[BAD SIGNAL] I Am Confused By The Clock

[Warren Ellis]

bad signalME

Records of the week, clearly BROADCAST AND THE FOCUS GROUP
by Broadcast And The Focus Group and THE TRANSACTIONAL DHARMA
OF ROJ by Roj.  Both of which have strange 70s vibes: that pagan-sf vibe
of mid-70s culture, Alan Garner books and children's tv dramas.  Not
always sure how these musics translate to people who weren't there --
especially other Ghost Box acts like Belbury Poly.  But I'm enjoying the
autumnal standing-stone spaciness.

If you take a look at ghostbox.co.uk, you can see the CD cover
designs: they have a house style derived from 70s design.  Lovely stuff.

Design, of course, is important in all things.  It creates the
atmosphere around the work.  Even if you don't recognise the
antecedents and signifiers in Ghost Box cover design, you still
get a powerful whiff of the strange and antique off them, which
sets you up for their peculiar explorations of Old Weird.

If it were up to me, certain comics wouldn't have traditional
covers at all.  What do you need to know about a Batman
comic, say, beyond the fact that Batman's in it?  It amused
me no end to just stamp a bit of old science-book diagram on
the front of AETHERIC MECHANICS and have done with it.
I've got a project in development right now with no cover art
at all.

All it has to do, you see, is suggest the atmosphere.  Post
a bit of semiotics and off you go.  Literal covers just bore me.
I tend to skim through the week's new covers on a download
site or the megacitycomics.co.uk store site, and, my god,
the bland fucking horror of them.  People who actually know
what they're doing stand out like tits at a tentacle party.

Hm.  Yes.  May have needed more sleep.

-- 
--------------------------
sent from [device: little black book]
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.flirble.org/pipermail/badsignal/attachments/20091002/365ed57a/attachment.html