Note to OMD’s label. Check out this post with decent product shots designed to help sell your overpriced super-fan only products. Although I suppose it is possible it doesn’t exist yet. If thats the case I’ll get some decent shots up here when they do.

The album is out in the UK on September 20th and in the US September 28th. You can only order the boxset through the band’s website but you can pick up the standard album with the cool cover anywhere that sells records.

What do you think?

Sam makes great use of hand drawn typography but she also experiments. This poster was created by photographing plasticine. I’m a sucker for that muscle tissue style illustration in the background as well.

The detail in this poster is stunning.

This artwork forms part of a series of flyers each with the same layout but very different appearance for the skull.

Sam has also done some pretty sweet t-shirt designs including this awesome shirt for Nine Lives for Sky Dives.

Sam’s website can be found here.

This artwork came together much the same as the album, lots of hard work and lots of fun. It was really great sitting down with Austin again and getting his thoughts on where the illustrations should go and seeing what he would do with the colors in the end. He really ran with this project and as we speak is still running with it as far as vinyl package and posters and stickers go. He did a truly amazing job in making sure things lined up and worked with every fold. I remember our initial talk and the initial sketch of what would become the package. Austin’s response was something along the lines of “There is no way they will let us do this.” and “You’re going to make me do all this work just to get turned down!”. It took a lot of thought to bring this together as smoothly as it has come. Austin did some really great work with this layout and color placement, there is no way it could have worked without him.
The idea was to make a package out of one solid cut, no plastic. More than anything we wanted to give the buyer something more substantial, a package that could double as a piece of art and not just be a marketable image ready to be tossed upon transfer of music to computer to MP3 player or internet for download (please share once you buy, that is how us little bands grow and how the bigger bands get bigger still.). You may not be able to see it from these rough, ROUGH small scale, handcut package photos but the CD, once transferred to computer to MP3 or internet for download, is also a part of the artwork. The sun. The template is meant to be a mountain that folds down into smaller mountains, much like the mountains that run around our home state and the illustrations are meant to represent the years of my childhood that the album was written through, 1987-93. The years my family moved around the state the most as well as the years I was introduced to films like Lightyears, Fantastic Planet, Fire and Ice and Wizards. Safe bet that those films may have ruined my growing mind.

This outlook is very refreshing in an industry that so often treats the artwork as just another cost in the marketing campaign. Creating a product that cannot be downloaded is also a key way of insuring that fans buy your product and don’t just steal it.

More on the album here and probably a pre-order link on there somewhere too.

Thanks to Fear and Records for the headsup tweet.

The video is also deeply disturbing yet the song is beautiful.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As you can see like the Rolo Tomassi EP the actual artwork is a a full 10 panel monster. Designed by Steven Gorden Fessey aka Fessey. He does crazy cool t-shirt designs often sported by bands (such as Gallows – see his blog) and intricate illustrative artwork.

Their earliest iconic piece was the Rolo Tomassi EP; screen printed, I believe, by Angelo Milano.

The Chariots release, The Inner Life, is also worthy of inclusion only I can’t find my copy to scan and the thumbnails on the interwebs do it no favours showing the less than perfect typography rather than the cool fold out artwork. On a side note Emile, the singer in Chariots is a former house mate of mine and you can check out his new project Gold Blood here.

The Cutting Pink With Knives album Populuxxe is exceptional within the release catalogue because it is the only artwork to date to not been illustrated. The typography is beautiful and the image to the left of it is slightly surrealist; the resulting combination of the two is a powerful piece of cover design.

Holy Roar Records 008 is a re-release of the first Rolo Tomassi EP; essentially the same but with a slightly reworking of the artwork by illustrator/designer Fessey.

HRR 010 was a special super limited (100 copies) compilation tape. The illustrative artwork is wonderful and its interesting to see it within the confines of a now dead (come on…it is) format. A CD version of this was released in Japan where the artwork was extended into the full CD format. Designed by Dan Reeves.

HRR011 is a digital only release; no compromise has been made on the artwork however. Designed by Dan Reeves.

The Maths / Throats split CD has crazy cool artwork. Shocking pink meets neon roses and picture frames.

There’s little sexier than white vinyl but when it’s combined with a simple colour-way and minimalist artwork it becomes an object of beauty.

Apologies for the smallness of the Mirror! Mirror! image. It’s a shame as there’s a lot of detail going on in this image.

Exceptionally disturbing illustration on the Dananananaykroyd – Sissy Hits mini-album. The colours are the only subtle thing about this. Look closely; there’s ghosts being secreted from the open pores on the backs of the fighters. One of my absolute favourites.

This Devil Sold His Soul / Tortuga split was designed by Simon Moody; the fabulous illustrator responsible for the current Rolo Tomassi artwork, I Was A Cub Scout and Data.Select.Party.

The Ergon Carousel release reminds me slightly of the poster I featured the other week for Blonde Redhead in so much as both feature the skeleton of a horse. This release too is limited to only a 100 copies.

Holy Roar Records second Christmas tape compilation is as beautiful as the first. Artwork created by James Burgess.

The Holy State ep is super limited edition but is also available digitally. A wonderfully detailed a slightly twisted style of illustration with angular hand drawn typography.

The artwork for the Maths digital release isn’t strictly the artwork for the Maths digital release at all. It was designed as the header for their myspace but the illustration does an excellent job doubling up. Illustrated by Sam Dunn.

I’ve already dedicated an entire post to the Rolo Tomassi artwork for the re-re-release of their untitled ep. I love it so it’s worth showing again.

Holy Roar Records next release is an album for Youves. The cover designed by illusrator Fessey who remixed the artwork for the re-release of the Rolo Tomassi EP (above). It’s a very strong image and fits the bands music perfectly. I can’t wait to get my copy!

Holy Roar are a label who do more than release records though. Their merch collection is incredible. Most of the t-shirts / bags etc were designed by the same people who do the artwork.

Holy Roar Records are a well established indie with a solid set of releases. They are honestly one of my favourite labels and I cannot wait to see who they release and what those releases look like in the future. Who knows maybe one day I’ll get to work with them!

So to Fool House. A label that seems to ooze style in all aspects. They’re an imprint of infamous french blog Fluokids. Known for posting some of the coolest mp3s on the internet, hosting the coolest parties and after show events: you could blame them for new-rave but that wouldn’t be quite fair. With their set-up it would have been easy to launch an mp3 only download service; it takes about 3 clicks but as stated earlier this is a label that recognises that the product is as important as the music. Instead they’re combining both – physical releases accompanied by digital releases; additional remixes typically.

The artwork that accompanies their releases is a collaborative effort between graphic designer David Lamothe and photographer Gala Collette. Each record is released as a super limited 500 only 12 inch pressing.

Their first EP (pictured above), released back in October, contains four tracks by Mondkopf (including a remix by the legendary I:Cube). The artwork reminds me of something Storm Thorgerson may have come up with in that the artwork draws you in by not telling the whole story.

Their second EP release, released just over a month ago in January, contains two tracks by 33Hz plus a remix by The Shoes and Boombass (one half of Cassius). The artwork, similar in its moment in time snapshot to the first EP, is minimalist in its imagery but appearing to be the same high design a magazine like Wallpaper* is full of.

Their upcoming release is for Delorean, a group based in Barcelona, and is known as the AyrTon Senna EP. I’ve yet to discover what tracks it will contain and as far as I’m aware the artwork has yet to appear but I have little doubt that it will be worthy of owning.

Fool House then, a label with great promise, releasing great music with great artwork in super limited quantities – what’s not to love?

Their art subverts popular American Culture; taking little pieces and rebuilding into controversial, often obscene, frequently vulgar but always strikingly beautiful poster designs that on the face tell you when a band is playing but with closer inspection reveal very different messages. The artists and designers are as idiosyncratic as their work. I can’t think of another film that focuses in this much detail on the visual elements of the scene and not just the music.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The film has already debuted at the Montreal Film World Film Festival but is being shown again at SXSW for those lucky enough to be in attendance. For those like me who are the wrong side of the Atlantic a DVD will be out in April (and since we’re all cool and have multi-region DVD players we’ll be able to watch it). www.diedyoungstayedpretty.com

I’ll be featuring some of the artists from the film among others when I get my ass in gear.