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What if ECM made…?
I’ve been doing some work on label branding this week, looking for simple ideas to communicate a strong identity, and it got me thinking about ECM. If you’re at all familiar with their album art, then...
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It’s back: What were they thinking?
They agreed never to speak of it, but the easy rapport was gone. Hurry up and take the picture so I can exhale. Oh look! Somebody left their funny little guitar thing. By day they solved crimes and...
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No photo no cry
A shortage of decent artist photos is not an excuse for your album cover to suck. EDIT: In the interests of clarity, I selected the examples below on the basis that I believe them to not suck.
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The INSERT COLOUR Violin
I have real work to do, and instead of doing it, I’ve spent half an hour singing the coat song from Joseph and typing things like “The Ochre Violin” into iTunes. Nobody seems to have used yellow....
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Spring Encounters
I wrote a guest post for Will Robin’s excellent blog on the Rite of Spring. The idea of the blog is for scholars, composers, performers and choreographers to share their experiences of the Rite of...
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What were they thinking? Benjamin Ealovega edition
Benjamin Ealovega is one of the most prolific photographers specialising in classical music today. You’ve almost certainly seen his work before – it seems like he has taken the cover photos for several...
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What were they thinking? New Amsterdam edition
The premises of non-profit label New Amsterdam were very badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy. You can help them get back on their feet here. It occurs to me that it has been a while since I made fun of...
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What were they thinking?
To just about everybody’s surprise, life as a comic magician turned out to be everything he’d hoped and more. As soon she was sure he’d gone, they went back to their plan. Morbid or not, having taken...
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Woulez Boulez
I stumbled upon this Boulez/Deutsche Grammophon record this week. There’s something about it that seems a bit unfinished. Like they’d cut out the background to replace it with something cool, and then...
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I also wrote…
I wrote an article for New Music Box about cover art last month. You can read it here. Or just skip the text and look at the silly illustrations. I also wrote an opinion piece for Classical Music about...
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