{music} – Page 213 – { feuilleton }

Design as virus 17: Boris and Roger Dean

The compact disc for Flood (2000) by Boris.

The music of Japanese heavy rock trio Boris has been soundtracking the past few days hence this addition to an occasional series which has already seen the band mentioned once before. It’s common for rock groups at the heavier end of the spectrum to find a visual identity which is maintained across all releases. Boris have never been interested in this kind of consistency; not only do the band vary their appearance for group shots but their music, and the packaging which attends it, explores a variety of different styles. The album cover which featured in an earlier post was a careful copy of the sleeve for Nick Drake’s second album Bryter Layter. All the releases featured here play with Roger Dean’s graphic style of the early 1970s. All art and design credits are given to the band’s own label, Fangs Anal Satan, so we’ll have to assume that it’s a member of the band responsible for the design and illustration.

Logo for rock group Budgie by Roger Dean, 1973.

Flood CD insert.

A label design from 2006 based on Roger Dean’s first Virgin Records logo.

Virgin Records label by Roger Dean, 1973.

Walrus/Groon (2007).

The most elaborate Roger Dean pastiche is this 12-inch single, a collaboration with Japanese noise man Merzbow. On the A-side the band play a version of I Am The Walrus while Merzbow makes noises in the background; the B-side is named after a King Crimson track but the racket everyone makes sounds little like the original. The sleeve is a gatefold affair based on Dean’s design for Close To The Edge (1972) by Yes, complete with handwritten credits and Dean-like painting in the interior. The vinyl disc came in a variety of coloured formats and used the imitation Virgin label. In all, a very collectable item.

Weekend links 169

Cover illustration by Gray Morrow, 1967. One of the less exploitative examples from a collection of hippy book covers.

• Ten Photographs by Alain Resnais: Mise en scène of Memory, Aesthetics of Silence by Ehsan Khoshbakht. In the comments to that post someone shows an old Penguin book with cover photos by Chris Marker. This confirms that the “C. Marker” whose name I found on the back of another Penguin book was indeed Monsieur Chat.

• There’s more (there’s always more…): Cornelius Castoriadis interviewed by Chris Marker in 1989, the complete footage of an interview edited down for Marker’s TV series L’héritage de la chouette (The Owl’s Legacy). Watch the series itself at YouTube.

• “A generation of innovators want to change the way we have sex and consume porn, but Google, Apple, and Amazon won’t let them,” says Andrea Garcia-Vargas. Related: Sam Biddle on how Tumblr is pushing porn into an internet sex ghetto.

• Mix of the week: the Chop Quietus Mix, “a jagged journey all the way from Broadcast to the uneasy thrum of Suicide, kosmische flavours from Popol Vuh and Cluster, Alexander Robotnik and many more.”

• Strange Flowers looked back at The Student of Prague: “the first art film, the first horror film and the first auteur film”, and now a century old.

• Clive Hicks-Jenkins talked to animator Barry Purves about the pleasures and difficulties of creating animated films for adults.

• Mazzy Star released a song, California, from their new album which arrives in September. Can’t wait.

• Suzanne Ciani, “American Delia Derbyshire of the Atari Generation” explains synthesizers, 1980.

• Christer Strömholm‘s photos of Parisian transgender communities in the 1950s.

• What are These Giant Concrete Arrows Across the American Landscape?

• How Kiyoshi Izumi built the psych ward of the future by dropping acid.

• Alan Moore: The revolution will be crowd-funded.

• Fuck Yeah Mazzy Star

• Suzanne Ciani: Lixiviation | The First Wave—Birth Of Venus (1982) | The Eighth Wave (1986)

The Residents: Twenty Twisted Questions

The art/music/performance group known as The Residents has been pushing their work into the media landscape for over 40 years but you could be forgiven for not knowing this. The Residents were delving into their own brand of the sinister and absurd years before the world had heard of David Lynch, but unlike Lynch their work has never been gained the mass audience that feature film and network television offers. The Residents were independent record producers before punk, in part because the music on their early albums was so far from the mainstream that few record companies would have dared take the risk.

Hello Skinny (1980).

Twenty Twisted Questions (1992) is a laserdisc compilation of their early films and music videos which can now be viewed at Ubuweb. I’ve always preferred the earlier material (up to The Mole Show), in part because its analogue nature retains a strangeness that the later productions lack. You get the impression of them carving out new territory on the earlier albums; later on things seemed to become more formulaic as they gained a wider audience. The laserdisc selection covers the first 20 years so you can judge for yourself. My favourites among the films are Hello Skinny, and the four One-Minute Movies from The Commercial Album (1980). If you can’t take all of it, at least stick around to watch those.

One-Minute Movies: The Act Of Being Polite (1980).

The art of Marijke Koger

Love Life (1966).

A slight return to The Fool, and specifically the work of Marijke Koger. Since The Fool was a collective it can be difficult separating out the work of individuals but all of these examples are credited as hers in Norman Hathaway & Dan Nadel’s excellent Electrical Banana (2011) book. The nature of the collective also tends to downplay the contribution of women to psychedelic art, with Koger tending to receive less individual credit than Bonnie MacLean does for her US concert posters. Koger’s Love Life design is very advanced for 1966, and could easily have been created at almost any time in the next decade. The Bob Dylan poster below is the most florid representation of Mr Zimmerman I’ve seen, an image that fits the times more than Dylan’s persona which remained resolutely untouched by acid culture.

It’s no surprise with this subject that Sweet Jane has already looked at the work of The Fool. There’s more photos and designs to be found at A Dandy in Aspic (many of them from the Electrical Banana book) while Bang The Drum All Day has some of the graphics produced for Brian Epstein’s Sunday Night at the Saville concerts.

Fashion drawing (1966).

Lucy (1966).

Love Bob Dylan (1967).

Tiger Man (1970).

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Fool album covers
• Through the Wonderwall

The Fool album covers

The Fool (1968).

Many people know the work of design collective The Fool even if they couldn’t tell you the name or the names of any of the individuals involved. The accelerated career trajectory of Dutch artists Marijke Koger and Simon Posthuma took them from a hippie enclave on the isle of Ibiza in 1966, to London and work for The Beatles throughout 1967 thanks to their distinctive brand of rainbow-hued psychedelia. Marijke Koger says the name The Fool was chosen after they met Crowley-obsessed blues singer Graham Bond who introduced them to the Tarot deck. Barry Finch and Josje Leeger later joined Koger and Posthuma. For The Beatles the group created the short-lived mural for the Apple boutique in Baker Street (removed after complaints), the decoration on John Lennon’s piano, and the inner sleeve for the Sgt Pepper album. The gatefold interior of the album was going to incorporate a Fool painting but Robert Fraser apparently persuaded the band to replace this with a group photo. The Fool themselves (and their decor) appear in the Beatles-produced feature film, Wonderwall (1968).

Proposed interior for the Sgt Pepper album (1967).

Given all this sudden visibility it’s surprising they weren’t more in demand for album cover designs although they were also busy producing florid outfits for other groups. The Beatles clothes on the All You Need is Love broadcast are Fool creations. Of the album covers, the one for The Incredible String Band is probably the most well-known. This small collection reminds me I still haven’t heard Evolution by The Hollies. The work on that cover led to a collaboration with Graham Nash on an album by The Fool (and session musicians) in 1968. The collective split up in 1969 with Marijke Koger and Simon Posthuma relocating to California.

• Marijke Koger-Dunham’s site
• Simon Posthuma’s site

Sgt Pepper inner sleeve.

The 5000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion (1967) by The Incredible String Band.

Evolution (1967) by The Hollies. Clothes and design by The Fool, photo by Karl Ferris.

Picknick (1967) by Boudewijn De Groot.

Move (1968) by The Move.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Through the Wonderwall