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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 [...]

Thanks be to YouTube for once more resurrecting moments of underground cinema which would otherwise be very difficult to see. Wavelength (1967) is Michael Snow’s experimental masterwork, a 45-minute zoom across a New York loft that ends on a photograph of waves that fills the screen. This recipe for ennui is not without incident: we [...]

1: Nothing Is… (1966), an album of science fiction jazz by Sun Ra. What does the empty space of that ellipsis imply? 2: Strawberry Fields Forever (1967), a single by The Beatles. “Strawberry Fields / Nothing is real” Cover art by Sam Green. 3: Empty Space (2012), a science fiction novel by M. John Harrison. [...]

Gratifying this week to see album cover art under discussion even if the heat-to-light ratio was as unbalanced as it usually is when pop culture is the subject. Jonathan Barnbrook, who also designed the Heathen (2002) and Reality (2003) packaging for David Bowie, wrote about the thinking behind the new cover on his blog. (And [...]

Couple with Clock Tower (2011) by Louise Despont. Assuming such a thing doesn’t already exist, there’s a micro-thesis to be written about the associations between the musicians of Germany’s Krautrock/Kosmische music scene in the early 1970s and the directors of the New German Cinema. I’d not seen this clip before which shows the mighty Amon [...]

Episode 38 of The Beatles (1967). The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine was released on Blu-ray earlier this month. The quality is as good as you’d expect, it looks and sounds fantastic with the songs really benefitting from their remixes and high-definition audio. The film atoned for Al Brodax and George Dunning’s earlier role as producers of [...]

“Tapes”, that’s the crucial word. For the past twenty-four hours I’ve been immersed in The Lost Tapes, the triple-disc collection of previously unreleased recordings by the mighty Can, and contemplating the importance of tape to the German music scene (Krautrock, if you must) of the 1970s. Can performed live throughout their career but their reputation [...]

Another in a series of posts that supplement the forthcoming Reverbstorm book. Music, especially the rock’n’roll of the mid-50s to the mid-60s, was an important motor in Reverbstorm‘s creation: the title comes from the lyrics to Paul Temple’s song, and the song itself was included as a CD-single with the first issue. Each issue opened [...]

The Beatles aka The White Album (1968) by The Beatles. Design by Richard Hamilton. Hamilton admires Hunger but he has little time for the other Young British Artists. He can’t imagine a conversation with Tracey Emin lasting more than five minutes – too tedious! – and though he was quite interested in Hirst’s sharks, his [...]

Raymond Taylor’s composition, A Signal from Mars (1901). This sheet music cover turned up recently as one of the pieces of science fiction-related graphics which will be on display at the British Library’s Out of this World: Science Fiction but not as you know it exhibition when it opens on Thursday. I don’t know what [...]

Transfiguration (1952) by Sulamith Wülfing. • Observatory posted photos of its Lovecraft art exhibition; see if you can spot my pics. Related: Write Club has more photos. Also, A Word From Our Sponsor. • Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick. Related: Beat Memories—The Photographs [...]

Simulation No. 136 (1973); From the Archigram Revival Project. • Scientific American looks at DMT: “the only psychedelic known to occur naturally in the human body”. Related: Hofmann’s Elixir: LSD and the New Eleusis, a book from the Beckley Foundation Press. • “People weren’t quite sure what this guy was doing.” Colin Marshall talks to [...]

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 [...]

Lennon, Manson and me: the psychedelic cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky

This battered item is my copy of the V&A guide to the landmark Aubrey Beardsley exhibition held at the museum from May to September 1966. That exhibition introduced Beardsley to a new public and made his work very trendy for a while, helped by the Beardsley-styled sleeve of the Beatles’ Revolver album which was released [...]

The Million Volt Light & Sound Rave (1967). More psychedelia as Paul Gorman at The Look alerts me to an exhibition of work by Pop artist Dudley Edwards running this month at 3345 Parr St, Liverpool. Edwards was a part of the Binder, Edwards & Vaughan design collective in the 1960s, renowned for their light [...]

It’s taken me years but the recent obsession with UK psychedelia led me to finally watch Joe Massot’s piece of cinematic fluff from 1968, Wonderwall, a film distinguished primarily for its score by George Harrison (with Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton playing pseudonymously), and its title which was swiped years later by a bunch of [...]

So I had a bright idea at the end of September… Instead of rehashing old work for a CafePress calendar design, I thought I’d try something new. I hadn’t done any artwork for myself all year, everything I’d been working on was a commission of some sort. In addition to that, I’d spent a large [...]

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 [...]

I said, “Girl, you drank a lot of Drink Me, But you ain’t in a Wonderland You know I might-a be there to greet you, child, When your trippin’ ship touches sand.” Donovan, The Trip (1966). Most of the key texts of the psychedelic period tend to be either non-fiction—Huxley’s Doors of Perception, Leary’s Psychedelic [...]