Album Cover Art and Design
The mental model for the 'single' is still associated with the vinyl 45, at least for a certain demographic. For those that did not grow up with vinyl, the format has even more cultural resonance. We seem to be nostalgic for that time, as evidenced by Arcade's single for the title track, The Suburbs.
In the interview with the New York Times, Butller said, “I’m not going to stop making albums because of some fad of digital distribution. The idea that you just have to make bad cheap stuff and sell it cheaply because the format changes, to me, is crazy. It’s more important than ever to me to have the artwork and the recording be as great as they can be.”
And what better way to present this music than in petroleum-based medium like vinyl! How clever to have the music be informed by the 'pulp' that it is printed on.
The cover of Mémoires, an artist book by the French situationist Guy Dubord and artist Asger Jorn is made of sandpaper:
Dubord: "Can you imagine the result when the book lies on a blank polished mahogany table, or when it's inserted or taken out of the bookshelf. It planes shavings off the neighbour's desert goat."
Dubord's idea of 'The Spectacle' was for the purpose of portraying reality in its most tangible form:
'The spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life. It is the omnipresent celebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production, and the consummate result of that choice. In form as in content the spectacle serves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existing system.'
***
Idea: To extrapolate that idea album cover art, release it partially finished on paper or canvas and have the listeners complete the cover and share their versions on the Net and in gallery shows.
***
[8/1/2024: I’ve never stopped making albums, but now they’re in the form of videos. Ever since 1981 we've listened to music visually. That's baked in the cake now after two generations. That's why I like releasing album sides as videos. They're not music videos per se but rather a kind of motion graphic that becomes the equivalent of the album cover art. I suspect Spotify and other streaming platforms will start doing this, but it's easy to do on YouTube. I can also release singles as Shorts, to be released later in their final versions. They’re my Video 45s, which are exactly 45 seconds long. Digital music continues to devalue music in general, and even more so now with generated music. This is why we have to look at music through the lens of different domains, primarily film and visual art. If you set out to make a visual you can write music for it and it can stand alone. The album is the equivalent of the series in art. Eventually, content gets "sequeled" and "prequeled" and is open-ended. If you had been thinking this way all along, your entire body of work would be cohesive. Thinking music of only a digital entity makes it too fungible, and the NFT addressed that.]
