Klaxons – Three Years On

After being told by horrified suits that they needed to re-record their second album in 2009 because it was ‘too experimental’ (what’s the point of being a musician then?), the Klaxons are now set to release the much anticipated follow-up this year.

It has been three long years since Myths of the Near Future, and I’m very curious to hear the fruits of the Klaxons labour. Jamie Reynolds at least, sounds confident – “We’d really like to put out the first great record of the 2010s rather than the last great one of this decade. Now that’s become an aspiration and a goal.”

Royal Mail Unveil Classic Album Cover Stamps

A series of classic album covers including Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells and Parklife by Blur has been issued as a set of stamps by the Royal Mail. Other well-known record sleeves to have been made into first-class stamps include Pink Floyd’s Division Bell. The design on each of the 10 stamps shows a vinyl record coming out of its recognisable album cover.

Blur – Parklife (1994)
Parklife captures three racing greyhounds on its cover, captured at Walthamstow by photographer Bob Thomas and designed by Stylorouge’s Creative Director Rob O’Connor.  O’Connor said, “The sleeves we designed for Blur captured an attitude that seemed just right for the time, they were always playful – more a wry observation of British visual culture than flashy design.”

New Order – Power, Corruption and Lies (1983)
Peter Saville’s design for the album had a colour-based code to represent the band’s name and the title of the album, but they were not actually written on the sleeve itself. The decoder for the code was featured prominently on the back cover of the album and can also be used for the “Blue Monday” and “Confusion” singles.

Rolling Stones – Let it Bleed (1969)
The cover displays a surreal sculpture designed by Robert Brownjohn. The image consists of the Let It Bleed record being played by the tone-arm of an antique phonograph, and a record-changer spindle supporting several items stacked on a plate in place of a stack of records. The cake parts of the construction were prepared by then-unknown cookery writer Delia Smith.