Rough trade East:

This isn’t a definitive list of my favorite album covers or anything. I was at my local record store the other day and just started taking photos of the covers that caught my eye, a lot of these I’ve never even seen before, let alone heard the music and I choose to photograph the 12”’s obviously because they’re bigger. These are all my photos and I’m gonna try to go round to all the different record stores and do the same thing, hopefully before they all go out of business. It’s a really interesting thing to do next time you have a day off, just see what jumps out at you.

Belle and Sebastian - Fold your hands child, you walk like a peasant

Belle and Sebastian’s 4th album released in 2000. Their artwork follows the same features each time, a black and white photo with a colour filter over it, the yellow they’ve chosen here makes it look eerie and strange, it feels like there’s an underlying menace to it, the lettering always in black and white. I’m a big fan of all their covers and this one drew me in the most, it’s a photo of twin girls from the Icelandic band ‘múm’. Maybe it’s cos I just found the girls attractive, but it’s also because I’m really big fan of this style of photography, capturing the narrative between people, using film as opposed to digital or even film where the shutter speed is really quick and you get a very crisp image, I like to see an image where the light comes into the camera slowly, it just seems more honest. Quite a few of the covers i’ve picked out have this feature. It especially looks great on a 12″ cover.

Xela - The Illuminated

I’ve never heard of this band before now and the metal section at rough trade east is the most easily accessed of the vinyl collection. This LP is from Norway and was released in April this year. I really like texture in artwork, and the photo of an archaic dilapidated cathedral in black and white and on cardboard works together well.

Wavves - Wavves

Wavves debut album came out this year, I was quite familiar this photo and the album. Both really great. A nostalgia provoking film photograph, it looks like it’s from the 70’s, real simple, no text. I always like a cover that has no text, makes it seem more of a statement, makes you want to hold it in your hands and cherish it, rather than just use it.

Va va va - Va va va

Another band and LP I’ve never heard of before and as you can imagine, google searching “va-va-va” is quite fruitless. The picture isn’t great but I hope you can make you the cover it’s a photo that’s been manipulated or over-exposed in some way, not being sure how old it is, it’s hard to say how. But it has really nice atmosphere. The building, I think it looks like a baroque French city hall or something. Outlined in lights, the white looks kind of ethereal against the blue background, a really, mysterious but soothing image.

Conifer - Crown fire

Another random plucked from the metal section. I was first drawn to this because it didn’t immediately have a black cover with a white gothic font on it, like most metal albums. This image transfers really well to 12” format and being square. A really beautiful image, looks like it’s from the 1970‘s but i think it was released last year, the colours are enticing, calming and wholesome and the character in the bottom right is a really nice idea.

Swell maps - A trip to Marineville

Swell maps - In “Jane from occupied Europe”

This was their debut album, released in 1979, and I also took a picture of their second (and last official) album “in ‘Jane from occupied Europe” (again, I wasn’t seeking out any of these albums, just taking in what suck out). They were one of the first ‘post-punk’ bands in Britain or anywhere and were a huge influence on many bands like sonic youth, pavement, all the grunge or post-punk bands you can think of, and us as well. The cover almost looks like something from a sci-fi film or maybe a comic strip, all the primary colours and hazy detail. But I also like it cos it doesn’t look like a typical punk band cover. The band’s logo looks like it was written on an off kilter typewriter. Like with the standard Metal design of being in black with white gothic font, most punk albums look like this: “” which is o.k. but it’s great when there’s something different. Swell maps were really different, their artwork (and music) really set themselves apart, they weren’t generic which is what so many punk bands try not to be and inevitably are. Their approach gave them their own plateau to stand on and made them timeless.

J. Ridoux.