Jazz covers (2): Reid Miles 12:15

 

No Jazz album cover is more a Jazz album cover than a Reid Miles Blue Note Jazz album cover. His designs became close to iconic. To many people, they simple are what Jazz looks like.

My friend P (Hi, P!) and I recently made a comic book with jazz stories, packaged in a record sleeve. Guess what we decided it should look like? Right. (Check out the design and a sneak peek at the comic here if you haven’t seen it before…)

I’ve been wanting to dedicate a post to these record cover designs for quite a while, but in a way, it just seemed kind of obsolete to do so. You’ve all seen them before, right? Ah, well…

Yesterday, however, I happened upon a nice little video. (A promo for the concerts at the Bellavista Social Pub). Check it out:

 

Hi-Fi from bante on Vimeo.

 

Et voila! Problem solved. Finally got Reid Miles featured on Monsieur Bandit. Well, sort of, anyway…

If you want to see more of the original Miles’ record covers, or read a bit about him, check out some of these articles: Thinking Miles ahead on d|visible or The Jazzy Blue Notes on Retinart. Also worth checking are these two posts on the Fontfeed-blog: Almost Blue and Reid Miles typography. To see the most extensive collection of Blue Note covers I know of, go to the Vintage Vanguard.

(Found via The Casual Optimist)

 

Technorati Tags: jazzed,record covers,reid miles,blue note

Animation: Balance 12:14

 

It has been a while since the last post, but starting today, we’re back in business 

Yesterday, I got a link to a real nice animated short from someone at StumbleUpon (Thanks again, D!)     I don’t know very much about the film, except that it’s from 1989 and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short. It’s from Germany and was directed and produced by the twin brothers Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein.

And it is very minimalistic and very beautiful.

Enjoy.

 

 

Technorati Tags: animation,Lauenstein,Balance

Project 33 15:45

 

 

This morning I came across a nice little blog called Project 33 which displays a collection of vintage record sleeves all designed with nothing but dots, rectangles, triangles, lines, abstract shapes or only typography. Very often the designs result in a completely abstract image, other times they become highly stylized representations of musical instruments for example.

I showed the blog to a friend (Hi, M!) and he immediately started sending me examples of similar record sleeve designs, consisting of only abstract shapes or typography, but from very different times and styles of music. Meanwhile I started searching for other examples as well. Here’s what we came up with…

 

First of all, some examples from the Project 33 site, run by Jive Time Records from Seattle:

 

 

And this is what M. came up with. (Thanks, M!)

 

 

Finally, the stuff I found:

 

 

Covers were found at Birka Jazz Archive, Discogs and Vintage Vanguard. Project 33 found via Drawn!

Technorati Tags: record covers,illustrations

Comics: Philip Paquet 09:45

 

 

Some of the readers of this blog might remember me mentioning a while ago I was writing some short Jazz stories for my friend P. Well, the results are in!

Mr P is better known as Philip Paquet, a Belgian comic book author who often finds inspiration in the world of Jazz music, resulting in such albums as Louis (a Louis Armstrong biography) and Snapshots (a collection of short stories).  He also created a series of adventure stories set in Japan called Yume and collaborated with Adriaan Van Aken on the two part Over naar jou/Weer over naar jou.

I’m planning a more extensive post dedicated to P somewhere in the near future, but today I’ve got a sneak preview of his new album: Playin’Smilin’Fightin’Cookin’. Again, this is a series of jazz short stories, one of which (Playin’) is written by Stéphane Daniel and Tim Vendaux, another (Smilin’) by Philip himself and the others (Fightin’ and Cookin’) by yours truly. As you can see, the design of the book is inspired by the famous Blue Note albums and in fact consists of a real double-LP record sleeve, opening up to display the two booklets.

Take a look at these (the first time ever we have those lovely ISSUU embeddable book-thingies on Monsieur Bandit, by the way…). The first gives you a peek at excerpts from the four stories, the second is the complete 5-page story Cookin’.

Oh, and before I forget, yes, the musicians on the front of the record sleeve are us. Philip is playing bass (which he actually can) and I’m the drummer (only in my dreams…). Tim on trumpet and Stéphane on sax. Ladies and gentlemen: The Vertigo Quartet…!

 

Open publication - Free publishing - More philip paquet

 

Open publication - Free publishing - More philip paquet

 

Philip and me are doing a little signing session to launch the book on Thursday the 24th of June at cafe Vertigo, Draakplaats 3 in Antwerp (Belgium), from 8pm ‘till 10pm. You are all very welcome to drop by…

Also,  Philip is having a nice little gallery show called Monkism at the moment, at the Print Gallery, Muntstraat 8 in Antwerp. Watch out, the gallery is only open on Friday from 1pm ‘till 6pm and on Saturday and Sunday from 11am till 6pm. It runs ‘till the 20th of June.

And if you want to check out the other albums of Philip Paquet visit the site of comic book publisher Bries.

 

Technorati Tags: comics,jazz,philip paquet,bries,playin'smilin'fightin'cookin'