I have been blessed with the opportunity to talk to an existing artist who has been in many bands and is currently active in the music industry right now. I will be contacting him with my peers via video conference and will be asking him about his album artwork. I have analysed his album artworks below. I will be focusing on the estimated genre of the albums and will be giving my own insight and opinions as to whether the band/artist is synthetic or organic - Keith Neegus' theory.
Marlowe -
"It's turning me on".
I couldn't say whether the album artwork belongs to an artist or a band as the cartoon style image of a woman is vague and clearly not a representation of a band member due to its retro style. I researched the album and it turns out Marlowe is a band.
I think the band is organic as there doesn't appear to be any obvious techniques implemented in order to sell copies of the album, for example the style of the album artwork may appeal to those that have a liking for a retro sound...so you could argue that the album was designed to sell copies and that the band is synthetic...but I would argue against that due to the small level of success of the band that the artwork wasn't designed to make millions in sales.
I would say that the genre of music is alternative rock, I say this due to the strong symbolic conventions tied to the colour red, red is often associated with the rock genre, yet I don't think that the band is entirely rock due to their minimalistic portrayal of a woman gently applying lipstick, this leads me to believe that though the band plays rock music yet with the more relaxed sound of the late 60's/early 70's..similar to the Beatles maybe.
Overall I think the album artwork creates a retro feel, it shows few conventions of genre which makes it difficult to analyse but it is very bold and would therefore stand out on a shelf of albums. From the album artwork alone I wouldn't buy the album but it might be something i'd be interested in trying out from the perspective of a potential audience member.
QUESTION FOR THE MUSICIAN: What were the decisions behind animation and simplistic text?
Marlowe - "Darksparklecorner".
Again with the artwork for an album by the band Marlowe I wouldn't be able to tell if the album belonged to an artist or a band, the message is vague and doesn't really tell me much about the contents of the album other than perhaps that the band produces weird and abstract music.
Again from this album I would say that the band is organic as the album cover doesn't show the band in a glorified way and doesn't appear to be trying to sell an image, but is instead trying to promote the abnormal style of music.
This album artwork would lead me to think that the genre of music is underground indie grunge, appealing to people that live the underground clubbing lifestyle as the image on the cover is in the style of the kind of photos that are produced and shared on the internet by that sort of audience.
I personally don't like this album artwork as I feel that the band is pushing to hard to be weird and out there, and I struggle to draw meaning from the artwork. I haven't listened to the music but I still feel that the child on the cover would have little relevance to the music on the album which I guess for this genre would sort of make sense...but in my opinion the album artwork should reflect the music inside the album to make more sense for the audiences buying the album.
QUESTION FOR THE MUSICIAN: Is there a symbolism behind your idea? And use of a child?
Marlowe - "a day in july".
Despite the album artwork being yet again abstract and unclear as to whether it belongs to a singular artist or a band, I would sway more toward the idea that the album belongs to a band due to the group of people on the album artwork. There are three children on the cover which differs from the last two album covers which had only a singular subject matter (a woman or a child) Seeing a small group of people on the cover subconsciously places an image of more than one person creating the music in the audience's heads.
The album artwork here makes me think that the band is organic yet again as there are AGAIN no industry techniques implemented to glorify or glamourise the band and sell the image in that sense. Instead a nice scenery with non-english children are used to position the most likely english audience somewhere far away from their home, to instil a feeling of tranquility and peace in their minds.
I think the genre of the band would be soft-rock from looking at this album cover as there is an element of a traditional and retro musical sound alongside the scenic peacefulness, unless the band is going for intense juxtaposition by using such a mellow photograph as their album cover and then slapping the audience with hardcore death metal...but that seems unlikely.
I like this album artwork, as a photographer I am drawn to the scenic landscapes and visually appealing composition of this artwork. I also like to look further into an image and to me the children represent the band members, the child standing up is the strongest, most confident and headstrong band member, his head is aligned with the top layer of the images, the sky. The child looks directly at the camera, again showing confidence and bravery. The other two children sit and are engaged with one another, not concentrating on their surroundings, their heads are aligned beneath the first level of the image. This would suggest to me that the child standing up is a band member that shows potential to move on toward bigger things in the music industry, and the other two will be left playing their music to the smaller groups of people in the lower ranks of the music industry. Either way the band as a whole is faced with the adversity of the music industry, and are looking out to an almost unassailable challenge.
QUESTION FOR THE MUSICIAN: What does the name of the album mean to you? What is the significance?
Tescard - "Lines".
I would say that this album belongs to a band as the band's name is so abstract and unclear. Usually an artist would use their name, where as a band would 9 times out of 10 use the name of some kind of object/animal etc.
I would again say that this band is organic rather than synthetic due to the weird name and odd choice of album artwork. However had I seen this band releasing an album that made it to the top of the charts there is a large chance that I would think hat the band is synthetic and is using the ambiguity of the artwork/band name as a way of appealing to alternative audiences.
I would say that the genre of the band is alternative rock/indie rock. With heavy emphasis on the instrumental sound of the songs rather than the lyrics...usually when bands' albums look like this they tend to sing about a load of random rubbish, this is due to them wanting the track to sound more artistic and different.
As for my personal opinion on the album artwork, I am both underwhelmed and quite frankly bored just looking at it. YES it may be artistically deliberate in the message it is trying to convey. Without hearing the track I cannot say what the intentions of the band are but there may be a possibility that the music of the album is both vibrant and juxtaposes the bland cover, or maybe that the band sings about the monotonous process of standardised tests and sing about it in their songs, but as a potential consumer of the album I couldn't see myself picking out this album in a music store, it simply doesn't stand out and I'm the opposite of intrigued to find out what the music sounds like.
QUESTION FOR THE MUSICIAN: The artwork suggests a certain monotony, are you making a political statement? Does the music attached to the album correspond to such a statement?
Roja - "Promises I should have kept"
This album cover reveals little about the band/artists. Roja in spanish means red - hence why the only colour on this album artwork is red and the only place where that colour is distributed is on the title of the band/artist: Roja - Red. Red has connotations of passion, love, hate, anger etc. It arguably the most striking and visually alluring colour of all, so one would think that the music accompanying this album would be angry, passionate, heartfelt etc. But to me the artwork suggests otherwise. The black and white illustrated style of the album YET AGAIN suggests an indie/alternative genre, one that I am not naturally drawn toward. The illustration is of a stereotypically spanish woman riding a horse, a holstered gun is visible on her hip and she wields a lasso - the horse is galloping along an overcast Spanish mountain-scape. When the image is examined and described in such optimism there isn't any reason why you WOULDN'T pick that album of the shelf, however due to the fact that it is illustrated in the style of a 14 year old's doodles I am in no way attracted to this album. The image is contradictory to its meaning and subverts the overarching intention of the production of the album - which is to sell copies. If I haven't mentioned yet I think that the album belongs to a band as there aren't many people called red, however there ARE bands that are named after colours, for example the once famous boy band comprised of heart-throbs: Blue. People actually bought their albums, because they were designed to sell. They showed band members looking directly into the cameras and wearing minimal clothing, the members themselves were a pubescent girl's dream. However Blue were by no doubt a synthetic band, where as I feel that Roja is organic. I expect Roja to be again an alternative/indie rock band, (excuse the repetition but it does make sense considering one of the musicians has been in ALL of these bands and you don't see Ozzy Osbourne joining One direction) and the conventions of the album artwork reflect this. I don't like this album artwork, it gives off bad vibes and from just the looks of it I know that in a store-scenario I would think that the music is scruffy and trying too hard to be individual, and specifically i'd think that the music of the album would sound like gypsey folk music from the visuals of the cover...i'm not into that kind of music.
QUESTION FOR THE MUSICIAN: Why did you decide to illustrate the album cover instead of using a photograph? And what is the significance of the spanish woman on a horse?
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