DH artwork (wasRe: HW: Swindon show)

[Christian Mumford]

At 10:55 15/11/97 +0000, Mark Edmonds wrote:

>
>The music is the most important obviously, but the artwork contributes
>to the album's "flavour" in a big way. One of the most potent
>music/visual combinations I know of is the UA period with BB's artwork.
>I know for a fact that if those covers were different, the music
>wouldn't sound the way it does to me.

Definetly. The "mythology" of the band is integrated beyond the music on the
disc. It is part of the whole, the cover, the shows, the lyrics, their
lives, your lives..... Just look at the cool Mountain Grill reference on
Space Bandits
.Maybe it was a reference of a return to a more "ambient" sound after Huw
left?
Other bands who do similar things were/are Fish era-Marillion, Voivod, Iron
Maiden, Gong, BOC, Monster Magnet..... in fact, I like to see it all as the
"continuing adventures of yer favorite band".... or rather "YOUR continuing
adventures with yer favorite band!". Very much like a good comic book run :)

>Also, if you lived through the Flicknife era, didn't you always get a
>sense of let down each time you picked up the next "new" HW album and
>looked at those, errr... putting it politely... low grade sleeve
>designs?

The first HW I bought was Chronicle Of The Black Sword on CD,
and it was the Flicknife edition. I was shocked! The artwork was
awful enough to begin with, plus they had taken the colored pencil (!!)
drawing and just printed it in 3 color, making all the gradients look like
a bad xerox and just slapped on flat red or blue color plates... ugh.
Anyway, the next one I bought was Xenon Codex and that sure restored my
faith IMMEDIATELY! Phew!

>The sleeve design is important and DH is OK IMO. That's enough acronyms.

Haven't seen DH yet, but I am always curious about Hawkwind's artwork.
The last few years has been consistently good, with the exception of
awful Business Trip cover! Also, both Palace Springs and California
Brainstorm had crap covers, but everything else in the past 10 years
has IMO been top-notch.

Christian