Visit Hard Format – reaching for the sublime in music design.

Michaela Stone wrote:

My project concerns the topic of digital music downloads and the subsequent potential for development and innovation in the design of music packaging. In terms of collating “successful” CD packaging examples, your blog has been such a help. So I write to ask if you would be at all interested in answering the following ten questions. This would help my research.

So here are my answers:

I’m going to answer this promptly otherwise it’ll take me forever to do so. Justin’s been taking a back seat on HF for some months now, so it’ll just be me responding.

Interesting subject, but I would say that… I hope the following responses are of interest/use.

Interview

1 Can you share any initial insights into the topic of music graphics for digital music downloads?

It’s probably terribly out of date, but you might read my 2004 piece ‘Interfacing with music in the digital age’ on my music reviews site, Somnambule. Given that computers and mobiles devices have more than enough power to deliver amazing visual experiences to accompany music, development in this area has to date been disappointingly limited. This is the quick answer: http://www.hardformat.org/snow-patrol-a-hundred-million-suns. Unfortunately it’s platform-specific. A platform-agnostic solution would of course be preferable. Given Apple’s current dominance of the digital marketplace, one might look to them hopefully. iTunes’ interface, however, has tended towards file management over anything else, though Coverflow and the latest Grid view options have been welcome.

I’d also refer you to Adrian Shaughnessy’s ‘Cover Art By: New Music Graphics’ in which he interviews a number of contemporary designers and asks them about digital graphics, but the summary is that no-one comes up with anything very much.

2 What has been your experience with digital music packaging thus far?

See above. I’m still waiting on art labels like Raster Noton, ECM, Ghost Box and the like to deliver something creatively interesting. One area you should explore if you’re not already are the likes of RjDj and Bloom for the iPhone – these are clearly new directions for interaction and (limited, but artistically fascinating) creative music-making. My experience of music artists’ websites has been not great, but Beck has done some fun things and there’s probably others.

3 What do you see as the future of music packaging? Will there be a revolution, or a slow process of change?

It’s hard to find record stores on high streets nowadays (and I live in London). Change is happening quickly. My domestic music playback system consists of multiple laptops playing through Airport Express into a stereo amplifier and speakers. I use the laptops to play CDs (I don’t have a CD player in the living room), but I do have a decent turntable which I received last Christmas – I buy vinyl off eBay and play it regularly. It’s the Japanese tea ceremony applied to music playback of course. My listening’s captured to last.fm (which I check too frequently) and I’m currently listening to Pole and Jan Garbarek on Spotify. I share musical recommendations via last.fm, ftp and dropbox shares. Since Spotify my use of soulseek for scoping has reduced significantly. I scan multiple RSS feeds in Google Reader for music news. I’m not certain I had an iPod five years ago, but that may be my hazy memory. Many of the aforementioned media have appeared or matured in roughly that time. Conclusion: change happens fairly rapidly.

4 What would you consider problematic in terms of designing within a smaller space (e.g. album covers that are viewed on iPods)?

Covers look beautiful on the iPod screen – they’re smaller, but they shine in the darkness! iTunes has since something like version 4 allowed multiple graphics to be pasted into its mp3 file artwork tab – that’s not been exploited yet, but I really hope it will be one day – the single screen is frustrating in terms of visual design, but I’m not the average consumer. You should check Kraftwerk’s yet to be released career retrospective The Catalogue: http://www.kraftwerk.com/ > click Info > click Der Katalog. They’ve clearly retro-designed their back-catalogue to function at smaller scale by emphasis the iconic aspect (which was already there admittedly). Note how recognisable they are in those small thumbnails. Then again if you refer to that post of mine again, graphics need to look good at a screen size larger than CD covers…

5 What potential positives do you think digital music packaging has?

Books are nice things, but I’ve now read four or five novels and a couple of volumes of short stories on my iPhone. I don’t buy paper books any more (well, except for photography books). The point is it’s all about convenience. That’s why digital wins – the vast majority of us are satisfied with lower quality sound and image because of that. I know I am (though I listen to mp3s while on the move via mp3s encoded at 192kb/s on £110 Ultimate Ears Super-fi 5EB headphones). I also happily play records which are the antithesis of mobile convenience. My unreliable conclusion – the medium is more fragmented than ever which allows us consumers to pick and choose and develop solutions that satisfy them.

6 Do you see CDs as becoming redundant? What do you think of this notion?

Probably, but with a niche market surviving. That’s what’s happened to audio and video cassettes. Vinyl sold with digital downloads may prove to be a stronger niche. Labels like Rune Grammofon and Southern Lord are seeing impressive sales there I believe.

7 Who (agencies, designers, record companies) do you think are being the most innovative in the field of music packaging?

You’re not referring to digital are you? Physical design-wise, I hope we’re covering them on HF:

Kim Hiorthoy/Rune Grammofon
Julian House/Ghost Box
Olaf Bender/Raster Noton
Susan Archie/Dust-to-Digital+Revenant+Table of the Elements

In the mainstream it’s Mark Farrow and Trevor Jackson.

See: http://www.hardformat.org/the-designers

8 What role does the designer play in determining the future of music packaging?

I’m not a designer, but my guess would be very little. Look at interviews with Peter Saville in this regard.

9 What role does the consumer play in determining the future of music packaging?

Surely they’re voting with their feet by choosing digital. We’re on our way back to the pre-Alex Steinweiss period, but there’s a slim chance that someone will realise the value in aggregating music metadata and design into more concentrated form as record and CD sleeves used to do/still do. We do have more information available to us now than before, it’s just that it’s dispersed over the web and takes Google to find.

10 How do you feel about the idea of music packaging as a non-physical thing?

I’d welcome it – there’s clearly massive potential (RjDj, Bloom), but also danger of platform deprecation a la Brian Eno’s generative music system Koan.

And of course, any last thoughts or suggestions for possible areas of research [within my research] are more than welcome.

See above, particularly the interactive/visual aspects of iPhone development. Also, that any definitive conclusion would be misguided. Music is in a state of massive upheaval. Hope that’s of help.

Two questions for you: how would you feel about my publishing this interview in HF’s news section and two, sending me a copy of your dissertation when it’s finished?

Good luck with it!

Name: v11v11v (quick abstraction of eleventhvolume)
Joined: 15th December 2004
108435 tracks played in total (at 11.28pm last night)
74 tracks per day, average
3,889 artists played
863 loved tracks
66 friends
177 shouts

Top 10 artists

• Kraftwerk (3,723)
• Scott Walker (2,622)
• Rhythm & Sound (2,126)
• King Tubby (1,882)
• Ornette Coleman (1,517)
• Jon Hassell (1,475)
• Miles Davis (1,363)
• Jazzanova (1,299)
• Arve Henriksen (1,133)
• Johann Sebastian Bach (1,076)

Top 10 tracks

• Jon Hassell, Maarifa Street (79 plays) – it’s my top track because I have two live versions and the album track all titled the same)
• 2-10 are all tracks from Kraftwerk’s Minimum Maximum. Their titles have the location of the performance added e.g. Tour De France Etape One (Riga) means that the number of times I’ve listened to the song is less than the total – I’ve listened to the studio version 53 times.

Miscellaneous thoughts

• At times I check my Last.fm page far too frequently, though less so since I hit 100,000 tracks. The impulse relates to registering the experience of something temporal that otherwise passes unmarked like clouds in the sky.
• I play Last.fm stations at work most days, predominantly choosing My Library (which is frustratingly much more limited and repetitive than my actual listening). Other times I choose Similar Artists radio and occasionally Recommendations. I’ve yet to find a particularly satisfactory one. I’d probably use Pandora as often, but it’s blocked outside the US now.
• I have yet to buy any music through the site and I use AdBlock to banish ads. I wonder how well they’re monetising Last.fm.
• I wish Last.fm facilitated easy retrieval of my stats. I really like Last Graph‘s visualisations of Last.fm data as seen at the top of this post.
• The Last.fm charts horrify me, forever dominated by Coldplay, Radiohead and The Beatles.
• The site redesign fails to support Last.fm’s objective to build community around music: I eventually gave up looking for how to send a membership invite to a friend, the shouts are too far down the page and it’s not obvious how to add friends.
• I really like Flag counter which I installed in my sidebar recently. It records the different nationalities that have anonymously visited my profile:
• 
• I’d miss Last.fm a lot if I didn’t have it!

Gutterbreakz wrote:

Got passed this latest blog meme t’ing by Paul over at Deeptime…

‘List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to’.

Then Mapsadaisical also invited me, at least writing at this late date, I think he did. Anyway, I began to write a response in timely fashion in May. Then things went off the rails (they hadn’t been on the rails for a long time in fact). Now I’m sorting my life out again, thank goodness, so um better late than never… here goes. Only thing I’m doing is summarily failing to pass this onto 7 others as I don’t know enough people and I can’t do tracks cos I’m an album sort of person. Oh and it’s 8 albums. Because I’m an arse. For all it’s failings, hopefully it’ll be of a little interest anyways…

Miles Davis – Complete Jack Johnson Sessions

Is gave me the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions when they came out and I was seriously underwhelmed by a shedload of tracks that probably shouldn’t ever have seen the light of day and served to potentially dilute Miles’ legacy. Later I got a promo copy of the In A Silent Way box. Same thing, but worse. So I gave up on ‘em. And also stopped listening to Miles for a few years. As of 6 months ago, I’ve started playing him again – he is a jaw-droppingly amazing genius after all. I tried the On The Corner box and found it better than I’d feared, I’m still in two minds, but I’ve just recently downloaded the Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (a very reasonable £9 from the iTMS). It suffers some longeurs, but there are enough brilliant tracks to justify the outlay twice over – including some excellent abstract sonic work from the late, great Sonny Sharrock.

snd – 4,5,6

snd have been away. Then they came back with this brilliant triple 12″ release limited to only 300 copies and no official digital release. Shame. It’s brilliant. I love their playful, inverted approach (no bass, emphasis upon syncopation, mid-range and treble). Been playing their back catalogue for quite a while now. Their graphics are brill too. This isn’t really an album, so I’m not even being consistent myself. Sigh.

Yello – 1980-1985 The New Mix In One Go

Rediscovery. Loved this back in the day, forgot all about it and them. Didn’t keep up with them after 1988′s Flag. Tremendously cinematic, playful and tinged with darkness. Loved the stories about vocalist Dieter Meier being a retired millionaire playboy industrialist. Brilliant soundscaping from Boris Blank. One of Switzerland’s great cultural exports.

Tinariwen – Aman Iman: Water Is Life

Touareg nomads big on showmanship vis-a-vis traditional dress worn onstage. Very much enjoyed the gig with Is a couple of months back at Jazz Cafe. This is delightfully minimal, rolling, electric music that should be played very loud and danced to until a sweat is broken.

Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis

Had this a long time, just recently opened my ears properly to it. Truly beautiful: all acoustic, mournful and only solo release from the former Talk Talk singer. Released 10 years ago (1998). Talking to Vaughan Oliver at work the other day (he spotted the album on my iPhone) I gave him a copy and he revealed that Mark Hollis had joined the working men’s club Vaughan goes to in Wimbledon. It’s such an amazing album I resisted asking him to pass on a begging missive to return to music making (he retired some years ago). If you haven’t heard this album, please do so. It’s £2.50 + P&P from Amazon currently, so you’ve no excuse.

CéU – CéU

I’m pitifully ignorant of South American music apart from the likes of Astor Piazzolla, Gotan Project and sundry compilations like Gilles Peterson’s In Brazil. One day, I’ll enthusiastically investigate, I reckon. I think I might have encountered CéU on a last.fm auto recommendation, whatever, she makes lovely, sultry jazzy, hip-hop and occasionally electronic infused Braziliana. Definitely worth hearing, on heavy rotation in the Eleventhvolume mansion.

Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War

I bought this for Is, am enjoying muchly. Compared to her debut in which she sang about rimshots and cups of tea in frighteningly anodyne fashion, it’s almost unrecognisable.

Scott Walker – The Drift

This took me a long time to get almost nowhere with, despite an adoration verging on mania for its predecessor Tilt (my album of the last century). Due to personal circumstances, it suddenly made an awful, I might even say a dread-ful sense which I’ve inhabited for a few months now. Things are definitely improving for me personally, but I retain an unshakeable sense of awe for this music and these words. I’d say it was as serious as your life, but it would be more accurate to say it’s as serious as your death. I honestly don’t know anything darker than The Drift.

And…

I guess I’m not really allowed to mention the Steinski double, the Luciano Fabric 41, Ø / Oleva, Morton Feldman or am I? No? Okay, I won’t then.

All in all, it’s been another great year for new music. Here’s hoping for new works by at least some of the following next year: Kraftwerk, Rhythm & Sound (however unlikely), Jon Hassell and David Sylvian. I still need to hear LCD Soundsytem (I guess), the new one from The Field and many other things I look forward to discovering long after everyone else. Anyway, the following is in alphabetical order rather than one of preference.

• 2562 – Channel Two/Circulate
  Thoughts here.
• Alva Noto – Xerrox Vol.1
  I knew there was something I liked a lot, but had forgotten to include and it took reading Mapsadaisical’s fine retrospective to jog my memory. My thoughts here. Like Mapsa sez, can’t wait for further instalments (despite the snotty Wire review).
• Arve Henriksen – Strjon
  My review here.
• Burial – Untrue
  Hmm. I’ve been meaning to write a post about this release since I first started to listen to it, but whenever I mean to write a blog post here, I end up doing one for Hard Format or concentrating on my photography. I think the shock of the new has been inevitably diluted. I’m not so keen on the vocals after 10 or 12 listens. I think I prefer the first one, but Untrue is still a very fine record.
• DJ Spooky – Ghostworld (Africa Pavilion Mix)
  A very recent discovery, made soon after getting back into Mr Spooky and particularly his Rhythm Science mix. You can download the very wonderful Ghostworld here.
• Dominik Eulberg – Heimische Gefilde
  Thank you Ben for opening my slow ears to the wonders of (mostly) German minimal, Heimische Gefilde endearingly alternates gently melodic techno with Bill Oddie-style bird spotting. Ace.
• Fennesz Sakamoto – cendre
  My review here.
• Gui Boratto – Chromophobia
  Lovely minimal from Brazilian architect/DJ on Kompakt, where else?
• Mika – Life in Cartoon Motion
  Huffy Guardian dismissals notwithstanding, a brilliant and at times heartbreaking sets of wonderful pop songs with brilliant lyrics – check the words to Bobbie Brown in particular. Thank you Amy!
• Modeselektor – Happy Birthday!
  Another Ben special – excellent, varied set featuring guest spots from the likes of Thom Yorke, Apparat and the incomparable Paul St. Hillaire.
• múm – Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy
  Lovely and predominantly uplifting experience after the darkness of 2004′s Summer Make Good. Why did it take so many years for this group to finally click?
• Ricardo Villalobos – Fabric 36
  Gradually growing on me, still not entirely convinced, but I can be slow like that.
• Roisin Murphy – Overpowered
  I’ll confess immediately that at time of writing I’ve heard this exactly 1.5 times, but I swear I’m going to love it. Okay, if I end up hating it I promise I’ll update this list, honest. Bought this for Is, I’m wagering she’ll start playing it soon :-)
• Steve Jansen – Slope
  My review here.
• Ryuichi Sakamoto/Morelenbaum2 – Casa
  Delicious interpretations by Sakamoto of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s compositions
• Scott Walker – And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And What Shall Go To The Ball?
  Scott was positively prolific this year, what with this 4 part instrumental composition and that single vocal contribution to the Plague Songs project. My review here.
• Skull Disco – Soundboy Punishments
  This didn’t really sound like dubstep to these ears, no bad thing. The Villalobos remix is stunning, but so is Shackleton’s Hamas Rule. My further thoughts here.
• Supersilent – 8
  My review here.
• Sustain Release – Private Press
  My thoughts/pics here.
• T++ – Allied / Tensile
  Gutterbreakz says it much better than I can.
• The Field – From Here We Go To Sublime
  Sublime indeed.
• Various – Basic Replay
  This is the compilation I’ve sort of been waiting for for years – an excellent compilation of 80s Jamaican digidub. Wouldn’t have known where to start, but this gives loads of pointers.
• Various – Rumble in the Jungle
  Glory days of ragga jungle collected brilliantly on this Soul Jazz compilation.
• Von Südenfed – Tromatic Reflexxions
  Comes last in this alphabetical listing, but near the top in my affections. According to my itunes playcount I appear to have played this something like 40 times.

I’m currently reading The Recording Angel by Evan Eisenberg. It’s a survey of the history of recording and the impact of that process upon music and our experience and appreciation of music. And it’s brilliant: hugely original, witty and perceptive. I suspect I’ll be make more references to it here in future. For the time being, I just want to quote the author’s interpretation of HMV’s famous image:

… the immense popularity of the HMV logo suggests the following things. That we feel like dumb animals before the phonograph, cocking our ears in consternation. That we are not masters of the voice, but the other way around. That the owner of the voice is dear to us, that we miss him and would like to see and sniff him. That if the disc is faithful to the master, we will be faithful to the disc.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is to express my surprise at discovering that Alva Noto has a MySpace page. As I’ve written previously, I’m no fan of MySpace, in fact I experience a sense of existential dread at the very thought of its endless banal ‘shouts’ and ‘adds’. I guess though that any musician wanting to exploit the potential of the internet must perforce undertake such base acts. Or perhaps he’s just not such a big pretentious snob as me. I know, you’re wondering why I’m wasting your time with such dull observations? Because I was really amused by how he’s managed to turn his page into an entirely characteristic minimal art space. This is particularly remarkable given the awful designs of 99.99% of the other 2 billion MySpace pages out there. Here’s a screenshot:

Bravo!
Link: Alva Noto’s MySpace page

I just stumbled across this video on an MP3 blog and think it’s absolutely brilliant. It cycles through and literally explodes a small number of key pieces of music playback hardware, ending up with what my awfully limited knowledge of Spanish translates as ‘music is never going to die’ (la musica nunca va a morir). It appears to be an ad for a Spanish design/music/technology magazine. Do follow the link below to watch it all!

(Oh and seeing one of the old cassette players with the piano keys and integrated mono speaker (do they still make them?) reminds me that I used to borrow my dad’s one – a weighty brushed metal and black plastic affair protected by a leather outer cover – and take it to school. In particularly boring lessons I’d plug in a mono ear piece, snake the wire through my jacket, plug it into the cassette recorder secreted in my school bag and listen to my recently recorded John Peel compilation tapes. This was, for sure, before the mainstream popularity of Sony Walkmans. I never did get caught…)

Link: dailymotion.com page
Via: Original Funk Music

The middle of last December saw me celebrating two years of being subscribed to Last.FM. To tell the truth, the celebration was only really marked by my taking the above screenshot and promptly forgetting about it. Anyway, here I am now remarking on said event. At that point I’d listened to 42,345 tracks, Kraftwerk was my weekly top artist and my overall top artists were Kraftwerk, Ornette Coleman and Rhythm & Sound. Nothing much has changed since. When I signed up it was rather unattractively called Audio Scrobbler, the service was much less reliable and there was little of the social aspect the site now sports. Mog.com may be snapping at its heels (I’m not a fan of its busy interface), but Last.fm claims 15 million users which should ensure fairly accurate recommendations and neighbour matching.

Well, at the time of writing (end of 2006) we have an unparalleled range of media through which we can access and enjoy music – iPods, P2P networks, music playback software, recommendation engines such as Last.FM and Mog. I’m going to start this site small and see how much time I have. For the time being, it’ll be a place to capture and categorise news and links.

I’d be interested in your comments, suggestions or newsworthy items if you’re interested in this topic, dear reader so please do get in touch.

Update: Doh! – slaps head – it might help if I’m referring to this new site of mine to actually supply the address…. It’s musicinterfaces.wordpress.com.

Fascinating that with the huge amount of coverage of Microsoft’s iPod combatant, the Zune, I’ve seen no discussion of sound quality until this question was asked on Gizmodo’s ‘Zune QA – all you need to know‘ post:

Q: How is the sound quality compared to the iPod?
A: Using both the included headphones and my Sennheiser 580s, I couldn’t tell the difference. Maybe my ears are retarded.

Similarly, I’ve seen acres of space devoted to playlists, menu structures, etc, etc, but this is the first time I’ve seen discussion of the sound quality of the headphones. Note the response is non-commital and refers to comfort as much as sound quality:

Q: How are the default headphones? Are they worth it to keep or should I be making a headphone purchase day one?
A: Not bad, and you should try them out yourself to see if they’re too big/small for your ear holes before you purchase new ones.

I should say that my reading about the Zune isn’t comprehensive, but predominantly limited to Gizmodo and Engadget, but the impression does seem to confirm the degree to which convenience is regarded as the most important element of a device even over its original primary function.