The Power of the Cover

Lil Bub: Science & Magic - A Soundtrack to the Universe. (Joyful Noise Recordings, 2015) Too cute.

This post is about Midnight Juggernauts, not because I find that ↑ cover particularly interesting (sorry...), but because they’ve become one of my favourite bands in the past few months, and I purchased their Crystal Axis album on vinyl four days ago. This is their second, and, in my personal opinion, their best album so far. Again, I couldn’t find anything about the cover design :/, and ok, we get it, that neon bonfire made of instruments is the axis of symmetry, and symbolises this and that, but these guys could do better. While I was getting out the LPs, I felt more disappointed, thinking that “oh no, that’s cheap”:

but then I saw the actual LPs, and thought “wow, yess, that’s really something!”:

So all in all, good job - for me, they replaced the visual power from the cover to the LPs :) Btw, I have to add that their other two album covers are really great:

[Left: Dystopia, right: Uncanny Valley - thoughtful album title choices, start reading e.g. uncanny valley.]

Two more things: Tame Impala covered Midnight Juggernauts’ song Vital Signs, and it’s pretty good (although I prefer the original one), and also, MJ made one of the best music videos ever:

Faith Healer: Cosmic Troubles (released by mint records). I didn’t find any information about the cover, but it reminds me of the topic about the power of the human scream in arts. I’m thinking about Francis Bacon specifically. He’s one of my favourite painters, I wrote my BA thesis about his work. The scream is a recurring theme on his pieces, and he was highly influenced by the Odessa Steps scene in Eisensteins’ movie Battleship Potemkin. 

[Left: still from the movie, right: Study for the Nurse (detail), F. Bacon, 1957.]