All Cats are Grey At Night (2009) by Kenny Hunter.
• “They found ways to do the impossible”: Hipgnosis, the designers who changed the record sleeve for ever. Lee Campbell talks to Anton Corbijn about Squaring the Circle, Corbijn’s documentary about the Hipgnosis design team. Peter Christopherson is shown in the accompanying photo but Campbell doesn’t mention him at all, despite his having been an equal partner with Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell from the mid-70s on. Many of those famous covers were photographed by Christopherson’s camera.
• A new book by Stephen Prince at A Year In The Country: “Lost Transmissions weaves amongst brambled pathways to take in the haunted soundscapes of electronica, the rise of the occult in the 1970s, cinema and television’s dystopian dreamscapes and hauntological work which creates and gives a glimpse into parallel worlds…”
• New music: Ambient Bass Guitar by John von Seggern, and Sturgeon Moon/Beaver Moon by Missing Scenes.
• How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City.
• Mix of the week: Tranquility by A Strangely Isolated Place.
• Galerie Dennis Cooper presents…Snow Globalists.
• The Strange World of…African Head Charge.
• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Baudot.
• Transmission (1979) by Joy Division | Clandestine Transmission (1994) by Richard H. Kirk | Transmission (1996) by Low
It’s always disappointing when Sleazy doesn’t get credit or even mentioned when the topic of Hipgnosis comes up.
I thought for sure this new documentary would get it right, Corbijn should know better.
I’d be surprised if Corbijn doesn’t mention PC–I’ve not seen the film so can’t say–but the article certainly didn’t. Thorgerson and Powell were always the public face of Hipgnosis but you can see the scale of Christopherson’s contributions in the book of all the covers that Powell published a few years ago. Christopherson often downplayed his work there but he originated many of the ideas as well as photographing them. He’s even a model on a couple of covers, eg:
http://www.hipgnosiscovers.com/brandx/moroccanroll.html
Yes, a real shame Peter is not mentioned more when it comes to Hipgnosis, especially when Gen and Cosey are the cover stars on the 1975 UFO album Force It. I’d have to go rooting for my copy but I think he is credited on the inner sleeve of Wish You Were Here. It’s interesting though that TG and Coil were never graced with fantastic album covers, perhaps 20 Jazz Funks Greats, but nothing of Coil’s springs to mind, apart from the Steven Stapleton-designed sleeves. My favourite TG album cover is Mission of Dead Souls which Fetish put out, and I’ve long wondered if that’s Sleazy’s own pic of the Oakland bridge used for the sleeve. I’d like to think it was, as it makes a nice companion to the Thomas Leer & Robert Rental album cover. My favourite Industrial cover though is Nothing Here Now But the Recordings – I think that’s a truly beautiful sleeve.
I like the Heathen Earth cover, and so did the other members of Hipgnosis who included it in their second book, The Goodbye Look, as an example of PC’s work. The Mission Of Dead Souls cover is a period photograph, either late 40s or early 50s to judge by the style of the cars. But it has the same moodiness as many Christopherson photos. The b&w photos inside the gatefold of Animals by Pink Floyd are very typical of his style.