No headline: Hard-Fi kill off record sleeve with postmodern gesture
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Hard-Fi are gearing up to 'kill off' the record sleeve with the artwork for their forthcoming sophomore LP Once Upon A Time In The West.
The sleeve for the new release, due September 3, will feature the band’s name and album title in small lettering, as well as the legend ‘No Cover Art’, in response to the shift towards digital sales within the music industry.
Singer Richard Archer told The Times: "The significance of album covers is becoming little more than a centimetre square on an iPod screen. The sleeve used to add another dimension to an album, but that seems to be disappearing, which is really sad."
"We had the Sleeve of the Year in 2005 and we looked at every way of trying to top it. But perhaps the best way is to kill off the sleeve altogether."
But just before you set your messageboard comments to 'heavy-handed sarcasm', here's influential sleeve designer Peter Saville with his tuppence worth, noting Hard-Fi’s "bold and very intelligent gesture" and hailing the new record as a "White Album for the digital culture".
Whether the band would actually have the courage of their convictions and release a CD with no music on it is currently a 'moot point'.
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We had the Sleeve of the Year in 2005 and we looked at every way of trying to top it. But perhaps the best way is to kill off the sleeve altogether."
WHAT?! WASN'T JUST YELLOW AND BLACK?!!?!
...
its 'really sad' that sleeves are dying out he says. So instead of making a really good sleeve to fight this idea, they decide to make a really shit one??!?!?
Thats like lying on the M4 waiting to be run over and saying "well, its really sad that people get run over these days".
what a farce.
Hard fi
Fuck off.Thank you.
eh?
This doesn't make sense. They like album cover art and are sad its disappearing.....so to stop this demise in its tracks they decide to try and "kill off the sleeve altogether"
wtf
But it's not a sleeve, honest...
Don't you see? Don't you fully appreciate their bold and very intelligent gesture?
well
that "no Cover Art" is well in fact cover art itself
if they really meant it, then why not just give us a disc in a blank box
but
THERE ISNT ANY COVER ART...NONE AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! at least it isnt some cctv camera that looks like a reject of robot wars or something. that would be really embarrasing.
How much
d'you reckon their major label paid someone to come up with that?
This is not a post
chew the fat out of that
If it was someone like
Battles or Radiohead instead of Hard-Fi a lot of you people would be banging on about what a great artistic statement this is. I smell double standards
No, you smell potential double standards
If it was battles or radiohead theyd probably be doing it with a hint of humour or irony, which would make it nearly acceptable.
no we wouldnt
I smell a lack of a point
postmodernism
is ironic in its very nature.
I wouldn't care if jesus christ
said it was a good idea.
Betcha...
the tunes will still suck....
Is that ironic in itself?
They've obviously haven't heard of
Map of Africa!
they're not even trying
think cover art is alive and well, that soulwax one a while back was astounding and recent designs point towards really interesting concepts. Hard Fi are just being lazy really, they can't be arsed to tie all their packaging together. It's quite aprt really for one of the most bland and derivative not to mention faceless buch of goons this side of hadrians wall. apart from their chimplike frontman.
cunts
cunts
Peter Saville...
Did a New Order cover like that a few years ago that just said 'N O'.
No one bought that and the bands now broken up.
so fingers crossed.
and if the children care
then the children are pissed!
Is this trying to be some sort of modern art minimalist expression?
If the answer is yes, then they are failing miserably at it
i...
quite like it.
I think I'd like it
if they - or the art director - had really had the courage of their convictions, and left the name of the band and the title of the album off the front cover altogether.
i like it
and i like hard-fi
and i dont gave a fuck.
<< rebel, rebel!
To some guy further up...
Radiohead wouldn't do it though, they have ideas and stuff...
irony
does not always equal humour.
wasn't
really his best effort though was it.
surely
if you were to kill off cover art you'd sell your cd in a blank case?
Perhaps the ultimate rebellion..
Would have been them not even selling an album.
(Well it won't happen unless someone suggests it)
*crosses fingers*
was that
a reply to me?
Most significantly
I want to know whether 'Sleeve Of The Year' is an official award. And if it is, why?
^
this
popjustice...
...put it well
It's like, how much more black could this be?
...and the answer is none. None more black.
HAHAHAHHAHA!
'if they meant it
they would sell the CD in a blank case, but that would be suicide'
is bang on. This is fuck all to do with art or music. Its just a lame gimmick to get people talking and to generate publicity, I mean, when else would a thread about Hard-Fi generate this many replies?
Its shite
it'd have been more amusing
if the artwork was just the little square box with the red x in the middle. At least to the web savvy.
[x]
No.
<<conformist tosser with no standards, conformist tosser with no standards!
AFX
did this.
It's an artistic gesture,
on the cover of a single...
so,
It's still cover art...
*sigh*
I almost...
got a Job at Atlantic Records where I would have been designing sleeves and stuff for Hard-Fi etc.... and I can answer your question with an easy 'Not that much actually'
look at all these replies though
it's nice to see a story on a band you all seem to despise provoke such a reaction from you lot!
;-)
I think it's more
that we all like to defend our intelligence when it's so blatently insulted
Ah but,
If this was a genuine gesture, why the striking bold typography?.
Why not just the title and artist in Times New Roman?
As twattish
as this is by hard-fi...
..even more annoying is accepting ridiculous statments because 'it's being ironic'
that somehow people can get away with being stupid, offensive or obvious because they are aware of it. ricky gervais makes a living out of it.
post-post-ironicism is where it's at.
I'm not a big Hard-Fi fan
but I thought the album cover for Stars of CCTV was pretty smart - it gave them a hell of a lot of free advertising throughout the country from the thing the band were taking the piss out of in the first place.
This cover is again quite unusual, and the fact it has been discussed at such length here shows they've succeeded again in doing something attention grabbing - all publicity is good publicity, even when there are a lot of high horses to be climbed.
In conclusion,
1) I'm not in advertising.
2) I'm very indifferent about Hard Fi as a band.
3) We're all playing into their hands by even talking about it.
good punning
your 'moot point' is the most imaginative and entertaining thing I've ever seen in any way related to this band
the cover should just be a mirror so that the owner is forced to stare their own disgrace in the face
checked
An italian guy already did that mirror thing in the 80s. The record was called "Faccia da pirla" (= dumbface, or along the lines). THAT was genius.
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