Recent Work

I’m excited about my latest cover for Bronze Rat Records’ Seriés Aphōnos.  It’s a limited edition, vinyl only release from Heavy Trash, Jon Spencer’s (of the Blues Explosion) two man side project. Order here.

Echoes of Paris

©1953 / 10 inch record

Seriés Aphōnos Covers

I am designing the covers and overall look for Seriés Aphōnos a sub-label of Berlin's Bronze Rat Records. The first two releases (Solex and Gemma Ray) arrived at my door a couple weeks ago. It's really satisfying to have my hands on the finished product. There are more releases in the works. 

This is how Seriés Aphōnos describes itself:

Seriés Aphōnos is a new music library which focuses on left-of-centre musical meanderings, soundtracks, and strange treasures from hidden corners. Seriés Aphonos records give full imagination start-up when played on a stereo record player. Whether originally accompanying moving pictures or not, the result is the same. The series features highly distinguished writers and musicians from the field, giving you a consistent and trustworthy source for musique pour l’ image. If you have doubts and wish to avoid excessive cortical stimuli, remove the stylus and consult your dealer.

Some Records

I'm thinning out my record collection, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ditch the ones I bought solely for the cover. Here are a few god ones.

Some 78s

A few of the better 78 cover I have found.

A few finds from today's outing

Secondary Occupants Collected & Observed Record Covers

I didn't have time to get proper documentation shots of the faux record covers in Secondary Occupants / Collected & Observed before the install, but I have them now. My fictional Hampshire University Records label is meant to resemble Smithsonian Folkways covers from the Ronald Clyne era.

45

Jacques Brel performing Amsterdam live here, (the embedding was disabled).

I finally got to design a record cover

After 12 years of being a graphic designer I have finally gotten to design the cover of a 12 inch record. Records were the whole reason I got into the business in the first place, I can't believe I had to wait this long. The job was for the excellent Buffalo based band Odiorne, the single is called Mountain Moon. Odiorne is led by Jimy Chambers, the former drummer for Mercury Rev. It took us a while to figure out how the artwork was going to happen, how the sleeves would be printed, etc., but I'm pretty happy with the results. The guys played at Mohawk Place on Tuesday night which was my first chance to see the final vinyl. It was a great show, by all means check them out live and buy their records!

We were restricted to one color printing, one side only

We used a sticker for the back info

Sticker

Black Moses R.I.P.

I was saddened to hear of Isaac Hayes death on Sunday. I went through a period in the early 90s where I was really into 70s soul, in particular Blaxploitation film soundtracks. Of course the theme from Shaft is the greatest single piece of blaxploitation film music (Curtis Mayfield's Super Fly is the best album), and there is a lot to like about Hayes' other musical work, especially the packaging. Pictured above is my copy of Black Moses, perhaps one of the most over the top record cover designs in history. He certainly had a lot of confidence.

Jacques Dutronc

I am not an expert on 60s French Pop, but I love it, I have around 350 songs from the period and I need more. That being the case, I was excited to find some French 45s yesterday at a used record/book store. One of them was the one pictured above by Jaques Dutronc, I was aware of Dutronc from his incredible song Le Responsable which was on the soundtrack for the movie CQ (not very good). After doing a little internet research I realize that there is a lot more to learn about this dude.

Of course, YouTube now allows you to see all sorts of performances that would have previously been obscured by time and geography, So check out this 1966 Dutronc "video" type performance, it's amazing:



Here he is filling in for Serge Gainsbourg doing Comic Strip with Jane Birkin (that is some small dress):



And here is the L'Hotesse de l'air, the song on the 45 above:

From the Projects Library #3

It is a snowy ice-encrusted morning. Luckily the ice does not seem to have caused much damage. More record covers here.