Sleeve Archive

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The Passions, I’m In Love With A German Film Star, Single 1981

This sleeve was designed during Stylorouge’s first year in existence, in fact, it was started just before Rob O’Connor had left his post in Polydor Record’s art department. The band were signed by Chris Perry to his nascent Fiction Records, where they became stablemates of The Cure and The Associates before signing to the parent label Polydor. 

The design was an homage to the stylish Poster art that came out of Germany in the early/mid 20th century. We commissioned illustrator Rosemary Harrison to create the androgynous mirror-image, and as was often the case at the time, the 7inch sleeve was printed in just two colours (it was cheaper in those days...)

We continued our relationship with the band to create the sleeve for the album 30,000 feet Over China.

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Del Amitri, Change Everything, Album 1992

This was a highly productive two day shoot in Amsterdam, with Kevin Westenberg shooting. Rob O’Connor, Mark Caylor and A&M Records art director Jez Pearce ganged up on art direction and production. We were after the mood and feel of a classic 1960′s R&B shoot – along the lines of The Yardbirds or the Pretty Things. Amsterdam has a vast wealth of waterside photo-opportunities. This was a canal warehouse in the throes of refurbishment to posh apartments. Having recced the location the day before, we’d worked out what time most of the builders went for lunch, allowing us enough time to shoot this picture.

The typography shamelessly took inspiration from Blue Note.

For anyone who loves classily produced, beautifully crafted songwriting and who has never explored Del Amitri’s back catalogue, shame on you. This album is among their best.

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Adam Ant, Vive Le Rock Album, 1985

Incredibly, over 30 years old this album was released around the time of Live Aid, which Adam performed at. The shoot was based as usual on Adam’s own styling inspirations, mashing together camp cowboy chic with an astronaut gang look for the band shot that was used on the back of the sleeve. Art direction by Rob O’Connor, photograph by Nick Knight.

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Chris Difford, I DIdn’t Get Where I Am, Album 2002

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Jesus Jones  Liquidizer  Album  1989

Photography Trevor Rogers

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Paradise Lost Draconian Times album 1995

Photo-illustration Holly Warburton

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The Kinks Lost And Found Single 1987

Illustration Mick Brownfield

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James Seven Album 1992

We were invited by Phonogram Records (Fontana) to meet James with a view to working with them on their sleeves. They had been recording this new album with producer Youth, but having exhausted their allocated time with him, had moved into residential space at RAK Studios in Regent’s Park where we met them and discussed the band themselves, the songs and their thoughts on packaging and imagery. A photoshoot for press was set up with Simon Fowler in his studio within our shared Paddington premises, and we got stuck in to producing visuals for a front cover, as their recording schedule had been delayed and time was now short. Finally, partly due to the fact that the band were comprised of seven quite different individuals, the theme of human identity was the route we were to follow, and a series of images were prepared to represent each member of the band. Artist Andrew Ekins was commissioned to create seven subverted passport photo distortions of each person, but with time running out it was decided for him to work on seven anonymous subjects instead – these became the inner sleeve of the package, and a new idea presented itself for the front following the announcement that lead singer Tim Booth’s partner was pregnant with their first child. Stock images of unborn babies were sifted through until we found the one that became the front, and some severe cropping created the enigmatic, strangely sic-fi looking image that became the focal point of the album campaign.

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The Creatures  Miss The Girl  Single 1983

Photography Gil Gilbert

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Killing Joke Revelations Album, 1982

Photography Trevor Rogers

This was Killing Joke’s third studio album, and the first that Stylorouge produced the sleeve for. An unexpectedly ‘posh’ looking image for a post-punk/dub/rock band of their prominence and counter-culture notoriety, but the aim was to reflect the esoteric pomp of the masonic brotherhood – a subject that front man Jaz Coleman had long since studied as part of his insatiable fascination with the occult and alternative religions and doctrines. He was also drawn to theories about the reputed mystical properties that were increasingly being attributed to Ley lines, and famously, later in 1982, he persuaded the band move to Iceland, which was deemed by Coleman to be the safest place to survive the impending apocalypse. Bassist, (and later on hugely successful record producer) Youth was the first to conclude that the impending disaster wasn’t quite forthcoming, and made his way back to Notting Hill where he started his own band, Brilliant. Killing Joke's visceral punk-styled imagery had already been established as subversive and shocking, revelling in dark humour and heavily influenced by the politically charged photo-montage work of artists such as John Heartfield, but in some ways this transition to a more traditional and ‘slick’ imagery did nothing to reduce the band’s disarmingly threatening ethos. Ironically we commissioned a long established embroiderer of masonic and institutional regalia to create the masonic pastiche embroidered symbol for the sleeve image. A change of producer on Revelations saw them working with Conny Plank, German veteran of Neu and Kraftwerk projects. Three years later, we would work with the band again on the sleeve and campaign for the Night Time album, which included Love Like Blood, the key single from the album which was a chart hit, substantially raising the band’s profile – even to the point where, no doubt to Coleman’s horror, it became a student dance floor staple.

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The Imagined Village Bending The Dark Album, 2012

Illustration Mark Higenbottam

Our second album sleeve project for Simon Emmerson’s multicultural folk collective. The album is a beautifully segued musical journey from the 2010 BBC Folk Awards winners, that places murder ballads alongside fiddle tunes, mournful cello passages, battling dhol drums and the richly experienced vocal stylings of Eliza and Martin Carthy, Jackie Oates and Sheema Mukherjee. Drums and Percussion are courtesy of Johnny Kalsi, who provided the rhythmic heartbeat of the London Olympics opening ceremony. The sleeve image sits somewhere between wood engraving and biro sketch – rough-edged and playing with rural, industrial and ecological themes. We also provided the band photography for the campaign, with a shoot located in the streets of Shoreditch and the well-used Owl & Pussycat pub in Redchurch Street of that parish.

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Spear Of Destiny Never Take Me Alive Single, 1987

This was Kirk Brandon’s most successful single release, peaking in the UK chart at No. 14, and was the key track on his group Spear Of Destiny’s Outland album, which was released by Virgin in 1987. He formed Spear of Destiny with bassist Stan Stammers when they disbanded their previous post-punk project Theatre Of Hate. For Stylorouge it was an opportunity to create a visual story that combined a few ideas; some of ours and some of Kirk’s; aesthetically the sleeves we produced were focused on craftsmanship and tradition, with a strong leaning towards romanticesd political poster art. Chris Welch crafted lino-cut illustrations of the front man, this one layered over primary coloured paper, whereas the album sleeve for Outland carried more of a narrative. The typography was influenced by 1930’s European poster design.

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The Jesus and Mary Chain Stoned And Dethroned Album 1994

It was a privilege to be asked to work for such an influential band. We knew that they were infamously reclusive and self-effacing when it comes to image. A number of visuals were prepared that predominantly used weirdly abstract found photographs, but it was decided by the record company to attempt to encourage the band to appear in some form or other on the front sleeve and knowing that they were to shoot a video in the American South West (for the stand-out single track on the album, Sometimes Always, which featured guest vocals from Mazzy Star heartthrob Hope Sandoval), they agreed to see what could be made of stills from the shoot. The images were extracted from the second half of Sophie Muller’s video. The distressed degenerated nature of the screengrab images was accentuated by the use of early colour photocopies – grainy noise and scan lines were deliberately retained. The overall final look was more akin to a title sequence for an art movie than an album sleeve (which we liked…)

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Desert Eagle Discs, The Lovers single sleeve 1998

Photography Peter Anderson

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Alexei Sayle (aka the Albanian World Cup Squad), Albania Albania, single 1982

Illustration Graham Humphreys

A rarity – I can’t imagine sales of this Island release bothered the charts much, despite the growing popularity of Comic Strip favourite, Alexei Sayle, who made this recording but was conspicuous by his absence on the sleeve credits. 

Out in time for the World Cup, both the track itself and the cover teetered on the edge of political correctness, but Graham Humphrey’s excellent illustration combined dexterity with comedic sensibility as always, and it remains a personal favourite cover of ours – the imagery felt like a fitting accompaniment to the abandoned frivolity of the record industry at the start of the post-punk 1980′s. 

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Danielle Dax, Blast The Human Flower, Album sleeve 1990

Photography Simon Fowler

Following a succession of sleeves adorned with darkly gothic textured images (many courtesy of highly respected photo-illustrator Holly Warburton), our instinct was to take Danielle out of the dark and into a brighter psychedlic situation depicting her almost as some kind of floating blissed out deity. One of our first forays into working with computers – in those days at considerable expense – but the treatment we ended up using was actually very simple. The typography hinted at motorcycle branding, and without being sure why, the two A’s in Danielle’s name carried the figures 6 and 9 within it (If 6 were 9? soixante-neuf...?). The photo on the reverse of the sleeve broke the heavenly spell and reverted back to familiar territory for the former Lemon Kitten.

As pointed out in the previous post on this blog, Danielle is also a talented visual artist, her drawings featured on the front covers of two of Robert Fripp’s album sleeves.

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Robert Fripp, the League of Gentlemen, Album sleeve 1981

Illustration by Danielle Dax

A relatively low profile distraction from King Crimson for Fripp, who came back a year later with Beat, itself representing something of a change of musical direction for the band.

The drawing on The League Of Gentlemen was by elfin psychobilly (my description) and herself a regular on the Stylorouge turntable, Danielle Dax.