occasion; we are
open to distraction. We might listen to music at home, but Berger talks of
missing the silence and power of the gallery.
Bibliography
en.oxforddictionairies.com
www.thebeatles.com
No comments:
Post a Comment