New Blog

Involving the migration of some of the posts from Music Art in the Download Era, there is now my new blog that picks up on the themes here.

Plastic Circles continues that interest in music artwork/packaging and can be found at http://plasticcircles.blogspot.com/
You can also follow it at http://twitter.com/PlasticCircles

MA Thesis

Got it bound. Finally.

Taylor Deupree interview

Sound artist, record company owner, photographer and graphic designer Taylor Deupree is responsible for the elegant 12k label. Despite being consumed by explorations of minimalist music and forward-thinking electronic/acoustic combinations [and then working out visual solutions for the respective releases], he very helpfully offered his views regarding physical media and the role of music artwork.


What's the approach to formats for the label? Why does having physical media matter when the music can be sent rather easily via iTunes?

As a listener, lover, and creator of music, music, to me, is more than just a generic list of text on a computer screen. while the convenience of iTunes is fantastic, and I'm a big user of iPods and the like, think we are seeing a generation of kids being brought up on the idea that music is disposable. The ramifications of this are huge. Among other things, music is about mystery and suspense... about putting that CD or record on, and reading along as you listen, or enjoying a bit of what went into creating the album, or learning something about the artist. Maybe these are becoming old-fashioned ideas, but if they aren't preserved then the music itself will suffer. Fortunately, in a lot of the creative and forward-thinking musical genres there is some wonderful packaging going on that either combines a downloadable format with a beautiful package or retains the CD and creates identity.

What legacy do you think there is for specific formats? How important is collectability? And 'a visual manifestation'?

I think someone's library defines who they are. Whether it's a library of books or a library of music. These stacks of books and records help create a person's identity and show off their passions. There are many ways to do this, of course, but a music library is one of them.

Also, have you seen the 'Totem' format for the new Matthew Dear album?

Yes, this is what I'm talking about.. a fantastic marriage of a downloadable format with an object... and where I hope music heads if the CD dies out. Unfortunately, a package like that is out of the reach of most small record labels to make. And if you start to have 1000 of such objects in your own musical collection... well, it'll end up being a lot bulkier than your CD collection ever was. But, there can be a balance and a blending of media, working together to create a creative whole.

How does your role as a designer fit in with those roles as label boss and artist? How important is it for you to find what you see is the 'right' visual solution for a release? And does it matter to the music? Does it alter the listening experience?

I'm not sure a CD cover directly alters the listening experience except in perhaps the first impression someone has on the music. I buy a lot of music based on album design and, similiarly, pass up a lot of music if it doesn't LOOK like something I'd like. So, in this sense it's a curatorial device, very often. When I'm preparing a release for the label I will always have a discussion with the artist about what they are envisioning for the album cover. Many times the artist themselves will have an image that they'd like me to use, and other times they'll want to use one of my photographs. It's important, of course, that the cover image has a relationship to the music; either an abstract visual representation of the sound, or something more literal... such as the new Seaworthy + Matt Rösner CD cover with a photograph they took in the Australian wetlands as they were recording the album.

What has been the response to the making available some of the artwork as ltd prints? And do you think it changes the meanings behind the imagery when it is removed from the packaging and the music?

In the case of 12k, I think many, not all, but many, of the cover images can stand alone as photographic art on your wall. Stripped of all text and branding. Most of the images were initially take as "photography" and then applied to a commercial package. The problem with selling prints like this is the production cost is quite high and people have trouble paying a couple or few hundred dollars for a print. But, hopefully that won't stop everyone.

Any influential music artwork that you think is worth referencing?

When I was a teenager growing up in new england I would go to the closest great record store to my house, which was about 40 minutes away (and is sadly not there anymore) and buy a lot of records based on album art alone. Many times it would be a band I'd never heard of yet I'd get home and 95% of the time I'd like the music. when i paid attention to the liner notes I started noticing a pattern... I was buying a lot of albums by the same designers... Neville Brody... Peter Saville... and in turn starting to pay attention to record labels, which I hadn't before... and the whole experience was teaching me about record labels as identities and creative wholes.. Factory Records, or 4AD come to mind as big influences of how to create a record label with a visual identity.

This all ties in to your first question.. and certainly is how I grew up and how I got into music... but the visual aesthetics are quite simply what introduced me to so much music and have always been and important part of my musical life.

http://www.12k.com

http://www.taylordeupree.com

http://www.twitter.com/taylordeupree

http://www.itunes.com/taylordeupree

Canvas etchings

The detail doesn't really come through on the photographs but these are a set of three works using laser etching on A3 canvas board. They're intended as perspectives on the idea of physical media and very much lead by the ideas in the report. One argues that the format isn't music, another looks at the tribal-like fetishism of certain formats and the third takes the hauntology route with its representation coming via a spectre-like ouija board.

All of them emulate the circular forms of popular playable media with grooves in the image of the 'locked' variety to suggest that either the format is going nowhere or is eternal. I wanted to use canvas as a way of echoing the reverance for formats and music packaging. To quote Peter Saville, to work with "the vernacular of fine art".

The final image additionally documents the process using plywood.

Michael Cina interview

I'm a big fan of Michael Cina's output. But it's evident that the designer is incredibly busy with a whole raft of projects emanating from his Minneapolis base. Which makes me even more grateful that he agreed to answer my annoying four-questions-in-one enquiries.



The work you've produced for Ghostly appears to explore your more abstract side. Are there distinct meanings between these images and what you hear? Are they meant to be obscure enough that they can be read in a number of ways? And who do you have in mind when you create them?

What I have tried to do for Ghostly is to make work that explores my interests, thoughts, and feelings. If work has no content, it is just an image. I have tried to produce something that is timeless and very personal to me.

The trick is, when I am creating this work, it is also for someone else also. So there is a duality that plays in the creation. I consider the music in every cover, but some pieces are tied to the music more than others.

Like all art, the viewer has to come with some interest in "seeing" the work to get anything out of it. With abstract work, you have to be a bit more open and have a willingness to learn.

The process also plays a big part. I explore a lot of ideas and directions for most of the projects. Some of the covers took me over 75 pieces to get to that final one. Very few of the projects have been nailed on the first try. So I really just think about my ideas and also if those ideas work with what I am doing. This is where the design background comes in handy.

How do you feel these images on formats might relate to the idea of providing a physical form for music? How important is it for you to find what you see is the 'right' visual solution for a release? And does it matter to the music? Does it alter the listening experience?

I have been making artwork for a long time and I was tired of the work being reduced to a jpg on a screen. I am not naive by thinking that music packaging is often taken seriously, but that is a shame. Anything that a person does should be done with care and thought. There is too much garbage out there already. My hope is that people will buy the album for the cover, even if they don't like the music or buy it out of curiosity. I have purchased many albums just because of the cover and it does make me think about the music from the context of the cover.

I am a perfectionist, if you don't give me feedback in one day or so, I will keep working in different directions. I have had a couple of projects where I have overwhelmed the musicians with the amount of visual work I show them. Deep down I normally know if it is right or not. If something makes me feel uncomfortable, I know I am almost there.

What are your thoughts about the Matthew Dear 'Totem' as a representation for music?

I really love it. Will Calcutt is a bright guy and a talented artist. Music packaging has to change. I have been pushing the art print aspect at Ghostly since 2008. It is important that people make work that challenges and that is exactly what the totem does. It is a little early for the viewer / audience to wrap their heads around what Ghostly is doing, but the day is coming. The totem is beautiful and serves as a work of art but also has a connection to the album. It isn't just for art's sake.

How do you think the download age changes music artwork? Is it good that we're moving away from artwork not needing to be 'packaging? Or are we potentially losing formats as significant cultural emblems?

The download age for sure changes music artwork. Cover art isn't as important and also is reduced to 100 pixels when sold or viewed most of the time. It makes an argument for more minimal graphics but it also puts the cover as a secondary aspect of the album. In the 70's and 80's the cover was almost as important as the music. I can only guess this is why there is so many bad covers out there now.

I don't see the cover as packaging. I see it more like art that represents what is inside. It should add to the experience. The music that Ghostly releases isn't disposable. They put a lot of thought and care into their artists and what comes out. It is a crime what some designers do to an amazing album of music. It doesn't make me sad to see the shift away from not needing packaging, but without a proper solution, such as prints, we are losing something significant to the music experience.

I only buy music on vinyl unless I am forced to buy another format. I think vinyl has been the only format that has been successful combining visuals and audio. That is why so many people are interested in this format. Until high definition audio comes, there is really no other alternative for me.

What's the approach to formats for the label? Why does having physical media matter when the music can be sent rather easily via iTunes? What legacy do you think there is for specific formats? How important is collectability? And 'a visual manifestation'?

I don't know if I have the liberty to speak for Ghostly, but I do know that there is a lot of skepticism over the CD format and also vinyl, for that matter. Ghostly has been pressing limited vinyl releases with better packaging now. I love this because if I really like an album, sometimes I will buy two copies, just incase. I am a collector though. I have a handful of friends that do the same thing. Some people don't care as much. To me, the CD format is on it's last legs. You can download uncompressed audio and make your own CD if you want.

[Ghostly founder] Sam Valenti is extremely concerned with the visual manifestation of the covers, more than anyone could know. I think he cares about the visuals just as much as the music.

What has been the response to the making available some of the artwork as ltd prints? And do you think it changes the meanings behind the imagery when it is removed from the packaging and the music?

People really seem to respond well to this. I have a couple of people who want all the prints and buy all of them on sight. I don't think that hanging a print on your wall detracts anything. It can only add more aspects if other people like the work and don't know if it is an album cover as well.

Any personally influential music artwork that you think is worth referencing?

Easy ones are almost anything on 4AD, ECM, Factory Records, Blue Note, and a couple of others. I like Hipgnosis, Peter Saville, Vaughn Oliver, and Barney Bubbles. I am attracted to odd art and concepts on covers.


Michael Cina links:

http://michaelcinaassociates.com/
http://www.trueistrue.com/
http://www.flickr.com/people/mikecina/
http://cargocollective.com/michaelcinaart
http://www.youworkforthem.com/
http://www.behance.net/michaelcina
http://ghostly.com/visual/mike-cina

The Vinyl Factory Group mission

A lot of the ideas I've been touching on in the report regarding the importance of collectability to physical formats and the potential benefits to digital releases is summed up succinctly by The Vinyl Factory Group. Known for their lavish box sets and stunning artwork [including the previously referenced Monkey: Journey From The East and Hot Chip's One Life Stand], the company has a manifesto flagged under the title 'music is art'.

"The music domain is increasingly polarized. On one end we have digital, on the other end specially crafted editions, where music becomes art, because music is art.

Music is a physical experience. The Vinyl Factory embraces this and helps crystalize music into unique spaces and products, through a unique process.

Products that take the shape of finely crafted limited edition box sets, as the ones produced for The Pet Shop Boys or Damon Albarn. Vinyl + Digital editions that marry music and art.

Spaces like the VF Galleries in Soho, Berlin and up and coming NY.

The Vinyl Factory through its label, is also changing the way music is funded and produced. It’s getting professional investors and fans to empower their favourite artists with the funding necessary to materialize their projects.

The Vinyl Factory understands that music is art and should be treated as such."

Michael Cina for Ghostly International

Another name that I referenced while working on the last project was Michael Cina. Below is a selection of more recent work that I view in much the same way as the ECM sleeves. Although I'll avoid trying to pinpoint what kind of response they are trying to initiate as Michael has agreed to answer a few questions about them. I can hopefully post his responses soon.

The Ghostly label that issued these releases is additionally proving to be key in my research. In terms of its target audience, its conceptual approach and the neat relationship to 'hauntology', it is suggesting that deliverables might want to be tied into this label. While hypothetical offerings, they would additionally be able to fit with where my own aesthetic interests are while still hopefully be relevant to the selected organization. I'll try to pick Michael Cina's brain about my concepts too as he - alongside Will Calcutt - is responsible for approving all of Ghostly's official artwork.

Stanley Donwood in San Francisco

From: Creative Review
Date: 27/08/10
By: Eliza Williams


Link via Dave [thanks!]. The quote about how there 'doesn't have to be a product to buy' fits in nicely with where I'm currently at with the report.

Stanley Donwood, who is famed for the artworks he has created for Radiohead, is staging his first US exhibition from next week, at the Fifty24sf gallery in San Francisco...

The show, titled Over Normal, will include a series of paintings influenced by the vibrant colours he saw on a trip to California, and the contents of spam emails that he's received. Writing in a newspaper that he has created to accompany the exhibition, he says: "The work that would eventually become Over Normal started in California, and maybe it will end there. I found myself in the Golden State once, back in 2003, trying to make an artwork. I'd just arrived, and I was with a well-known 'rock' band who had decided that they were going to record an album in two weeks. Similarly I was supposed to produce the artwork in two weeks. Ho hum. It was the first time I had been to the west coast of America. It's an eerie place for a European; incredibly familiar from television and movies, inhabited by people who mostly speak the same language, but at the same time indefinably foreign. This foreign-ness, I thought, was at least partly to do with scale. Huge skies, huge buildings, huge highways, huge vehicles. Part of this massive scale involved the many advertising materials and traffic signage employed along the multi-lane highways that dissect the built environment.

"I was in the car with my notebook, and for something to do I was writing down what all those signs and advertisements had to say. I realised that they only used a very few colours and the colours were bold, brash, and used in very visually compelling combinations. I became convinced that about 90 per cent of the messages that flicked past my retinas were using just seven colours. I noted these colours down: red, green, blue, yellow, orange, black and white. All, I think, made from pigments derived from the petrochemical industry, the same hydrocarbon trade that has made the modern world, its complex and energy-hungry civilization, possible. I decided to paint using these colours, straight from the tub. There were all sorts of practical difficulties involving viscosity and opacity, but soon I had my palette, which I eventually referred to as the 'California palette'.

Donwood's studio, photographs by Ambrose Blimfield

Donwood used this palette in the artworks he created for Radiohead's album Hail To The Thief, and has used it in a number of projects since. The colours work well with the words from spam emails, another form of communication known for its shoutiness. Combined, they make striking, and noisy, paintings that are difficult to ignore. "These paintings are like some kind of weird, blatant advertising," writes Donwood in the newspaper, "advertising from a zone inside my head where words are enough and there doesn't need to be a product to buy."

The exhibition at Fifty24sf opens next Thursday, September 2, and will run until October 27. For those of you that can't make it to San Francisco though, Donwood has made the newspaper available to download from his site (where you'll also find his witty musings on blogging). Visit the site here.

Yasunao Tone - Solo for Wounded CD

I pretty much overdosed on the noise/art collision at the Bigger Than Words conference in July. Subsequently I was going to try and avoid looking at that side of things for this project. However, if we're talking about unplayable media and the (mis)use of formats in general, then there is this huge overlap with some of the ideas that were highlighted there.

Echoing discussion that came up via the Digital Noise panel [the one I chaired] is the Solo For Wounded CD project by Yasunao Tone. I first encountered this in the pages of the Background Noise book and it fits in with some of the interesting research into digital manipulation and the technological 'glitch'. Here the Japanese experimental musician treated/damaged the surfaces of CD-Rs before recording what was read by the CD player.

Adventurous listeners who worship at the altars of Merzbow and Fennesz might be interested in the actual sounds produced. I'm more inspired by the destructive processes and the aesthetic qualities of the manipulated discs: especially in terms of it helping to definine the physical format as an exclusively collectable decorative, rather than functional, item. Plus there are potentially other influences documented in Caleb Kelly's book [which came up on a Google image search while looking for examples of Yasunao Tone's CDs]:

Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction
Caleb Kelly


From the mid-twentieth century into the twenty-first, artists and musicians manipulated, cracked, and broke audio media technologies to produce novel sounds and performances. Artists and musicians, including John Cage, Nam June Paik, Yasunao Tone, and Oval, pulled apart both playback devices (phonographs and compact disc players) and the recorded media (vinyl records and compact discs) to create an extended sound palette. In Cracked Media, Caleb Kelly explores how the deliberate utilization of the normally undesirable (a crack, a break) has become the site of productive creation. Cracked media, Kelly writes, slides across disciplines, through music, sound, and noise. Cracked media encompasses everything from Cage’s silences and indeterminacies, to Paik’s often humorous tape works, to the cold and clean sounds of digital glitch in the work of Tone and Oval. Kelly offers a detailed historical account of these practices, arguing that they can be read as precursors to contemporary new media.

Kelly looks at the nature of recording technology and the music industry in relation to the crack and the break, and discusses the various manifestations of noise, concluding that neither theories of recording nor theories of noise offer an adequate framework for understanding cracked media. Connecting the historical avant-garde to modern-day turntablism, and predigital destructive techniques to the digital ticks, pops, and clicks of the glitch, Kelly proposes new media theorizations of cracked media that focus on materiality and the everyday.

“Caleb Kelly’s Cracked Media is a welcome addition to the growing body of critical writing on the role of sound in the history of modern and postmodern art. It helpfully extends Douglas Kahn’s monumental Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts by focusing on a powerful strain of contemporary sonic art: the creative mis-use of audio playback technologies. As Kelly ably theorizes it, the ‘crack’ is a productive break that articulates past and future, archaeology and innovation, analog and digital. Hence, this book combines an exhaustive survey and taxonomy of recent experiments with turntables and CD technology (Oval, Christian Marclay, Yasunao Tone, etc.) with a detailed genealogy of these practices that traces them back to earlier moments of sonic experimentation (Futurism, Fluxus, John Cage, etc.). Informed, but not overloaded, by theoretical accounts of phonography and digital media, Kelly helpfully sorts out what is at issue in cracked sound and places this at the center of contemporary debates about art and technology.”


Caleb Kelly is a lecturer at the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl

Great reference spotted by Dave. (Cheers!)

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl features work by 41 artists from around the world, from the 1960s to the present, who use vinyl records as subject or medium. The exhibition includes sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video and performance.

Artists in the exhibition include Laurie Anderson (1947 USA), Felipe Barbosa (1978 Brazil), David Byrne (1952 Scotland), Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller (1957 & 1960 Canada)*, William Cordova (1971 Peru), Moyra Davey (1958 Canada), Kevin Ei-ichi deForest (1962 Canada), Jeroen Diepenmaat (1978 Netherlands), Sean Duffy (1966 USA), Yukio Fujimoto (1950 Japan), Jack Goldstein (1945 Canada), Rodney Graham (1949 Canada)*, Harrison Haynes (1973 USA)*, Gregor Hildebrandt (1974 Germany), Satch Hoyt (1957 UK), Jasper Johns (1930 USA), Taiyo Kimura (1970 Japan), Tim Lee (1975 Korea), Ralph Lemon (1952 USA), Christian Marclay (1955 USA), David McConnell (1975 USA), Mingering Mike (1950 USA), Dave Muller (1964 USA), Ujino Muneteru (1964 Japan), Vik Muniz and Carlos da Silva Assunção Filho aka Cafi (1961 & 1950 Brazil)*, Patrick Douthit aka 9th Wonder (1975 USA)*, DJ Rekha (1971 UK)*, Robin Rhode (1976 South Africa), Dario Robleto (1972 USA), Ed Ruscha (1937 USA), Malick Sidibé (1935 Mali), Xaviera Simmons (1974 USA), Mark Soo (1977 Singapore), Meredyth Sparks (1972 USA), Su-Mei Tse (1973 Luxembourg), Fatimah Tuggar (1967 Nigeria), Alice Wagner (1974 Peru), Carrie Mae Weems (1953 USA), and Lyota Yagi (1980 Japan).

The accompanying Cover to Cover installation features 10 artists and musicians who each curated a crate of 20 albums that tell a story through the cover visuals. Visitors will peruse the crates and with headphones listen to records on record players.

Jason Vivona

No stranger to working on vinyl [see the first two images], Californian artist Jason Vivona also subverted the bottom sleeve quite beautifully. I love that ireverence.

Indigo's painted record

This item was spotted on a forum devoted to collectable vinyl. I like how the accompanying text simultaneously takes the piss out of the muso-like craving for rarities and yet it still demonstrates the emotional attachment that we can have to objects. And aesthetically? Well, if this was a proper release by Sonic Youth, Radiohead or Tortoise, people would be fighting over it. I already think it's brilliant.

"Here it is! The Devil's Most Prized Record!!! So RARE! A limited edition of ONE!!! Unplayable brown SPRAY PIANT colored vinyl with hand drawn SKULL graphics and signed by the artist himself, my son Indigo!!! This record means more to me than any other record in my collection. It has hung on my wall since my boy did this for me several years ago. He must have been about 5 or 6 or so years old or so when he did it. This one will stay with me FOREVER!!! Jealous? I know you are..."

Also not to be confused with the picture disc, I've spotted a wide range of other artists that have been using vinyl as their canvas. I'll post some of those subsequently unplayable works in due course.

Frank Bretschneider - EXP

From the Raster-Noton label [although maybe more relevant to the previous project]:

EXP is a music-visual work based on the idea that fine art should attain the abstract purity of music. an attempt to assimilate the qualities found in music – including movement, rhythm, tempo, mood, intensity and compositional structure – within visual phenomena. the music for the project was composed of specifi c generated and selected waveforms, feedbacks, impulses, clicks, the sound of mechanics, electricity, magnetism, light and other radiation. in addition and since the animation is mainly driven by sound frequency and intensity, the sonic quality of these sounds makes it possible to obtain an optimal effect on the graphics motion. in combination with several other ways of controlling the animation – from midi programming to applying motion curves – the visualization represents an exact reproduction of the audible occurrences. as a consequence the computed images often attain anunexpected beauty, from simple geometrical patterns to extraordinarily complex forms.

Hard Format

"It seems like everybody’s talking about the end of physical music
media. Who knows whether they’re right or not, but Hard Format is a
little place we’ve set up to celebrate our love of brilliant
music-related design. That means we’re going to focus on records, CDs,
cassettes and their like. However, Hard Format isn’t intended to become
a dusty museum devoted exclusively to past glories, though there’ll
certainly be some of that, we also want to highlight the brilliant new
design work being produced right now. In fact, we’re not setting
ourselves up to supply a canon of classic design - this is a place
where we record stuff we like, if you want yet another reproduction of
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band there are enough ‘Greatest
album covers of all time’ books out there already."

Hard Format is a collection and study of the design and art of physical music media and it's packaging. Not just another collection of album covers on the Internet, Hard Format embodies a love for the music-related design of CDs, cassettes and vinyl.

I specifically like the material that moves away from the supposed restrictions of the traditional format but then I can also recount how some of my own music purchases - such as Mo Wax and Spiritualized releases - would be a little annoying as they wouldn't be easily stored due to their increased size. Shop-bought CD racks, for example, never had the capacity for 'deluxe' editions.

Ghostly International Editions

Ghostly has to be one of my favourite labels and I referenced Mike Cina's work for the company during my last project. The symbiotic relationship between music and art has proved inspiring and, especially after news of the Matthew Dear 'Totem', I'm really interested to see how they further develop the approach to physical products in the digital age.

Here is another aspect to what the label is doing with the availability of images created as 'packaging' now becoming available as prints alongside digital downloads of the associated music.

The press release:

Visual art has always played an indispensable counterpoint to Ghostly International's musical releases. With this in mind, we've introduced an exciting new addition to The Ghostly Store's repertoire of custom apparel and hand-picked, can't-live-without-'em goods: Ghostly International Editions. Our new art section will feature an ever-growing selection of open-edition and limited-edition prints from Ghostly's renowned family of visual artists, along with work from talented new collaborators.

This spring, The Ghostly Store made its first foray into this field with signed, limited-edition prints by longtime contributor Michael Cina. These archival prints feature artwork from Ghostly releases such as The Sight Below's Glider, the state-of-the-label compilation Horizon Line / Ghostly By Night, and Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble's Terry Riley: In C.

Looking forward to the months (and years) ahead, Ghostly International Editions will release prints in two perennial formats: the PDL and the Art Print. When the cover art for a new (or back-catalogue) release lends itself to the print format, we'll offer an open-edition PDL (print + download) version. Larger than a CD but smaller than an LP, these 10" x 10" archival prints will be sold with a digital download of the album.

In conjunction with the PDL, Ghostly International Editions will be releasing limited-edition art prints featuring original artwork from collaborators including Michael Cina, Andy Gilmore, Will Calcutt, and many more.

Both the PDL and Art Print are printed using archival ink on photo rag paper and will include artist signed certificates of authenticity. We've carefully considered the pricing for both formats: PDL will be an affordable $25, while the larger, limited-edition art prints will generally cost less than your monthly cellphone bill.

Peter Gabriel's Scratch My Back Album - deluxe edition designed by Marc Bessant

Dave sent this my way a few weeks back and it's a lovely bit of packaging by Marc Bessant with art direction by Daniel Mason. This format for the most recent Peter Gabriel album features CD, vinyl and USB plus a limited print signed by Peter Gabriel and it retails at $299. There are just 500 copies. [Full details at http://www.petergabriel.com/scratchmyback/]

It is interesting that even basic vinyl copies of chart albums now come with premium pricing and are only available in limited numbers. But as this multi-format version highlights, often the releases aren't about the playability of the music itself. The collectability of the product is potentially more important.