RND/ To consider some conceptual concept album covers:
Cockney Voodoo Beaver album: User’s Latest Favorite Colors
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– Another hot theoretical banger from ‘ambient death jazz metal’ supergroup that brought you classics like “Biofreak Removal Operative” (Orloff Records, 1989.)
Track List Side A
– Sweet Electric Boogaloo Blue/ 4:50
– Terminal Sunset In Day West Red/ 3:20
– My Hot Super Chrome Starlove/ 18hrs 55
– Umm Urrrg (Tasty Zombie Plastic Green)/ 2:01
Track List Side B
– Turns Out Orloff Was Right About Lemons 5:50
– Hey It’s Me (Billy No Mates)/ 1:02
– And No 4th Wall Neither/ 6:00
– North South East West Gates (Fighting Fantasy)/ 13:47
– Bonus Track: Feelin’ Kinda Dislocated On This Bright, Hard Edge Of Postmodern Media Phantasy/ 2hrs 20
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Evening Star Fripp & Eno
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An alternative album cover take – faces like distant memory islands with the texture a cross between thick quality paper and new pressed Levis jeans.
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Sleater Kinney – The Hot Rock
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Not heard this album yet, though consider envisioning this cover as a faded indie classic.
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Smashwords Covers
To consider how Smashwords e book covers rule.
Cheat your landlord if you can must but do not try to shortchange the muse
It cannot be done
You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal
– William Seward Burroughs
In which it seems a large percentage of ebook covers teleport in from another slushy dimension – where modern languages of design and aesthetic judgement are bypassed along with a distinct lack of readable typefaces as the norm; consider Smashwords that dimension.
Travel with me now as you research a tasty sampling of of best only Smashwords can only offer – where ephemeral banality, acute irony, angst ridden kitsch and deliberate self parody along with biliously strong colors and other hyperreal aesthetic distortions seem to undermine the functional symbolic value of such objects, questioning concepts of taste, good design and common sense under regular supervised medication.
Such book covers give strange new impetus to the phrase “If the covers are anything to go by, imagine what the writing inside must be like.”
Cover Notes
– These Smashwords covers seems to be channelling the Stepford Wives.
– One also wonders if title indicates both of these people no longer soil carpet.
Sample: Julia was no longer convinced of her own faithfulness, due to fact her trousers were regularly missing from the washing line ever other Thursday; other than that she was still busy coping over the recent death of Beufort, her prized psychic bulldog.
– It’s unknown if unfortunately angelic Sarah is staring up in fright at the couple she’s unable to join in shadow – or up at the scary Ferris Wheel of unrequited love.
Sample: Sarah’s cute button nose was a regular item of commentary among the fast rising starlets of New Montagnal High’s inner social circle/ it was set however in a face where the inner shine of a troubled soul shone through with an oblique gold tint, paradoxically casting its melancholy shadow on every party Sarah frequented in her angry overcast semester.
– The awesomely photoshopped head seems to contrast well with the dirty blue bubble font set at a jaunty angle.
Sample: Intense mucosal explosions suddenly rocked the entire school to its foundations as minxy Emily in her new sky blue winter sports jacket giggled with jagged sexual luminosity – snowy daydreams of luxurious revenge on her team mates forever rapidly expanding in ancient untold skies above her hometown now forgotten in a hard chemical rush for liquid revenge.
– Other than a straight to VHS Fulci flick, the only place this poses a greater immediate threat is to one’s eyeballs as a terrific beast.
Sample: Justin clasped the monster by its fleshy lapels and threw it over his muscular shoulder with the force of a man who watches late night open access cable judo; with a strange fiery yelp the creature crashed through several cubicles into a watercooler where, due to effects of the water Justin had blessed that very morning it underwent a terrible transformation into local network manager Graham, known as ‘flesh trifle’ to his numerous secret office enemies.
– Having said that, however one obviously did not have to contend with the burning sun of this modern classic; one wonders what strange literary thoughts must have been provoked to produce it.
Sample: Let sunlight be your guide – let the rocks tell your story – everything in this land is a perfect symbol of peace and loving guidance but you must allow such a sentient message of holistic wonderment into your heart – turn off the television, eat the apple of contentment waiting in your soul – just don’t forget to plant any seeds you find in the core for these are are future selves as yet unborn and ready to sprout.
– Now this cover should be on a Hawaiian style t-shirt worn by employees of a company where they have ‘enforced fun Fridays’ – dig the ‘playful’ (deadpan) way Mr. Tiger pokes ir head through.
Sample: Monkey speak through teacher – teacher speak through wine – wine not speak but poor – rain on table, mist in bloody desert air – monkey teacher drink poor wine from rainy table – calculate oddities of fate but never speak of tiger of destiny without first raising single finger to test air for shifting winds of unexpected joy.
– Standing before a cardboard cut out city of her troubled birth, Susan feels as confused as anyone else.
Sample: Clasping her designer handbag to an ample chest, Susan waited for a cab to the meeting she now sensed would never arrive at; where was her life heading if not rapidly down the nearest executive toilet, her head bumping against the continually lowered glass ceiling of a male dominated industry. Sarah sighed carefully, and took out a single tiny white pill from a delicately made medicine box in the side pocket of her purse – it was already dissolving into her pores as she slowly ground it between thumb and finger. Sarah immediately felt alive, conceptually renewed and just horny enough to care.
– Any book cover where it’s possible to visually interpret the giant carp as saying the name of author should be commended – for precisely what however is the tricky part.
Sample: Bloop bloop went the fish – why am I here said the mighty fish hunter.
– This cover seems precisely the kind of intense fever dream someone young with measles might conjure up.
Sample: Dallius let cool, grey sand slip pleasantly between his oversized toes while the light played off the surface of colorless water. “Time for another hot existential doodle”, thought Dallius.
– This particular cover should win an award for most unrestrained use of Tartan in the knowable universe.
Sample: In some strange sense, Julia really was a private investigator – right up to the point the man under question filed a restraining order against her. No private investigative roleplaying with 500 meters of this alleged imaginary suspect read the court order. Julia frowned and carefully considered ir next case.
– When words fail, a heteronormative kiss taken over a pastel scene of pure phallic flight-fantasy often suffices.
Sample: Haemorrhoids, thought Trevor.
– Armed with what look like ten breasts and a face slightly too small for the head, any reader would fear the pealing of this particular bell.
Sample: Copy the sixth – summit meeting of elite bodybuilders – eight quadrant over ninth plus eighty – four circles – weave eighty call fourth copy – damned if I know where the manuscript lies.
– The 70s called with an offer; awesome how the milkshake looks sentient and ready to attack – a horror story perhaps.
Sample: It was no laughing matter thought Duke Gombrata, as he indelicately slid one of his many remotely controlled mating organs into what was left of the storm cloud pudding. A great crackling could be heard, echoing throughout castle; many of guests were damp with anticipation.
– If there was ever a book cover suggesting a marriage on the borderline of terminal decline.
Sample: Marianne hated Peter so much, she threw away her first edition copy of Ulysses into the harbor where they had once departed for their honeymoon, a thousand billion bloody hollow moons ago it seemed.
– In an impossibly distant, immediate near future, who will come across covers like these – what will they make of them? What pathetic little backwater planet of empty gestures and endless useless details will they imagine once existed where now there’s only airless, utterly desiccated salty death.
Sample: Chapter One – in which old Tom Fisherman at Omega Point lapses back into private reverie, where he is the unsoiled potato king, or something.
– Highlights: the suspect gaze at the young woman, her lipstick smear, the use of lens flare – horses; one wonders what other untold promises such epic trilogy might hold.
Sample: Captain Robinson liked his women physically strong, mentally feeble and perfectly armed with his favorite brand of space pistol – a Crakos Mark 14 slung low on one cheeky hip. He looked out the port window and sighed, dreaming idly of better days. The captain’s mind was like brilliant metallic space sponge able, to absorb any information about impending attack by dimensional ninjas sent by his intensely fashionable arch enemy Doctor Caslon.
– Ten (unidentifiable) marks out of ten.
Sample: Eat it, mutant street scum – shakaloumabanjo!
– This particular book cover seems legit; one might even want to be seen reading it in public with slip on shoes and a popped collar; this sort of book is often found in Maseratis in Beverly Hills – know what I mean?
Sample: Open your life to the affirmative possibility enhanced by neuro-cognitive science and let sunlight be your guide; let the audience tell your story – everything you own is a perfect symbol of peace and loving guidance. Further unlockable life lessons available online now for new, low price.
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Peter Blake, Summer With Monika
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Cleaned up; added portrait of Eno on wall, and a tattoo gun on the side dresser.
More detail given to visible outer sensual organs of the slumbering form.
Was to overlay image of engraved doors to mines in LOTR on art portfolio at the foot of bed but didn’t have time.
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The Police, Ghost In The Machine
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To consider some garish remix of Ghost In The Machine album cover by The Police.
Too much information, running through my brain
Too much information, driving me insane
– The Police 1981
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Upstepping Album Cover
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Remix via Oliver Coates
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// how to play big science