It’s Sunday morning, I opened my rdio page, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to make an image (above) that I’ve been meaning to make for months. Why is it that so many bands over the past year or so have opted for album covers with big glaring circles in the middle? It’s a pretty established fact that whomever comments first in a list, be it a Facebook post or a hotel or wedding guestbook, will be copied at least a few times before the end of the page, but has endless scrolling taken over LP design in the same way?
That said, while I’m not a fan of any of the above records, some of my favorite records have similar artwork:
Honoring—and in homage to—Peter Saville’s legendary artwork for Joy Division’s equally legendary album, Unknown Pleasures, the “trans-Atlantic space rock orchestra” Flowers of Hell have covered “Atmosphere,” and animated a video to accompany it. The track is taken from the collective’s third record, Odes, out now Spectralite.
Saville wrote about his use of negative space in designing the Unknown Pleasures artwork for Issue 1 of Afterzine. Watch the video below.
