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Elektrik Karousel, a new release on the Ghost Box label by The Focus Group. “For a clue to its moods, think Czech animation, Italian Giallo, early Radiophonics, HP Lovecraft stories, 1960s underground cinema, Lewis Carroll and baroque psych.” Julian House’s package design is “heavily inspired by 1960s underground press and conceived as a kind of [...]

A post for Record Store Day, and a slight return to the work of Hipgnosis and the late Storm Thorgerson. One of the many things which impressed about Hipgnosis album designs was the way they gradually came to approach each album as a distinct package for which every component deserved special attention. The very early [...]

Wish You Were Here (outer and inner sleeve, 1975) by Pink Floyd. Whenever people ask questions about your work at some point the subject of influences always turns up. Influences for me are usually few, they’re those things which skew your perception to such a degree—or which enlarge the range of possibilities—that they make you [...]

Alchemy (1969) by the Third Ear Band. Design by Dave Loxley. For an idea of how these posts often come into being, this one is the result of the following chain of association: an article by Leo Robson about the films of Roman Polanski > A re-viewing of Polanski’s Macbeth > A re-listening to albums [...]

Here in Britain there’s no Thanksgiving so turkey as a seasonal meal is a Christmas dish. Turkey also has another meaning which the OED can supply: 6.6 U.S. slang. a.6.a An inferior or unsuccessful cinematographic or theatrical production, a flop; hence, anything disappointing or of little value. This post concerns the latter—turkeys for the turkey [...]

Something spotted whilst browsing issues of Photoplay magazine at the Internet Archive, a photo showing the US dirigible ZR1 drifting over the Cosmopolitan Studios in 1923 during the filming of Yolanda. I don’t doubt that the ZR1 really did fly over Hollywood although it looks here to be at an odd perspective (it’s also being [...]

Yet more animation. Long Drawn-Out Trip was Gerald Scarfe‘s first foray into the medium, produced in 1972 at the request of the BBC who sent the artist to Los Angeles to try out the new De Joux animation system. The process needed only six or eight drawings per second of film thus reducing the usual amount [...]

The Bradbury Building by Carel Struycken. An idle search for a panorama view of the interior of the Bradbury Building in Downtown Los Angeles fetched me up at my favourite panorama site 360Cities and this photo by Carel Struycken. Mr Struycken is better known as an actor whose great height has seen him cast as [...]

Portrait of Dr. Ignacio Chavez (1957) by Remedios Varo (1908–1963) some of whose Surrealist paintings can be seen at Frey Norris, San Francisco, from 19th January. There’s also In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 29th January. The current crop [...]

The flip-side of the kitsch London of Smashing Time can be found in this frenetic short made a year later which presents a fragmented view of that other locus of the Paisley Era, San Francisco. Director Anthony Stern avoids the usual longueurs of silent documentary by chopping his footage to bits to create a tour [...]

Poster by Will Bradley for Victor Bicycles (c. 1895). • G. Wayne Clough, chief exective of the Smithsonian Institution, finally admits that he made a hasty decision in removing David Wojnarowicz’s video from the Hide/Seek exhibition of gay art. Related: “Finland’s cultural gifts to the world include Sibelius, the Moomins and an artist that the [...]

• Watch the trailer for the newly-restored version of Fritz Lang’s masterwork, Metropolis. • My cover design for Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch was voted best cover in the 2010 Spinetingler Awards. • Figment announces the 2nd Annual Figment Album Cover Design Contest. The judge this time round is William Schaff. • Two interviews at The Quietus: [...]

Storm Thorgerson, he of the great design partnership Hipgnosis, has some of his album covers and other work in exhibition this month at the Idea Generation Gallery, London. The exhibition runs to May 2nd. This Sunday (April 11th) he’ll be signing copies of his books at the gallery from 2pm. Alongside some of the most [...]

25 O’Clock (1985). Andy Partridge’s great cover design. The DUKES say it’s time…it’s time to visit the planet smile…it’s time the love bomb was dropped…it’s time to eat music…it’s time to kiss the sun…it’s time to drown yourself in SOUNDGASM and it’s time to dance through the mirror. The DUKES declare it’s 25 O’CLOCK. It [...]

Kieran at Sci-Fi-O-Rama was in touch recently asking me to contribute a paragraph about a favourite Roger Dean picture for this feature about the artist. The following splurge of polemic was the result, something I’d been intending on writing for a while. Since so many words would have overwhelmed the other contributions it’s being presented [...]

top row: The Division Bell by Pink Floyd; A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay. bottom row: London Calling by The Clash; Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. The Royal Mail follows its series of British Design Classics postage stamps with a series dedicated to what they call “classic” album covers. The design classics [...]

A photograph of the control room of Battersea Power Station, London, by Michael Collins, one of a series which will shortly be on display at the Royal Institute of British Architects. The images show Battersea Power Station as what Collins describes as a “twentieth century ruined castle” – a building that was built to last, [...]

I was a Space Age boy. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in Project Mercury’s Friendship 7 a month before I was born, and growing up in the 1960s it was impossible to be unaware of the NASA missions. The first encyclopedia I was given in 1967 had a whole chapter [...]

For those who’ve been eagerly awaiting Paul Gorman’s Barney Bubbles monograph, here’s the latest. Readers in the UK may also like to know there’s a feature about the book in the current issue of The Word. By coincidence, if you turn the page in the magazine there’s another feature about the Rob Gretton book I [...]

Rick Wright in 1971. As has been noted nearly everywhere by now, Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright went to the Great Gig in the Sky earlier this week, and I’m sure the inevitability of using the title of his most famous composition in this way wouldn’t have surprised him. I may as well note here [...]