exhibit.12: Project Rodney's "big graphic/photo backgrounds"

A new digital distribution site with an eye for good old fashioned artwork. This has to be one to watch. From http://beta.projectrodney.com/about:

Today when you hear a great song and want to learn about an artist or band you Google it and within seconds you are able to find out everything about the artist including what they ate for breakfast that morning. Back in the old days - before the internet - often the only thing that connected you with an artist was the artwork on their album. We still believe that the artwork is just as important in telling a story as the music and want to bring it back! We can't tell you how many times we dreamed about what Michael Jackson was doing with that magical tiger from the Thriller album while listening to "Beat It". We want to bring that old feeling back…for the kids.

exhibit.11: deadmau5 'LIVE from Earls Court 4GB USB'

"This special edition deadmau5 USB has eyes that light up when being used. It features exclusive footage from this recent Live show at Earls Court, recorded on December 18th 2010. Contents include... Exclusive film - Live From Earls Court shot in HD... Behind the scenes footage... Exclusive photo gallery... Wallpapers. Please note you will receive one design from a possible 5, which is selected at random. NOTE: This product is NOT available to territories in the American continent."

Price: £30.00, available from http://www.deadmau5.com/ on February 7th 2011.

exibit.10: Pete Rock, Common and BDP Deluxe Box Sets from Traffic

exhibit.09: Placebo's download/T-shirt mash-up

Atticus Clothing and recently launched label, Atticus Black Music, have exclusively teamed up with one of the world’s biggest alternative bands in PLACEBO to release the band’s storming new track ‘Trigger Happy Hands’ as a digital download track along with a limited edition T-shirt, designed by Placebo and Atticus’ Paul Jackson.

PLACEBO will also be re-issuing the brilliant ‘Battle for the Sun’ album, for the first time ever seen, with a 10 track bonus disc featuring brand new tracks, including ‘Trigger Happy Hands’, reworked classic tracks AND the Atticus collaboration T-shirt.   The new ‘Redux’ version will include the full album and 10 bonus tracks housed in a digipack featuring new artwork, along with the T-shirt, which is compressed down and all packaged together in a newly designed slip case.

exhibit.08: TAP3 by Dadahack

'TAP3' is both an album and not an album, and will therefore be available as both a thing and a thing that is not a thing. You will be able to download the finished sounds to add to your play lists and you will be able to buy it as an innovative piece of product that looks as though it is a cassette - to celebrate the mysterious, practical type of physical formats that electronic music was once released on. 'TAP3' the physical thing you can hold in your hands and explore is a combination of romantic found object and specialised industrial product that took many months to conceive, design and manufacture. It appears to be something that might appear in a 23rd century museum of Earth's pop culture history that got it slightly wrong - /dadahack/ have created a personal history as though the cassette was invented after the iPod. 

Indeed the physical piece of /dadahack/ can be played as a cassette, although, as if it is a cousin once or twice removed of Dr.Who, and something he would have as part of his collection inside the Tardis, it also plays itself. It needs no machine for the 'TAP3' sounds to be heard - by plugging in headphones and utilizing it as a digital music player. 'TAP3' is a souvenir of a fading time when music was only finished when it appeared on an actual object, and an acceptance of a future where music is finished as soon as it is let go into the cloud above/below/all around us.

The two musicians who sit, sequence, dream and programme at the centre of /dadahack/, are James Banbury and Pete Davis. They have existed, professionally, as technicians, programmers, producers, consultants, mixers, arrangers, players, theorists in a number of polyglamorous popmusic contexts - The Auteurs, Gwen Stefani, U2, Art of Noise, New Order, Human League, Infantjoy. As /dadahack/ they sent each other musical ideas that they played on traditional musical instruments, on computers, samplers, on rewired electronic toys, and via various contemporary forms of communication, file sharing, time dilation and system exploitation. 

exhibit.07: Peter Gabriel prints

Real World is thinking along our lines... This just in:

One thing we often lament is the shrinking of the artwork that is attached to music. Only the minority who choose to buy 'Scratch My Back' on vinyl will begin to get the traditional 12" of artwork. For CD buyers that shrank to somewhere around 12.5cm square and for digital purchasers the decline has continued, often no more than a thumbnail is attached to the music.

We want to free artwork from these dwindling presentations. Peter Gabriel albums are the product of just as much intense labour and passion visually as acoustically, so we have formed Real World Galleries, initially to release a series of hand-signed limited edition specialist fine art prints of all Peter Gabriel's album covers.

The prints are hand signed by Peter and the artists or are authorised and stamped by the estates where the artist is no longer with us.

The editions are limited to 100 for the regular sizes and are limited to 25 for the larger sizes. We'll keep you posted as the project swings into life.

exhibit.06: The Sisters of Transistors

A limited edition, out now.  PVC outer sleeve, 8-page double-sided loose-leaf booklet, hand hole-punched, ink-stamped, three stickers, library card.  Free Sisters of Transistors knickers in two random copies.

exhibit.05: The Beatles' stereo USB apples

Following the September 9 (9-9-09) debut of The Beatles’ digitally re-mastered catalogue on CD, Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music are pleased to announce the worldwide release of a limited edition of only 30,000 Beatles Stereo USB apples on December 7 (December 8 in North America, December 16 in Japan).

The exquisitely crafted, apple-shaped USB drive is loaded with the critically acclaimed re-mastered audio for The Beatles’ 14 stereo titles, as well as all of the re-mastered CDs’ visual elements, including 13 mini-documentary films about the studio albums, replicated original UK album art, rare photos and expanded liner notes.

exhibit.04: Simple Minds USB sticks

The advent of the USB stick is one of our favourite examples of phonograffika from recent years.  It's like hardware and software combined.  And because they can be burned relatively quickly, you can get projects like this one, announced today by Simple Minds:

Simple Minds today announced they will issue their forthcoming 'Graffiti Soul' UK tour entirely on USB sticks directly after each concert...

Each USB stick will come with an individual serial code number. Fans who attend the forthcoming UK tour dates, which kicks off at the Newcastle Metro Radio Arena on November 30th, will be able to purchase the live recording USB sticks directly after the concerts and can download the encores once they install the memory stick into their USB port on their computers. To download the encores, the user can automatically hyperlink to www.concert-online.com and can enter the serial code clearly marked on their USB concert stick.

comment: what's with the spate of bad album covers?

As the life physical album cover starts to fade out, is the art of album cover design fading out with it?

Is yesterday's Guardian, Rebecca Nicholson asks "Leaping dogs, space-age uniforms, cartoon animals. Who the hell is designing record sleeves these days? GCSE art students?"

Read the full article here.

competition: voting opens for ArtVinyl's end-of-year awards...

On 3rd November Art Vinyl launches the Best Art Vinyl search for the most exciting sleeves of 2009. This year will see music and graphic artists competing to follow in the footsteps of Hard-Fi, The Cribs, Thom Yorke and last year's winner, Fleet Foxes.

Art Vinyl, alongside graphic design and music industry experts, has selected a shortlist of 50 sleeve designs for the award that will be will be celebrated in exhibitions in London and around the UK during November and December.

Art Vinyl founder and managing director Andrew Heeps says: "We are once again championing the art of the record sleeve. The Best Art Vinyl poll now in its 5th year has provided a unique snap shot of popular art and design and this year will be no exception. The Art Vinyl award is about celebrating the emotional resonance of the best sleeve designs from 2009 and honouring some of those unsung hero's of art and design who provide the visual identity for so many bands and artists"

The Best Art Vinyl 2009 shortlist will be featured in exhibitions at the Art Vinyl Gallery at Selfridges on Oxford St, London, the Snap Galleries in Birmingham, and the Georges House Gallery in Folkestone. All of the designs will be displayed in the unique Art Vinyl Play & Display Flip Frame. The winning designs will be displayed from January 2010.

exhibit.03: The Fireman box set

Paul McCartney's experimental side project The Fireman has produced some great examples of phonograffika.

Like the early promos on clear vinyl, that offered no mention of Macca.  And that Nitin Sawnhey collab 12" single promo held together with a red elastic band.

And now, just in time for Christmas, a production house called Think Tank have come up with this stunning new version of the latest Fireman album, Electric Arguments:

web sight: LP Cover Lover

I've just discovered this brilliant blog - LP Cover Lover: http://lpcoverlover.com/.  It's got everything for people who delight in kitsch 'n' sync vinyl, sleeves and the like.  Everything apart from an About Us page, so I can't give you much background.  But there's lots to look at - and drool over - and that's the main thing.  Will re-post and link to more from this site in future...

comment: Artwork for Moby's Wait for Me, Deluxe Edition

Moby has been responsible for some beautiful sleeves in his time.  Like the orange-sleeved 12" vinyl edition of Feeling So Real.  Tried to find an example online to show but there isn't one unfortunately.  So if you find it in a second hand store, take some time to handle it... and examine it.

He's been responsible for some rather unpleasant sleeves, too.  Like Ambient, which wraps some of his best music in something very uncomfortable to look at:

I'm blogging on Moby today becuase he's soon to release a deluxe version of his Wait For Me album.  Wait For Me Deluxe comprises of three discs: Disc One is the original 16-track album plus two new, previously unreleased bonus tracks which Moby recorded in August 09 in his NYC home studio.  Disc Two is an ambient version of the original album, 16 brand new interpretations of the original tracks, re-interpreted and re-recorded by Moby.  Disc Three is a DVD comprised of live highlights from Moby's 2009 summer European festival dates, an animated EPK and interview with Moby, plus five videos for songs from Wait For Me, including David Lynch's animation for Shot in The Back of the Head.

And as for how it will look.  It will rank as one of his best:

exhibit.02: Madonna made (of) records

This is Madonna, who used to make records, and now makes MP3s, made of records.  Which is an interesting twist, especially for the new generation of fans buying her new Best Of this Christmas who wont be too sure what records are...

As one of my favourite blogs, XO's Middle Eight, points out, this is the best image in the booklet for Madonna's afore-mentioned new Best Of, Celebration.

exhibit.01: Box of Vision

Strangely, Apple didn't go to town on the box set front, when they remastered and reissued the Beatles albums. Which leaves Box Of Vision to fill in the gaps.

"But please, don't call it a box," says the Manhattan Examiner. "According to the much-needed instructional insert that pops out of the box that contains the Box of Vision box, the massive, monumental, 13 x 13-inch 13-pound coffee table slab is a patented "CD Storage Structure." Once you unravel several layers of bubble wrap and unpeel the protective clear plastic wrapper, you understand why..."