conventions of Album Artwork

References -
https://www.nme.com/news/music/arctic-monkeys-443-1347345 *



Album artwork is very important to the artists these days as Vinyl consumption has become a trend again meaning that the visuals must represent the album and the artists. Doers the artist come across as organic or synthetic?

Album No.1 - Favourite Worst Nightmare - Arctic Monkeys
This is my favourite album of all time and I have the CD version and so I've taken some pictures of it to analyse.

The 3rd album from Arctic Monkeys resulted in some experimental sounding indie rock with distortion and other effects pedals on the guitar to create magical sounds in the guitar that really make the album sound unique. 

 For me, the album artwork fully looks like the sound it makes. It's the combination of colours, shapes and fonts that really emphasise the overall sound of the album.

 Let's start with disk, it clearly depicts a face with some sort of hat on. It appears to me that there are horns on the hat which could be a nod to the word 'Nightmare' which appears in the title. Horns are a nightmarish look and Cleary is used to possibly scare the consumer. However, looking at this CD, we can also see that there are stars on the face along with sunglasses. To the audience he looks like someone who likes to party and stay out and is quite a rebellious character.

Album Artwork

 We can tell that the genre of music is indie rock from the alternative artwork and the colouring. The pictures all have subtle meanings behind them but they are not clear, I think they are all close ups of the long shots of the house.

 A star image isn't really created by this album, however this is because the Arctic Monkeys created their star image in their first albums and received lots of publicity after playing at Glastonbury and headlining reading a year after their second album.

The majority of album Artwork is just various images that don't really have a backstory, in an interview on NBE.com the band stated that “We wanted to do something physical, like do something real with the artwork. We got all these illustrators, played them some tunes and that and got them to draw bits of stuff, bits of things that we liked and stuff."* 

The colour with the blacked out house makes for a treat for the eyes, the eyes are attracted to the colour in the blacked out house which give it a sense of not judging something by the outside look.

Album No.2

Wizville, presumably based of Ocean Wisdom's rapper name is a collective of modern rap songs but with a jazz twist. The use of upright bass and jazz instruments along with the electronics sounds make this album sound unique and it is reflected by the album artwork.

The star image is created on the front, the long shot gives us a full outline of Wisdom's figure in a tunnel with lots of graffiti on the walls. The lack of lighting in the shot combined with the Jazzy tones in the album give me a feeling that this album is quite exclusive like an underground club.

The song 'Tom and Jerry' featured on the Fifa 19 soundtrack which I decided to give Wizville a listen and I really enjoyed the sound. He is quite an underground artist and so this was his breakthrough album which I imagine was helped by Fifa 19.

Rock

This is Spinal Tap's most famous album, as you can see, the consumer can deeply analyse this cover.

That was joke...

AC/DC Black Ice featuring tracks like Rock 'N' Roll train and War Machine. this album allegedly saved the band's career!

The consumer can easily tell that that this album is a rock and roll album by the illustrations on the front. They are quite gothic and the font represents the name AC/DC which are the two power options on a battery, the lightning bolt represents that.

The artwork represents a sort of crest showing that the band are like a famous family.