How well can you judge a CD by its cover? We put that question to the test by having each classical editor choose an album based solely on its cover, record his/her initial impressions and expectations, and then review the recording. Each editor’s “before” expectations are listed below; follow the links under the entries to see the “after” reviews. And now, on with the judgment!
 
 

Anthony Coleman: Lapidation
Blair Sanderson

At first blush, this CD appears to feature some kind of sparse avant-garde or ambient music, judged solely by the simple abstract art on the cover. There’s a subdued, minimalist feeling to the washed-out colors and roughly repetitive shapes, and the spiral — do you go clockwise or widdershins? — connotes an introspective approach in the music, perhaps of a meditative bent. Does a Japanese rock garden spring to mind? A Zen koan, anyone? Without knowing the work of this composer or how lapidation (i.e., the stoning of a person to death) figures into the musical style, method, or structure, one might guess that the music has some connection to pitched percussion or tuned stoneware, and hopefully not smashed crockery.

Read the review here

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Excess and desperation certainly have their place in rock music, so does packaging. What in hell do these three all have in common? Chris Rea. Right, that British guitar slinger guy who was ubiquitous on MTV during the late 1980s and 1990s. He released hit after hit in Europe and Asia, and did marginally well on these shores with albums like On the Beach, The Road to Hell, and Auberge to mention just three.

Some years back, Rea, who has had enough health problems and surgeries to fill a lifetime, and as a result knows there’s no time to be fooling with the nonsense of record companies, told his major label to shove it. He released a record called Dancing Down the Stony Road that they didn’t want in a beautiful package, and scored big time in Europe and Asia. Then came an epiphany. Rea suddenly understood something about making and presenting music in the digital age: that you had to really give something to the listener for them to seek you out in the mass media swamp, provide an object that could be collected and treasured — it’s kinda hard to do on an iPod — something tangible to hold on to and refer to in the way many of us did in the vinyl age. He started his own label called Jazzee Blue, issued an 11-CD/single-DVD set called Blue Guitars, packaged together with a huge hardbound book, that included his reproductions of his paintings, and music that covered every kind of blues Rea and his band could play. Priced very reasonably, it sold 160,00 units. He assembled a compilation in the form of a standard double disc called The Blue Jukebox; it too sold well.

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Those who are familiar with Detroit underground MC Esham’s typically gore-splattered 1992 double-album opus Judgement Day will have an acid-rap flashback when they listen to Beanie Siegel’s The Solution, out the 11th on Roc-A-Fella. Track ten, a Dre & Vidal production titled “The Day,” samples Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” off 1971’s Paranoid. What’s kind of surprising is the manner in which the song is used. It is used almost exactly (if not exactly) the same way it was used in Esham’s “Judgement Day” — much more creatively than it was used in Ice-T’s “Rhyme Pays,” maximizing the tumbling, crunching, white-knuckled fury. Somewhat tellingly, a pre-release leak of the album had “The Day” listed as “Judgment Day ft. Ozzy Osbourne.”

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Rhino may have been a little too cunning for their own britches on The Brit Box. The tracklisting is a scattered array of artists, largely due to a strange creative decision to construct themes from song title to song title (for example, “Insomniac,” “Sleep Well Tonight,” and “Sleeping In” all play back-to-back on disc two, followed by “Alright,” “Alright,” and “Stutter”). Cute, yes. But the result feels clumsy at times rather than a linear overview. It’s a good set, but it could have been oh so much better. For a project with such a huge scope, it seems like the concentration was focused in the wrong areas. Surely it was difficult enough to come up with a grouping for the wide array of artists that fit into the “Brit” genre without trying to get all fancy with the song order, and there was no need, as the art department had cute and fancy covered with the packaging. The case incorporates a rustic UK phone booth plastered with band stickers and actual flickering light bulbs inside to set the retro mood; the CDs themselves are designed to look like ashtrays, with the number of cigarette butts correlating with the disc number; and, to top it all off, it comes with a matching phone-booth keychain. It’s all extremely crafty, but of course, that’s no big surprise, considering that marketing has always been one of Rhino’s strong suits. Let’s look back at five of the most physically appealing other treats from their catalog.

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The budget label Opera d’Oro made the interesting/inspired/bizarre decision to have a single artist, Rafal Olbinski, a Polish-born surrealist, create paintings to use on the covers of all their albums. One thing is sure, it was a brilliant marketing concept if their goal was to create an immediately recognizable brand — their covers pop out at you in a way few others do. Olbinski’s paintings, which take up about three-fifths of the cover, are so surreal and often so garish and often so provocative that they practically scream out at you to take a closer look, even though you may find them aesthetically unappealing. (This would be the point to lament the fact that LP covers offered a potential for artistic expression that was radically diminished by the advent of CDs.) At their best, the paintings tap into the viewer’s subconscious and stir up associations that reveal truths about the opera that can’t be put into words.

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Evidence for a real resurgence of interest in vinyl is at big box retailers — online and in brick-and-mortars: they are stocking turntables again. They vary in price and quality from mid-level items to budget portables, from heavyweight DJ battlers to portable USB units that hook up to a computer without a preamp and convert vinyl to MP3 or CD. There are more catalog titles — both classic and obscure — as well as new (mostly) indie titles coming out weekly; they are available on the internet and at discriminating (again, mostly indie) shops — including the LPs whose covers adorn the top of this post. There are more titles coming every week. Good-quality domestic pressings are inexpensive for the most part (somewhere between nine and 12 dollars). Audiophile ones — 150 grams or better — are more expensive but still affordable when you consider the list price for CDs. We’ll get to a few new and reissued titles each week to let you know what’s out there. Here are a few reissues that catch both the eyes and ears.

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Estonian composer Helena Tulve’s Sula (Thawing) looks about as unprepossessing as you could get — a white cover with a barely visible off-white sketch of a frost formation, and the title and composer’s name discreetly tucked into a corner. Once you (try to) open the CD, you quickly realize that wherever you are (unless you’re at a large empty conference table, or in the middle of your living room floor) you’re in the wrong place. After you find a vast open area and start to unfold, and keep unfolding the case’s 18 panels, you end up with a spread not quite as big as a standard road map.

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