A Collection Of My Favourite Album Covers
I’ve been checking out heaps of blog posts showing great examples of album art. Most notably these articles on Smashing Magazine; 35 Album Covers, 100 Obscure & Remarkable Album Covers, and these articles from Abduzeedo; Part One, Part Two.
Those posts mentioned above really show a great collection of album art. It’s a shame how this art has died away since music has mainly been assessed online. I love going through people’s ‘vinyl’ collection and staring at the album art printed onto a nice big sleeve. Some people say album art is dead, but I still make the album art show up on my computer when I listen to tunes. I even know people who will impulse buy albums just because they like the cover, without even listening to the music! So I still think it’s important to get good album art for your cd. If your album art is average, people will think your music is average and will most likely put your cd back in the rack and move on.
I decided to go through my collection and pick out my favourite album art, just to get some inspiration before I start on my own. Although the collections of album art on smashing magazine and abduzeedo have already done excellent posts on this, it was good to go through my own collection and pick out the album covers that I never seem to get sick of.
The list is in no particular order, in fact I went through my music collection, picked them out then randomized the list!
That Damn Last Song
So lately I’ve been trying to organise my songs and work out which order I want them to be on the album. This has become quite a frustrating process. I’ve already got my first track sorted out, which is cool. But finding a track to put on the end of the album is starting to annoy me.
You want the last track on the album to leave the listener on a good note, make them feel like the album is complete. The thing is, I’ve had a shortlist of songs I could put on the end of my album, but when I work on them for too long I decide that the song deserves to be higher up on the list – obviously being the last track the percentage of listeners actually listening to the song would be quite low in comparison to say my first 3-5 songs. Headache!
Anyway, to clear my head I went in search of albums I like that have a great closing track. Here’s my top ten:
Black Moth Super Rainbow
These guys are pretty cool, haven’t heard them before. My girlfriend showed me this film clip and its actually really kinda creepy, but well done all the same. I enjoy their style of music and most of the songs on their cd goes for less then a couple of minutes which is cool – it goes all over the place but the drums are consistent and keeps the groove together.
Highway 61 Revisited
This album has really grown on me during the past few weeks, it’s got to the stage where I almost prefer every song on it over “Like a Rolling Stone” (Madness!).
Still, the thing about this album that really draws me to it is the fact that it just sounds so raw – but in a good way. These days so much music is made to the best standards, using the best gear, and the best sound engineers (not me!). But this album sounds makes you feel like you were standing in the studio listening to them record in one take. In fact that reminds me – I heard during an interview with the Rolling Stones that they could only afford limited hours in the studio – so therefore they just smashed the song over in about an hour and just left it at that and went on with it.
Now days with people recording in their homes, like myself, we have this timeless period where mistakes such as a small lapse in time or an 90 percent guitar riff, starts to haunt you until it gets to the stage where you end up punching a wall cause you realised that the first recording of the guitar riff was better than your 50th.
Well, that’s just a thought or too, Highway 61 Revisited rocks – go listen to it, your father will appreciate you more.