Halloween Record Sleeves

posted by Marcroy November 3, 2014

We asked the fabulous Emily Evans, who co-runs Cover Club at Ace Hotel to write about some of her favourite Halloween style record sleeves. here they are in all of their glory.

Symphonie Fantastique was written by composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. The tale of a musician who poisons himself with opium out of sadness for a hopeless love. He finds himself unsuccessful in his poisoning but transported on a very morbid trip/nightmare meeting various scary scenarios. Its the perfect story to create some great artwork. Since the 1960s there have been a number of covers created for this macabre symphony. Seven of which are shown here, its always interesting to see different takes on the same theme and each cover is very different. Unsurprisingly there are some beautiful typefaces and textures as well as some tasty uses of simple colour schemes. My very favourite by Ronald Clyne utilises a red and black marble like texture to darkly suggest the torment and also the opium poison that is fuelling this episode in dramatised despair. Whilst others seem almost tongue in cheek a unknown designer shows merely beautiful woman smiling knowingly whilst a hangman’s knot takes up most of the sleeve.

Carrying on from the slightly trippy theme is the album sleeve by Robert Beatty for South London four-piece Childhood. Their debut album Lacuna was released on August 11th via House Anxiety/Marathon Artists, its a great album and the artwork really works, reminiscent of airbrush styles used by British artists such as Terry Pastor, Beatty digitally creates distinctive artwork that really suits Childhoods sound. The colours look totally edible like gummy sweet flavours!

Not so recently released but easily something that could be turned into the most original Halloween costume is Connan Mockasin’s Forever Dolphin Love released in 2011 on Phantasy Sound. With a vividly painted paper paper mache puppet made by himself as the central piece to the sleeve. This album simply turns an object into a simple story telling vessel for the playful music within the album. With a distinctive blonde wig atop is paper face its painted in the abstract bright paints that feature as the decorative face paints in the Forever Dolphin Love music video, this album beautifully translates from sleeve to screen . Its black eyes are sweet but also as with most puppets a little scary.

Zombies are also a classic Halloween costume choice and potentially a cat zombie could be the costume for you. Run The Jewels 2 has had a lot of hype recently and the additional hilarious blow up of the Meow The Jewels Kickstarter campaign to remake the whole album using cat sounds is just one example of the internet winning! Once again proving that cats really do run the internet. Also the album artwork by Nick Gazin is very much getting a life of its own side outside of the internet and the ‘Tag the Jewels tumblr’ is showcasing artist’s original takes on the album artwork in random locations all around the world.