Some of you, hopefully all of you 
noticed that the site was down for a bit over the last two days. My hosting had come to an end with one hosting company and I took the opportunity to move hosts because my old host’s speed was described as being “like it was hosted on someones ADSL connection”; rubbish in other words. However transferring a site was a bit beyond my skills so the guys at Clook sorted it for me. However once my nameservers were pointing in the right direction I was, and you will have been also, confronted by a mysterious white screen. The problem according to the tech guys was:
It was the paths stored in the database and one file for advanced cache. You’d have thought WordPress would have basic error reporting by default rather than a blank page which could be anything! 
So anyway a bit thanks to them for sorting it all out. Business can return to normal now.
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Rich
Cool new video from White Light Parade. It’s clearly done on a limited budget and that makes it all the more endearing.
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admin
I’m not feeling great today (aww poor me) so this is just a super quick round up. Not entirely sure how I feel about the Damien Hurst work for the cover of the Hours record; it’s not awful but is that the best I can say for it? Can anyway say better; tell me why it’s a good cover? Probably not.
The Monks and Juan Maclean...
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Rich
Steve Rose contacted me to say I should be checking out the artwork for the Young Widows’ album Old Wounds. As you can see it’s a pretty trippy hand illustrated and painted skull heavily influenced by tribal face paint and Mexican wrestling masks. It’s illustrated by David Cook and the rest of his illustrative work, although not band related, is well worth checking out. He seems to be a favourite among guys looking for very distinctive, very cool tattoos.
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Rich
A little late this week and rather short because no-one in their right mind releases an album hoping to chart well on a 6 day week.
With that said the Super Furry Animals have released a great new album with super artwork by the ever ace Pete Fowler (above).
See Bill Callahan and Paper Cuts albums covers...
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Rich
There is such a wealth of awful rubbish out this week that it actually hurt my eyes browsing amazon etc to find the new releases. Deep digging of the virtual crates found some great artwork however and more than usual so all is not lost. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ album It’s Blitz is my favourite this week as it’s so evocative. It’s a very sexy image at first glance but there’s actually something kinda gross about crushing an egg.
Click to see more by the Doves, J-Dilla,
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Rich
This is such a bleak and traumatic image. The woman’s face appears so pained and the addition of hand drawn angular illustration accentuates the anguish by obscuring parts of the woman’s face distorting her features into an even more pained expression. I love it.
Click to see the video for Epilepsy Is Dancing
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Rich
I included the Youves’ artwork in my assessment/roundup of the Holy Roar Records artwork but it’s even better than I realised from the single panel illustration.
See the outer cover...
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Rich
Peter Bjorn and John for the win this week. Wonderful use of typography to create the object. Buy this on vinyl to truly appreciate the details.
Dan Deacon, Fever Ray & Life On Earth...
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Rich
Holy Roar Records are one of my favourite independent record labels in the UK. The music they release is of a consistently high quality and although the artwork wasn’t consistent at the very start they’ve completely upped their game and now release some of the most visually arresting as well as sonically interesting vinyl, cds and tapes of any label in the world. They’ve allied themselves with some very talented designers/illustrators that insure a high quality output every time.
Releases from Rolo Tomassi, Youves, Cutting Pink With Knives, Maths etc...
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Rich
