What's in an album cover?
Art is subjective. Ambient and experimental music usually have strange artwork for their covers. But there's often meaning to the visuals behind the music to provoke emotions, convey ideas and thoughts through the medium or to place emphasis on the themes for the song.
A question behind creating any art is to consider how to discuss it in your own style. Everyone has had unique experiences but not everyone will see things in the same way to you. But then, how do you convey something personal to an audience?
Ambient soundscapes
The 'Everywhere at the End of Time' albums (or stages?) have very unique covers. I haven't listened to the entire album from start to finish yet, but what I have listened to has given me an appreciation for the art itself. When I see this image, I instantly know what it is from.
Theatre soundtracks
Back in high school music class, we had two listening exercises where they played a snippet of 'Anthem' from Chess, and 'Music of the Night' from Phantom of the Opera. I absolutely adore classical and theatre music and these two songs instantly hooked me. However, I hadn't looked at their album art until quite recently.
The concept art for 'Chess' is outstanding. It captures (no pun intended) its idea with such a simple design. I particularly like the simplicity and minimal colours to convey the themes. It gives a sense of disorderly stability in the chaos that often happens with chess.
And the art for 'Phantom of the Opera' is also really good. Despite only using about half of the cover for the main characters, it really has a mysterious intrigue to it which is how I feel about 'Music of the Night'. I was once told that I should never have silence in my compositions, and that I must always fill in every bar. But silence is the contrast to music. I've heard a lot of songs that make use of silence that make a song sound louder and put more emphasis on the rhythm with the breaks - for example 'A Cold Sweat' by Danny Baranowsky from 'Crypt of the Necrodancer'.
My own artwork
I'm no visual artist as I struggle to draw which is why I find it both easy and difficult to create my own art for an album. The first album cover I created was for 'Remasteux'. I focused on using simple geometrical shapes that I could draw through selecting, filling and copy/pasting. I use GIMP to draw the art for most of the my covers.
Even though I have the source file, I can break it down without needing to look at the separate layers. It starts with a two-colour checkered background with a black gradient fade atop. A bar of rainbow gradient is overlayed and then a "clock" is drawn on top using circles, and straight lines for the hands and numbers. It's not much, but that's okay. I wanted some art for my album and it suffices for what it is. If I were to remake the album, I would probably take the original album art as it was and put a twist on it.
"Sandbohx" is the only album I have created art for that doesn't feature it's name on the cover. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to draw the name by hand, or use a font. But when I decided against drawing it, I couldn't decide a font. However, I decided to omit the name of the album from the cover because I felt it was more appropriate. You'll notice that it is Minecraft-themed, and that is because it is a screenshot I took from the game and heavily edited. But that is a story for another time, and I'll definitely be covering the Sanbohx series because it's one of my favourite works.
One of my most recent album covers, this album was an experimentive collection of ambience. The "brain" in the center is actually a simulated path of Langton's ant. It's essentially a deterministic simulation of an "ant" that has a set of rules. There's no free choice for the ant, it simply follows the rules that are set by the algorithm. I chose this design because I find it fascinating. Almost always (some patterns are unconfirmed), the ant ends up producing the "highway" which it gets stuck in. Originally, the album was going to be named "The Chessboard Extends Into Infinity". After a discussion with a friend, I eventually settled on its final name because it felt more appropriate.
This album was my first step into composing music, and then throwing it into another editor and messing around with more effects. I have released a 'restored' version of two tracks from the album, which show what the track was like before I added the paulstretching.
Guest artwork: m00ncury
My fourth album was written for an old friend's character. I wanted a character portrait for the artwork but I lack the skills to do this. So I asked m00ncury, a university friend, for a commission of the artwork.
As this was an album for a character, I wanted the character to be present on the art. I don't have much to say about this one other than it was one of my first original compositions.
Guest artwork: Nibby49
This is the second album cover that Nibby49 has created for me. He has done another one, but that is part of the aforementioned Sandbohx series. I originally had some art lined up for Silver Seedling but after I showed it off, I was a little unhappy with my original art. I like the simplicity of the design, and its use of monochromatic colours.
This blog post is getting a little long so I will pause here, but there is a lot more I can say. Maybe a part two?
Reading list
"Everywhere at the End of Time" · The Caretaker
"Anthem" · Chess
"Music of the Night" · Phantom of the Opera
Danny Baranowsky
m00ncury
Nibby49