#record frames

We continue to delve into the detail of the creative process for some of The Best Art Vinyl 2023 shortlisted album artworks and today we take a look at this seemingly simple cover design for PJ Harvey’s tenth studio album that, in fact, couldn’t be less so. The final image is actually a result of months of preparation, awaiting perfect weather conditions and a combination of multiple photographs and techniques. We were lucky enough to get the whole story from artist Michelle Henning.

Henning’s background is in fine art, she started as a painter and installation artist. As well as being a Professor in Photography and Media in the School of the Arts at the University of Liverpool, Michelle works for PJ Harvey as art director/creative director, and as such is very much involved in decisions relating to many of the visual assets.

Michelle explained to us how the creative process starts and about her collaboration with PJ Harvey; “The way I approach the work is to listen to the music. Polly and I don’t discuss visual ideas at first, instead, she gives me everything to do with the album: recordings or demos, poems and lyrics, drawings and notes. I then immerse myself in it and try to get a feel for it and start working. I already had a way into it because I was familiar with her poetry book 'Orlam', which is connected to the album, and I had a strong sense of the world of the album. What matters most to me is trying to find a visual equivalent for the music, not to illustrate it or directly reference lyrics, but sense the atmosphere and convey that.”

Michelle elaborates, “In the case of ‘I Inside the Old Year Dying’, this album has a strange and interesting feel, on the one hand it’s about a twentieth century rural childhood, with references to Curly-Wurlys and Coca cola but also there are soldiers who appear from a much more ancient past, and there’s a strong presence of nature."

PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying concept gatefold (Copyright © Michelle Henning, 2023) with photographs by Steve Gullick and drawings by Polly Harvey

"I started by thinking I would try to put wildlife cameras in a forest, not to capture animals but to get infra-red photos of trees. So I did that for a while but I wasn’t satisfied with the results. Then I started to paint forests, but that didn’t feel right either."

Early Forest concept ideas for PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying (Copyright © Michelle Henning, 2023)

"I had a sudden realisation that I didn’t need a whole forest, I just needed one stick and such a simple single object would give it the feel of the classic album covers I admire. Now I realise an unconscious influence was Polly herself, because she had chosen to use drawings she had made of single twigs (“twiddicks”), to break up the sections in 'Orlam'."

Orlam by PJ Harvey

"I think the idea of giving the stick a shadow emerged from the process of finding twigs on the ground and photographing them — the shadows seemed to bring them to life and make something very ordinary suddenly seem almost animate."

Concept ideas for PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying (Copyright © Michelle Henning, 2023)

"The back cover is a photograph of Polly by Steve Gullick, onto which I superimposed a scan of a tissue and plastic envelope, so it has a slightly battered, used look. I chose this photo because I loved the way her legs echoed the shape of the twig, and also how it could be cropped so that it seemed as if she was almost kicking the edge of the album away."

Front and back cover artwork for PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying (Copyright © Michelle Henning, 2023)

Michelle has produced three album covers and a number of singles for PJ Harvey as well as several for other artists, including for John Parish, Mazgani and Dot Allison. She works with a wide variety of techniques; photography, clay models, printmaking, drawing in ink and watercolour and moves between analogue and digital, with a lot of work in Adobe Photoshop, creating very complex layered files.

Michelle Henning: PJ Harvey, Let England Shake (Island Records, 2011)

Michelle Henning: PJ Harvey, A Dog Called Money 7" Single

Centre label of Hope Six vinyl | PJ Harvey (Island Records 2016)

Expanding on her techniques for this current album cover artwork, Michelle tells us, “I photographed a lot of sticks in bright sunlight on different coloured and textured backgrounds. At a certain time in the afternoon the sun started to cast really interesting shadows. I remember Polly’s manager Sumit calling me and asking me when I would have something ready to show them, and I said I wouldn’t be ready until we had had more sunny weather. He was very patient with me but he must have wondered what on earth I was doing.”

She continues, “The stick that worked best, that I felt had the most mysterious shadow, I then rephotographed under plastic. The final image is a composite of about three or maybe more photographs of this twig, both under the plastic and not. The orange sticker is based on the sticker stuck on this piece of plastic — which was a large transparent folder in which my film photographs were returned to me. I liked the way it brought a pop of colour to the cover.”  

"In Photoshop, I changed the lighting on the plastic, added more layers of plastic lighting, superimposed Polly’s handwriting onto the sticker, and created the fake embossed text in the centre (which is a mixture of hand-painted ink drawing and a lot of digital editing)."

"The gatefold is a scan of a 1980s sticky photograph album complete with the blue lines of glue and the plastic layer, and the inner sleeve is based on photographs of red kitchen linoleum superimposed over photographs by Polly of a lamb and a forest. I did a rough layout for the body text and type, and then handed that over to Rob Crane of Rob Crane Design, who did a brilliant job of making the typography on the inside and back covers look elegant and balanced, and made all the files print-ready."

Inner gatefold for PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying (Copyright © Michelle Henning, 2023) with typesetting by Rob Crane, and photographs by Steve Gullick gatefold pic

Michelle told us she looked at a lot of great album covers when creating this artwork and there are subtle references to some of them, both in the inner gatefold and the front cover. She says, "I love the idea that there are record cover geeks like myself who like to figure out the echoes of other designs, so I won’t say what they are!" (two iconic late 60s LP covers spring to our record cover geeky minds!)

Michelle Henning: PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying concept (Copyright © Michelle Henning, 2023)

Continuing our insights into the creative behind the shortlisted album covers for Best Art Vinyl 2023. Andrea Riba talks us through her work and this evocative cover shot of the avant-pop star Glüme who flippantly calls herself the 'Walmart Marilyn' for her latest album Main Character.

Andrea Riba is a Mexican-Chilean writer, director, producer, and co-founder of Femina Films. The album cover for Main Character was shot on the film set for 'Child Actor' which is the opening track on the album and inspired the short film and music video of the same title produced by Femina Films and Italians Do It Better.

Andrea tells us “It's a surreal film in which Glüme revisits her child self in the 90s. The image was taken after shooting the climax of the film in a preserved 70s dressing room in the outskirts of Hollywood. In this scene, Glüme confronts her mother (played by Riki Lindhome - whose credits include Knives Out, Wednesday) about the loss of her childhood to the demanding world of child acting in Hollywood."

Riba first met Glüme on set for her debut album cover shoot for 'The Internet', although the shoot initially started as a passion project. Andrea explains, “I had a Blue Velvet inspired photoshoot I had been sitting on, and after discovering Glüme through music label Italians Do It Better, I thought she had the perfect cadence for the concept. At the time, the label had already announced the album cover for her debut album The Internet, but when the label saw the photos from our shoot, the plan changed and they landed on one of the images for the album cover and billboards around LA, which was such an exciting surprise.”

The Internet album cover - Glüme 2012

We asked Andrea how the iconic image for the cover of Main Character came about. She told us, “We purposefully scheduled this scene at the end of our 12 hour set day in order for the exhaustion of the day to aid Glüme's performance. After wrapping the scene, I thought of taking film stills to capture Glüme's raw emotions, which were at an all-time high. There was no intention for the image to be the album cover, but the distraught expression captured on Glüme sparked the attention of her label, so they landed on this image as the album cover. There is an interesting contradiction between the title of the album 'Main Character' - someone at the centre of the plot, with an image of a woman tearing and in pure vulnerability.” 

Vinyl scan image for 'Main Character' 2023 by Andrea Riba

We wanted to delve into how the vintage feel of this image was captured so effectively. Andrea tells us, "I wanted to shoot the image on Cinestill 800T because this film captures a beautiful halation and glow around practical lights, that being the vintage tungsten bulbs around the mirrors around the entire dressing room we shot in. There is also a thick grain to the film which provides a sort of surreal veneer between the audience and the world captured, which was meant to reflect Glüme's life as a child actor in the 90's. We also wanted to keep it same world, since her first album 'The Internet' was shot on Cinestill as well."

Riba and Glüme have a close professional and personal relationship which may account for how Andrea was able to capture such a wonderfully raw and personal image of the star. She explains, "Glüme approached me about joining her team as a creative director and this was the beginning of, not only an organic professional collaboration between her and I, but a long term friendship. She is an inspiring human being and we share the same aesthetic interests and love for film, music, and people."

Glüme Harlow and Andrea Riba

1. Thundercat - Apocalypse Anniversary Edition

Art Vinyl's quest to ‘Uncover’ the stories behind some of the best vinyl record artwork each year never ceases, and so we turn to take a look at a selection of upcoming releases for 2024 from the consistently excellent independent record label Ninja Tune in our new sub-series ‘Uncovered: The Ninja Tales’.

First one off the press is American bassist, singer-songwriter, Stephen 'Thundercat' Bruner and the Apocalypse Anniversary Edition. This 10th Anniversary reissue of Apocalypse arrives on 15th March 2024 on Brainfeeder and Ninja Tune and features two previously unreleased songs. The original sleeve design is taken to the next level for this release, and we caught up with Ninja’s Head of Production and Design, Sean Preston to give us the exclusive creative process low-down.

Thundercat - Apocalypse 10 Year Anniversary Edition (2024)

Sean says, “This one took the remaining few hairs left on my scalp. Six months of getting it to where it is now, but I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. The brief was to create a sleeve of the existing portrait front cover, that somehow showed Thundercat's portrait skull with holography."

The mark of 90s print processes associated with comic book and cartoon collectables has run through the artworks of Thundercat’s back catalogue of releases, married with striking portrait photography that is often dark or dark-humoured.

Sean told us, "Thundercat is really into holography, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is realistically achieved. With the previous Golden Age of Apocalypse reissue we even had to work with the company that makes tiny holograms for VISA’s credit cards!”

He continues, "The issue we have today is that a lot of the old techniques are no longer workable. Print has streamlined and that often means "holographic print” is actually just standard litho printing on top of reflective cards and that wasn’t enough for us here. Brainfeeder’s Adam Stover came up with the idea of working with implementing a holographic aspect to the original front cover portrait that would present a sort of x-ray of Thundercat, in which a skull would be visible in certain lights. The challenge was to print both the standard colour portrait as per the original, and the holographic skull, which should only be visible in certain lights."

Our conversation with Sean reveals that what at first brief appeared to be an unattainable outcome for this Anniversary edition, in fact culminated in a blend of two quite ordinary techniques to get to an extraordinary finish - a deluxe rainbow holographic sleeve with gold foil detail, housed in transparent PVC outer slipcase with “x-ray” holographic skull print.

Thundercat - Apocalypse (2013) and Apocalypse 10 Year Anniversary Edition (2024)

Sean explains, “We needed to create something new, which is so hard to achieve these days. Holographic techniques don’t really provide the ideal for what we wanted to achieve. Light exposure ink isn’t really at the point where it would create something with the effect of depth and transition we were looking for. I find sometimes the desired effect needs to be unpacked and rebuilt, so when the initial tests didn’t get us to where we wanted to be, we married two fairly traditional print methods in a way that I don’t think has been done before.”

Sean elaborates, “Though we wanted the skull to appear beneath the portrait initially, I found a way to achieve the desired overall consequence of a skull appearing from a portrait, was to have two separate sleeves engage with each other, and in a way that created something we could consider be a new, or at least unique to this release.”

We asked Sean about the techniques used on each sleeve to create this final synergy between them.

He told us, “The first sleeve is a standard print onto a rainbow mirriboard (like silver wrapping paper that presents a rainbow effect under light). By printing the first card sleeve with the original front cover portrait of Thundercat on the iridescent mirriboard, we could get much closer to our ideal by printing a second outer sleeve to cover the first, on a clear APET (a more environmentally friendly plastic) sheet with a process called Cast & Cure. This process is nothing new, but is usually employed on its own, or as an alternative to varnish, but usually as the primary feature of the packaging. It leaves a holographic impression on the clear material which isn’t immediately obvious on its own, but it does react well to light.”

The process didn’t stop there however, as Sean tells us, “Of course, in attempting to create something unique, where the two components will actually land in print, takes us to the unknown, and as such requires a fair amount of testing and development. We wanted something that had more depth in certain areas - aiming for that x-ray aesthetic. We eventually applied a small partial white base in areas and took further measures with the portrait printed mirrirboard cover to increase its vibrancy. Something that really ties the room together from my perspective is the fine gold lacquer (like a gold foil) that we applied for Thundercat’s crown. So regal!”

Sean Preston is an award winning product designer and artist from London. He is Head of Production at independent record label Ninja Tune, a bastion of ground-breaking music since 1990, working with artists such as Black Country, New Road, Bonobo, Thundercat and more. Sean founded Fiction magazine and publisher Open Pen.

Sean Preston, Head of Production at Ninja Tune

With creatives like Sean pushing boundaries and reimagining tried and tested processes to achieve the music artists' end vision, we the humble vinyl collectors, are rewarded with a unique album artwork to cherish. He says, "What I love about this is that in a record shop, you’d approach the record sleeve and it would just look like a slightly iridescent version of the original cover - but on closer inspect and interaction, the skull effect comes to life and reveals the x-ray effect." 

APOCALYPSE - TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY EDITION BY THUNDERCAT is released on 15th March 2024 on Brainfeeder and Ninja Tune. Album FlipFrames by Art Vinyl

The highly anticipated 2024 BBC Radio Sessions vinyl series from the Beggars Group is released with a brand new cohesive box set re-design consisting of ten separate 12” vinyl records featuring ten performances recorded for John Peel.

All incorporated into a bespoke foil-numbered record box, this super collectable limited edition box set from the Beggars archives, is available exclusively for subscribers and we were lucky enough to speak to Designer, Carter O'Sullivan and Archives Manager, Florence Pick from the Beggars Group, to find out more about the project.

The sessions on each of the records span 30 years, from the 1970s to the 2000s and capture the raw, unfiltered essence of BBC radio performances recorded for John Peel. The famous Peel Sessions were always renowned for featuring both emerging and established artists, providing a platform for exclusive and ground-breaking recordings. And this unique limited-edition boxset brings these rare recordings, from some of the most influential artists in Beggars’ extensive archive, together with a design sense of uniformity and simplicity, whilst ensuring each record had its own unique character.

Florence explained that the inspiration for the design was inspired by BBC branding and artwork from the 70s and 80s, “A lot of early BBC artwork inspired us, very boxy plain artwork and simple bold colours.”

Carter elaborates, “We were under some strict design constraints, as we couldn’t use original artwork as there was none for these specific radio sessions. We also didn’t want to use photographs of the different bands as it could start to look very mismatched with the different visual aesthetics of photography. So we had to start from scratch and find a way to represent all of the radio sessions in a cohesive box set. I started to look at BBC branding and infographics from the 70s and 80s, as a lot of the recordings were made around that time.”

Carter continues, “We then spoke as a team about refining the design down to 3 simple things, block shapes, colour and texture. Each of these visual characteristics create a visual language that can be played with, chopped and changed to represent the music inside. Once we had settled on the shapes and layout of the text for each record, we then had the fun task of selecting a range of 10 pairs of colours that flow cohesively, so when you collect all 10 records they fit together on your shelf.”

The creative was taken back to basics as Carter told us, “With the artwork being very stripped back focusing on three simple principles of colour, shape and texture. The technique of creating a tight grid system was used for each of the blocks on the front and back cover. Along with using the beautiful range of colours Pantone has to offer so when printing the colours were as close to what we had envisioned as possible.” 

Tubeway Army

Bauhaus

Electrelane

The Beggars group has an impressive heritage with origins stemming from the Beggars Banquet record shops in London, whose first branch opened in 1973 in Earls Court. The label was born in 1977 with the 7” release of the ‘Free Admission Single’ by The Lurkers. Success was quick to follow via one of the first signings, Gary Numan. Chaired by founder Martin Mills, Beggars Group now comprises many of the world’s most respected independent labels and is home to 4AD, Matador Records, Rough Trade, XL Recordings and Young, in addition to a growing publishing wing ‘Beggars Music’ and the successful catalogue imprint ‘Beggars Arkive’ from which this release hails.

Florence Pick works in the archive department at Beggars and helps to release their back catalogue in new and interesting ways, working closely with the art department and music artists. She comes from a record shop background and says “vintage vinyl & sleeve art is something I have always cared about and understand the importance of preserving and crafting exclusive products for music fans.”

Carter O'Sullivan joined the art department at Beggars during the midst of 2020 covid and has have worked across projects from new releases such as Queens of the Stone Age’s ‘In Times New Roman…’ to reissues like Death Cult’s ‘Paradise Now’. He says, “Getting to be a part of the creative process for such artists and bands I grew up on has been a life achievement and continuing to push what’s possible where art and music meet will be forever interesting to me.” 

We couldn't put it better ourselves...exploring what's possible where art and music meet is our passion and we can't wait to get all 10 of these beautifully packaged records framed and displayed on the office walls!

BBC Radio Sessions, Vol. 1 Various Artists is released on Beggars Arkive as a subscription service that started in January 2024 with the final record of the series, 'Electrelane' released at the end of October. An Annual Vinyl Subscription for the Collector's Box Set Promo includes:

 The Fall BBC Radio Sessions 1 Vinyl, 12”

 Folk Devils BBC Radio Sessions 2 Vinyl, 12”

 Stereolab BBC Radio Sessions 3 Vinyl, 12”

 Moonshake BBC Radio Sessions 4 Vinyl, 12”

 Bauhaus BBC Radio Sessions 5 Vinyl, 12”

 China Drum BBC Radio Sessions 6 Vinyl, 12”

 Tubeway Army BBC Radio Sessions 7 Vinyl, 12”

 Mouse on Mars BBC Radio Sessions 8 Vinyl, 12”

 BBC Radio Sessions 9 Vinyl, 12”

“Now Playing” sleeve show

Make a feature of your playback selection by employing a “now playing” or “now spinning” sleeve holder. This specific stand is created from stunning solid walnut, providing a pretty and sensible accent for displaying your vinyl Record Frames. The album sleeve design is a component of the record expertise, straightforward record shows facilitate to showing neatness and safely display most traditional 12-inch LPs, together with double albums in most cases.

Table prime Storage Holder

Simple, elegant table-top record-holders—such as this solid wood providing from KAIU—allow for a a lot of up to date kind of record storage that permits the album art to shine. These units can impediment to fifty records and supply a straightforward thanks to access and show records that you’re presently spinning on a daily basis.

                      Tap on the link to buy vinyl record frames.

https://www.personalisedboxframes.com/personalised-vinyl-record-birthday-frame/

Open Record Storage

Despite the naysayers, it seems that 2012 was another great year for the vinyl record. According to the stats released by Nielsen Soundscan, sales of vinyl records hit another, modern-era record in 2012 with 4.6 million units.

For U.K. Vinyl fans, it was The xx's second album, Co-Exist which topped sales, whilst Jack White's solo effort, Blunderbuss headed up the U.S. charts.

Above, Cave Painting's 'Votive Life' sleeve, designed by The Creative Corporation. Scott Jones, Creative Director, shares his thoughts on the sleeve:

"For Votive Life, Cave Painting approached us with a brief asking for a very simple and striking application of a diamond shape that they had been using as a symbol for  while. It was proposed that we produce packages that had a refined but crafted feel to them, using paper engineering and japanese binding techniques for inspiration.

For the vinyl we continued this theme and produced a sleeve that simulated an animated effect when opened, and when closed uses the die-cut areas as textural elements to add another dimension to the sleeve."