The very best report sleeves of 2020
If music has slipped into the darkness of streaming in recent years, this year it has been pushed into the background again. With the pandemic turning the music industry upside down, listeners have accepted Bandcamp Fridays – the music platform's regular fee waiver initiative – while Charity Vinyl Sale Secret 7 ”raised £ 134,000 for the final edition.
Given where their money goes, music fans have also looked into ways of consuming music that fosters greater appreciation for albums and releases in their entirety. That includes record sleeves and album covers, of course – and luckily, some great designs were shown this year. We look back on ten of our favorites from 2020.
Idle: Ultra Mono
Following the 2018 album Joy as a Act of Resistance, Bristol punk band Idles' third LP Ultra Mono plunged headlong into observations on politics, mental health, fame and masculinity. The band hired former collaborator Russell Oliver to paint the album cover, which shows a large pink ball smacking frontman Joe Talbot (whose favorite color is pink) in the face and giving him a nosebleed.
Talbot came up with the concept – a shirtless, defenseless man hit by a ball – and commissioned Oliver to bring it to life in the style of Caravaggio. Despite Idles' fierce criticism of politics, the painting was supposed to embody the band's "unconditional love and acceptance of all" and draw on the album's fifth track, Kill Them With Kindness.
Packaging and metal copper record for Slayers Relentless HELL-P
Slayer: Unrepentant HELL-P
For their final release, metal band Slayer set all guns on fire. The "HELL-P" packaging and plate design created by Kolle Rebbe was what a fan described as "one of the most metallic things I've ever seen".
The pentagonal cardboard outer box is decorated with skulls and flames and unfolds to reveal a black inner shell containing the record. However, the case was completely sealed, meaning that listeners had to burn it to access the recording (a small coffin of matches is provided). Fortunately, the record is made of fireproof copper and steel, which means it can withstand the inferno and also withstand the fires of hell if you should ever find yourself there.
Charli XCX: How I feel now
While half of the UK was busy fermenting things during the initial lockdown, Charli XCX was working on a new music project – one that she opened up to her fans. The pop star involved her in creating How I'm Feeling Now through social media updates that reveal the pros and cons of making music, screenshots of conversations with employees, and a series of virtual chats where fans can come up with ideas, The music itself could draw on works of art and content. A verse written by fans even landed on one of the tracks.
How I'm Feeling Now was created from start to finish in a matter of weeks and was both a real-time reflection of life during the pandemic and an experiment in communication and co-creation. The cover was recorded by her boyfriend at home and shows the singer-songwriter relaxing on a bed while watching a camcorder (or & # 39; Charli Cam & # 39;) and on the album's open process and im broader sense of the always-on indicates kind of fame in the age of social media. The physical recording also included collaged fan art as well as tons of additional photos of the singer behind the scenes (although everything can be seen behind the scenes at this point), while the process was documented in greater detail as part of a PDF book designed by Studio Nari.
Zara McFarlane: Songs of an Unknown Tongue
Jazz singer-songwriter Zara McFarlane's latest album, Songs of a Unknown Tongue, explores her ancestral connections to Jamaica and its early folk and spiritual traditions and “is an allegory of my personal journey exploring the effects of colonialism I feel British in my black and black life today, ”she said on social media.
Mcfarlane's concept for the artwork drew on Afro-futuristic cues and imagery of Jamaica's Blue Mountains and hibiscus flowers – symbols that gave her personal meaning in relation to her experience in Jamaica.
New York-based visual artist Sajjad, who also did the album cover for Burna Boy's 2019 hit African Giant, was hired to bring the idea to life. After the photo shoots were canceled at the start of the pandemic, the team decided on a collaged cover and using an archive photo as the basis for the portrait. The result shows how Mcfarlane emerges from the mountains and is crowned with purple hibiscus flowers that not only take up the idea of roots and ancestors, but also provide a disguise for the distinctive hairstyle Mcfarlane wore in the original shoot. The album title was printed as a sticker, which was peeled off with the outer shrink film so that the beautiful design comes into its own.
NicolJaar: Telas
The Chilean-American producer Nicolás Jaar released three albums this year, the latest one, Telas – which means "veil" – has been in the works since 2016. With this record, Jaar's compositional experiments married more than any of his previous publications with a visual language. Unfolding in both a "solid" state (the physical record) and a "liquid" state (a digital counterpart).
It was released as a double black and clear vinyl with a gatefold jacket, extensively adorned with intricate markings, symbols and patterns designed by Jaar and designer Somnath Bhatt that appear to be part pixel art, part embroidery . The interactive website experience developed by Abeera Kamran opens up design details like an atom and sprays them around in a spatial experiment.
Tame Impala: The Slow Onslaught
The artwork for Tame Impala's fourth album The Slow Rush is set in Kolmanskop, an abandoned mining town in the Namibian desert, and shows fascinating interiors that have been reclaimed by nature.
The photo series was taken by Neil Krug, who traveled to Kolmanskop with Kevin Parker from the band. They were then digitally painted to enhance the surreal quality of these wondrous spaces, which, despite being a tourist hotspot, have the same eerie, isolated feel as Andrei Tarkovsky's stalker. Artificial views have been added in the background and the features of the rooms have been changed to create dreamlike images.
"When we were (in Kolmanskop), I kept getting these crazy deja vu moments – like that hair on the back of my neck, crazy vibrations, as if I'd been there in a dream or had already thought about it." Krug told CR. “I didn't know much about the place before we went – I'd seen it years ago on National Geographic – but when I was standing there and driving around on some streets I had this wonderful, eerie feeling that I can't quite get into Words. "
Grimes: Miss Anthropocene
The latest concept album by Canadian artist Grimes, which has nothing to do in a conventional way, captures the state of the world through the lens of its title personality, an anthropomorphic goddess of climate change. Though Grimes looked back to ancient mythology for inspiration, the concept thematizes contemporary subjects viewed through a futuristic lens – and the artwork has more than a healthy dose of dystopian energy.
The artwork was created with the help of designer and director GMUNK, who worked to visualize the expansive world of Grimes as the "Photoshop surface of the future," which included all of the Easter eggs and backstories from the album's creative direction. It must contain a lot of content ", Explained GMUNK. "The style should be maximalist" Oblivion UI, "crossed with Grimes' grungy palette of black and pinks. The program itself was dedicated to simulation theory mixed in with the creation of the world and God – essentially a first-person narration in the Grimes was registered in the program room and carried out the simulations himself. "
Moses Sumney: Græ
Moses Sumney's double album Græ will be released within three months and is a remarkable work that expresses the complexities of identity, feeling and masculinity. The album cover was photographed by Ghanaian photographer Eric Gyamfi, who has worked with Sumney on numerous occasions, including on the cover of his 2017 album debut Aromanticism.
In Ghana Gyamfi photographed the impressive picture that would later become the album cover: Sumney's naked body draped over a rock in front of a waterfall. The image symbolized the sheer honesty of the album while attempting to redefine stereotypes of the black male body by portraying it as soft and vulnerable. The art and packaging was designed by Julian Gross, who also worked on the first record, and offers a remarkable range of alternative artwork.
Future utopia: 12 questions
Musician and record producer Fraser T Smith is no stranger to working with stars behind the scenes as he has produced and written for everyone from Britney Spears to Gorillaz to Adele. However, on his most recent album, 12 Questions, released under the pseudonym Future Utopia, roles were reversed when he was designing stars for his own project. Contributors include longtime associates Stormzy and Dave (both albums Smith worked on), rising star Arlo Parks, actor Idris Elba, artist Es Devlin, and others. As the title suggests, the album asked each of the staff 12 questions on topics ranging from faith to freedom to equality with ecology.
Abbott Miller of Pentagram was brought on board to creatively direct and design the album cover, which captures the complexities of such subjects without becoming heavy. "It allowed us to visualize these big issues – greed, power, technology, environmental crisis, social justice – but balance the darkness with a sense of optimism," Miller told Design Week.
Shygirl: Alias
British rapper Shygirl's latest EP Alias is a visceral exploration of sex, and there's a fair amount of skin on the release's twisted cover. In the center of the artwork is a fleshy face sitting somewhere between an ill-fitting mask and leather wallpaper. A look pierces a pair of misshapen eye holes framed by eyelash extensions. The rough light absorbs the shine of the lip gloss as well as the puckering, in which a nose seems to have sunk and straddles the line between seductive and unsettlingly unpleasant.
In collaboration with make-up artist Jimmy Owen Jones, a cast of Shygirl's head was made and then flattened to distort the familiarity of the facial features. Photographer Henrik Schneider held the expression on her face as she peeked out from behind the cast for the cover artwork, which was heavily influenced by the introspection she experienced during the first national ban.
Shygirl records multiple people throughout the EP, and the nod to disguise on the cover is a clever nod to that creative approach. The limited EP bundle also contained stickers, a hand fan and a pack of condoms.