A Closer Listen
A great album cover catches the viewer’s attention in a crowded field. A great album cover makes one want – no, need to hear the music. A great album cover is a visual reflection of the sonic contents.
A great album cover also stands on its own. A great album cover sticks in one’s memory. A great album cover deserves to be made into a poster and a t-shirt and cherished, even when the music isn’t playing.
These are the album covers that caught our attention in 2024. They let us know that the musicians were up to something special, as they created – or contracted – striking visuals to match. Thank you to all the artists who contributed extra insights to this article!
Andrey Kiritchenko ~ Maria (Touched Music)
Artwork: Danil Bashenko and Touched Music Design
The cover is a blend of human and A.I. imagery, honoring the work of Maria Prymachenko, whose art has graced every installment of Ukrainian Field Notes. The concept is communicated across the board, from music to art to video. Like the album, the art is a perfect balance between traditional and modern, an honest homage.
Arrowounds ~ Burial Trances of the Tentacled Sect (Lost Tribe Sound)
Collage, layout and design by R. Keane
Another appearance for R. Keane following last year’s In the Octopus Pond, this year’s entry comes from the bonus disc of The Therianthrope Series. The full set of four albums contains a wide range of amazing phantasmagorical art, in the service of a dark and intriguing story, scored by equally intriguing music: the complete package.
From Ryan Keane:
Much like last year’s ‘In the Octopus Pond’ cover from Arrowounds, ‘Burial Trances of the Tentacled Sect’ was formed from a mix of AI, collage and drawing. The imaginative title from Arrowounds yet again provided easy fodder for the canvas. Reeling from the hive collapse that took place over the course of the 4 album Therianthrope Series, especially following ‘The Honeycomb Labyrinth’, ‘Burial Trances…’ was ripe for some post-apocalyptic after-party vibes. More so, the story of the refugees of this once lush land, now pockmarked with the calcified ruins of its previous inhabitants. A hollow existence based on hollow rituals that once held great meaning. What will grow from the spoiled soil, only time will tell. The petrified remains of the old octopi giants now serve as nesting grounds for a variety of winged beasts. For many of the survivors, these times of loneliness, scarcity and harsh conditions are all they know. ‘Burial Trances…’ may very well be their redemption song, a time for communion, or yet another blight in a long line of false doctrines. All of the previous was gleaned from my loose interpretation of Chamberlain’s music, writings, and titles surrounding this opus.
From Arrowounds:
The cover art for Burial Trances of the Tentacled Sect is often my favorite of the Therianthrope Series. To me the artwork beautifully conveys the murky, mysterious mythos within this album of lost spells. The bubbling undercurrents of autumnal rituals upheld by worshippers of calcified deities long since replaced in the annals of lore and superstition. Solemn idolization within the forest cathedral, mantras vibrating through moss and mounds. Miasmal unification in frequency through all beauty before them. A landscape enriched with a peace only encountered by those with eyes opened… I am forever in awe of how Ryan was able to translate my weird worlds within worlds into such fantastical psychedelic imagery.
Fall of Leviathan ~ In Waves
Jéromine Schaller – Artwork
Gwenaëlle Hauri – Design
The design seems to be in motion, the massive swaths of white and blue suggesting both waves and icebergs, reflecting the pursuit of the great white whale. The music is a battleground of guitars and drums. The colors pop against a black background; the crescendos rise from pauses and troughs. Tinted vinyl completes the oceanic impression.
From Fall of Leviathan:
For this first album, we wanted to work with a local artist, to work in close proximity. We quickly chose Jéromine Schaller and her world of raw, extremely vivid seascapes. There’s something wild about her work that really struck a chord with us. So we commissioned a painting from her, which we then used as the graphic basis for the cover. What Jéromine has done for us is pretty insane. There’s something hyper-realistic about the painting and the energy it exudes, and at the same time, it has a very abstract, suggestive quality that lets you completely submerge yourself in it. It’s a perfect match for our musical universe. We’re very proud to have been able to realize this collaboration, and we’d also like to thank Gwenaëlle Hauri, who succeeded in translating this work into an album cover design that perfectly showcases Jéromine Schaller’s work. The painting measures 100/170 and is exhibited in David’s (our bassist) living room in Biel/Bienne.
From Jéromine Schaller:
The collaboration with Fall of Leviathan was immediately very fluid and natural. When the band contacted me to design the cover for their debut album In Waves, it immediately seemed like an obvious choice. The project was in gestation, with a few demos already in the pipeline, but their vision was clear: they wanted to capture a dark, tormented maritime atmosphere. This theme corresponded perfectly to my artistic universe. I suggested creating an oil painting on canvas, which would then be photographed and adapted to the vinyl format. Throughout the process, I was fortunate enough to work completely autonomously, which allowed me to express my vision in complete freedom, and I’m proud of the lovely synergy that emerged between the music and the image.
The Hardy Tree ~ All the Hours (Clay Pipe Music)
Artwork: Frances Castle
All of Frances Castle’s work is exquisite, and her work on All the Hours is a highlight, the church steeple suggesting the markers of time as well as the eternal. The gatefold displays the full piece of artwork and is accompanied by a matching nighttime scene. In each, the use of shading draws the folds of the buildings into stark relief.
From Frances Hardy:
The music, by The Hardy Tree – which is my own musical project – was created for a 20 minute, slow moving, animation inspired by the changing of light – night to day – on a London street. I’ve done two shows this year using the animation, and hope to do more next year. I used the view from the window of the room I work in as the inspiration for the cover. I’ve lived in this flat for a very long time and the view seems almost part of me. The cover folds out into 3 panels, one side of the sleeve is night, and the other day. It was drawn in Procreate using a limited colour palette, and then laid out in Photoshop. The cover was printed by a small print company in Sufolk (UK) on uncoated paper. It is part of a series of mini CDs, which I plan to continue. It is sold out now, but I’ll be doing a special hand made edition for Monorail in Glasgow which will come in a box, it should be available at some point in December.
Jenny Haniver ~ Haunt Your Own House (Landland Colportage)
Art by Zach Hobbs.
Layout by Dan Black and Eric Nyffeler
As soon as we saw this insane artwork, we just had to hear the music. The mood and complexity of Hobbs’ work draws the viewer in: is it terrifying, beguiling or both? The restrained color palette is an added boon, countering what might otherwise have been seen as excess. Reflecting the cover, the music contains stories within stories.
From Eric Nyffeler:
We don’t remember exactly when we came up with the phrase “Haunt Your Own House” but it had to have happened during the recording of the album, which at that point was not yet intended to BE our debut album, but just an attempt to find out what our songs would sound like in a recorded form. Finding that phrase seemed to crystalize the idea that maybe it was an album that we were working on after all!
The simplest way to summarize the phrase “Haunt Your Own House” is that our bodies are the houses where our minds permanently dwell, not unlike ghosts and spirits. Like ghosts, we know where the scary parts are hidden; what walls hide skeletons and what floorboards cover blood. The album name is an attempt at self acceptance and owning your frightening bits. No one else can be inside your own body and no other ghosts can haunt your house.
From early on, I knew I wanted to work with my old friend Zach Hobbs, who has been one of my favorite artists and collaborators for close to fifteen years. I knew that he would have the ability to render a phrase as potentially morbid as “Haunt Your Own House” with a sense of color and live and dark humor. I sketched out an idea of a Picasso-esque house, with the familiar form smooshed and flattened, with Zach’s iconic skull faces and limbs extending out of the windows and doors. Zach loved the sketch and proceeded to draw literally dozens of variations on the theme, which we ended up using in accompanying merch and concert posters. Another reference point that we gave Zach was the idea of “alien or occult tattoo flash.” We wanted him to fill in the negative space around the houses with familiar, yet indecipherable, images and iconography.
After Zach gave us a stack of more images and typography than we knew what to do with, our label owner Dan Black (a god tier illustrator and designer in his own right) teamed up with me to wrangle all of the raw material of a record sleeve. We wanted a sense of contrast between the overwhelming illustrations and the expressive typography. In the end, Dan decided not to put any typography on the front cover, but instead designed a bold OBI strip to convey the practical information.
At this point in my career, I have been involved in the art side of more records than I can even count, but this project was truly one of the most fun and exciting and surprising projects of which I’ve been a part. The fact that these images exist for music that I helped write is a joy that I’ll never recover from.
NINA EBA ~ MORPHO
art by iwhiteplant
design and layout by kpvptt
label design NINA EBA
Everything about NINA EBA is striking; the MORPHO cover is the icing on the cake. The artist is reimagined as a magical creature, benign and otherworldly. The music follows suit, painted with unexpected edges and curves. The matching morpho blue vinyl adds a sense of overall coherence. We sense a multiplanetary star in the making.
From NINA EBA:
Since metamorphosis is the central theme of the album, the butterfly naturally became our foundation. However, I wanted to create something hybrid—transitional—a blend of a butterfly, a human, and something entirely unfamiliar. One thing was clear: I didn’t want it to feel whimsical, fancy, or cute. I was drawn to the strange and unconventional—something raw, ugly, and slightly unsettling.
When defining the album’s aesthetic, I found inspiration in the album covers of Sevdaliza, Arca, and Björk, the enchanting sculptures of Forest Rogers, and the surreal characters created by Keely Majewski. I’ve always loved glassy, porcelain-like, glossy, and liquid textures, which are so prominent in contemporary design. Collaborating with iwhiteplant, a generative AI artist, we started by crafting a detailed mood board. From there, he began experimenting with AI generation.
The cover evolved over several months. We sifted through more than 100 AI-generated concepts across multiple stages of refinement. Then, I saw the one. My immediate reaction was: “Wow—this is it. Crazy. Perfect.” We see an anthropomorphic creature that might resemble a butterfly, but it is hard to say what it is. Is it a human? A bat? A demon? A mutant? Or is it just a stage of transformation within the cocoon into something better or worse? This creature has something simultaneously repulsive and beautiful, something that challenges our perception of what the non-existent ideal should be.
Initially, I considered integrating my face into the creature to embody the chimera personally. However, the original composition was so meticulously balanced that any alterations only diminished its impact. So, we chose to preserve it as it was. Later, kpvptt stepped in to polish the details, removing artifacts like extra fingers and fixing imperfections on the face. She also worked on the vinyl layout. We opted for a minimalist approach, letting the chimera take center stage without distractions.
On the reverse side of the cover, we presented the creature as if it were an illustration in a biology textbook. Some of its features connect to specific tracks, adding a conceptual dimension. For example, the droplet resembling a cocoon references the song COCOON. The wings symbolize DOVES, while the hand alludes to MONDAY, a track about my dependence on social media and gadgets—where, of course, we always hold our phones.
I also personally designed the vinyl label, adding a little surprise for listeners: a zoetrope featuring butterflies. This symbolizes the cyclical nature of life—a fitting touch for the album’s theme. If you turn of the light and turn on light strobe (you can download Strobe tachometer app on your phone) with frequency 12 Hz or 720 RPM, you can see an animation of flying butterflies 🦋🦋🦋 .
R. Weis ~ The Reaper & Me
Design: R. Weis
The cover image is striking and somewhat scary, an eye looking out or looking in, depending on one’s interpretation. The art is a reflection of the disorienting pain and confusion of the A.I.D.S. crisis, and the ensuing sorrow and anger. Through art both visual and aural, the artist comes to a fragile detente with the reaper, refusing to give up on life, even in the midst of death.
From R, Weis:
By the time I was composing the tracks on this EP (mid 1990s), I had already lived through 10 years of the AIDS epidemic in New York City. I had to express that experience in my work. It was a horrible era of fear, hopelessness, desperation, and sadness. Ordinary life was tinged with the profound.
30 years later, when I decided to release those tracks, I already had an image in mind that I was pretty sure I could convey with my basic Photoshop skills. So, I decided to design the cover art for this EP.
The idea for the cover art came from the title track “The Reaper & Me.” The track is my imaginary conversation with Death. After all, Death had become as familiar as any friend. Death’s response to my questioning is a swirling, pulsating tone that surrounds, spinning like a current and pulling one deeper and farther from the familiar. I was no different than every other gay man: we were all desperately swimming against that ominous current, knowing escape was unlikely.
I also had, however, many beautiful supernatural experiences that began and continued for years after the death of my friend Charly Lamb in 1995. His loving, otherworldly messages taught me something: the death vortex doesn’t descend to nothingness.
Stellarays ~ Winter Resort Music (Castles in Space)
Artwork by Nick Taylor spectral-studio.co.uk
The cover art evokes a certain time and place, reminiscent of a postcard collage. As one enjoys these images, one thinks of a carefree vacation captured in a photo book, a romanticized fantasy that may have never matched reality. The music is filled with similar nostalgia, exuberance and resolve. We just know that skier will conquer the mountain.
WaqWaq Kingdom ~ Mind Onsen (Phantom Limb)
Design: Kiki Hitomi
Mind Onsen marks a repeat appearance for WaqWaq Kingdom and Kiki Hitomi, who last appeared on this chart in 2019 with Essaka Hoisa. The artist and duo are perfectly paired, sharing a love for humor and allusion. One can locate the album’s themes in the artwork, and feel its joy by looking at its colors and lines.
From Kiki Hitomi:
The Concept and Process Behind the Artwork:
For the EP titled Mind Onsen, I illustrated Shige (DJ Scotch Egg) and myself soaking in a Japanese hot spring Onsen bath, imagined as being located inside Buddha’s head. We are bathing alongside Oni (a Japanese male demon) and Hannya (a Japanese female demon), symbolizing the stressful situations, challenges, chaos, and adversaries we encounter in the world. Visualizing this Onsen helps me relieve stress and serves as a reminder to take breaks and recharge for the next day.
I wanted to create this cover art in a Japanese Ukiyoe style, incorporating one of the EP’s lyrics around the Buddha’s head. This style, often referred to as Ukiyoe Manga, reflects the origins of manga itself, which began with Ukiyoe illustrations and storytelling.
This Buddha-head Onsen is also an homage to the iconic album artwork of Mankind’s “Doctor Who” 12-inch single (1978), which artistically depicts the universe inside the human head. It’s an incredible song accompanied by equally stunning artwork!
Mind Onsen’s cover art is, in fact, the final piece in a trilogy story:
Wound ~ Plasticene (okla records)
Artwork: Michał Kęskiewicz
One of the joys of our site is discovering a brand new label that seems to launch fully formed. Such is the case with okla records, who releases cassettes in batches and whose unified covers share an abstract visual aesthetic. We had a hard time choosing a favorite, but settled on Plasticene; no feelings will be hurt, as the same artist is behind the cover work for all.
From Bartosz Szturgiewicz:
Every Okla Records cover is done by our resident artist, Michał Kęskiewicz, and I was very eager to see what he felt for the cover of ‘Plasticene’. Apart from the sounds, the concept, and feelings around the release no specific pointers were made – I wanted to see how his individual voice would channel his artistic aesthetic. He suggested three drafts and what struck me immediately was how in line with my sensibility his propositions were, particularly in the use of colours and semi-abstract shapes. There was a fierce battle inside me between two propositions but ultimately a decision had to be made and I chose a version quite close to what you see on the final cover.
Taking into account the concept of ‘Plasticene’, an era ‘after’ whatever we have in store for us in the upcoming hundreds of years, the cover resonates with a certain in-organization chaos—a falling-of-pieces-into-place mood. A shitstorm being swept up by a gentle, understanding hand. The follies of man couldn’t suppress the vital energy of our beautiful world as the sun still shines on an altered landscape. Colours burst out through the plastic prisms.
Richard Allen
Mon Dec 09 00:01:31 GMT 2024