music is one of my greatest loves in life but that's not just limited to the sound itself. i'm also fascinated with the artistic elements involved in the packaging of the actual physical media itself. let's share some of it in this thread! to start us off: Petrels (Oliver Barrett) is one of my all time favorite musicians. not even sure how to begin describing the kind of music he makes but it's incredibly breathtaking. His album art is always just as impressive as well. The cover for his first album, Haeligewielle (Holy Well) in particular is an all time favorite. The album itself conveys (mostly wordlessly) a story about the British diver William Walker, who, in the early 1900s working to shore up the foundations of Winchester Cathedral in order to prevent its collapse into the peat bog it was built on. He worked underwater in the pitch blackness of the silt-laden water, for six hours a day, for roughly five years, to accomplish this. The album's art pays tribute to this by incorporating visual elements of a cathedral into the overall shape of a diver's helmet. from another one of my favorite artists, the colorful, complex, and bizarre collage-style art for the covers of the music of GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES! is a perfect match for the frenetic, high-energy experimental math rock they play finding this, the art for post-metal outfit Latitudes' upcoming release Old Sunlight, earlier today made me think i should make a thread about album art. incredible detail and variety in every part of it, combining flesh and blood seamlessly with textures that remind me of paper, marbled stone, or oil on water. It's weirdly serene and relaxing, too, in the overall impression it gives me. and some moody greyscale stuff to round out the OP. in order, Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus, Monoliths & Dimensions by Sunn O))), Imprecari Island by Barrows, and Bloodlands by Ash Borer
I'm on my phone so I don't feel like finding it right now, but my absolute favorite album cover is the one for Nightwish's Endless Forms Most Beautiful.
as far as stuff thats awesome in terms of actual packaging tricks, the things that come immediately to mind are the deluxe edition of Arcade Fire's album Neon Bible, which is a little box with a holographic cover that has two flip books inside along with the CD, Thom Yorke's album The Eraser, which has a large folded up mural-like image of a city being washed away by a flood and a Canute-like figure trying to hold the waters back incorporated into the actual sleeve for the CD itself, and something I recently purchased, The Kraken, by In Each Hand a Cutlass, which has the CD held inside a really cool kind of 'folding waves' compartment
