Depression Cherry Remixed

Depression Cherry Remixed

The final album that I decided to remix was "Depression Cherry" by the band, Beach House. This album is a newer favorite of mine, although it was released during 2015. The original album artwork is merely the color red, with the title of the album and band name in the upper right and left hand corners. Beach House has been noted as being part of the genre "dream-pop", which might be a note as to why the album artwork is left to be very ambiguous and simple. 

I felt like this album cover would be a good one to remix because it was previously very plain and I felt as though there could be more context to the album artwork in order for it to be more effective. Again using photography, I took this as an opportunity to completely reinvent the cover of this album since I was starting from a pretty much blank canvas. I decided to use darker colors, to mimic the duller red that was featured on the cover of the album. Instead of running with the "cherry" red color, I decided to feature actual cherries in my take on the album. So basically, I was just sitting in the dark eating cherries while trying to get a silhouetted image.

I thought photography would be the most effective text-technology to utilize because I thought it would be interesting to add an actual image to the album artwork instead of the minimalism that Beach House chose to strive for on the original cover. It brings a person into this rather than simply portraying this idea of "depression cherry" through use of color alone.

I chose to utilize color as a key mode in this photo because playing on darker colors and silhouettes  achieves a similar ambiguity as the original cover. Obviously photographs are limited in their ability to portray things, but I think that that is why it is important that the album artworks identify with the music on the albums and what the artists represent.

The audience of this piece would be fans of the band Beach House. 

Language and Perspective Remixed

Language and Perspective Remixed

The second album I chose to remix is my favorite album of all time, "Language and Perspective" by the band Bad Suns. The artwork on the original album is fairly simple, containing a red background with the multi-colored band logo juxtaposing the plainness of the red. This was the band's first release so it makes sense that they would keep their album artwork simple, playing it safe in an attempt to gauge their future audience's grasp on their theme. It is interesting as well to note that their first album artwork is completely different from their second album artwork, showing a change in the aesthetics of the band. 

I chose to use photography for this album cover merely because the original album artwork is, like Tyler the Creator's, digitally produced. I felt as though photography would be the best opportunity for me to explore alternative album artwork because it allows me to represent the themes of the album in a more realistic setting, making it more understandable to the audience. 

I chose to stick to a more neutral color scheme, contrasting the colors that are in the original album artwork which relies upon bright colors. The album title "Language and Perspective" plays off of two simple concepts so I decided to depict those using the symbols of a pair of glasses, for perspective, and a stack of books to represent language.

 A lot of times people easily look over the title of an album, often because it doesn't seem to relate much to the album itself. With this album in particular, I noticed that the title creates a theme across the songs. Songs like "Transpose" and "We Move Like The Ocean" reflect upon the concept of differing personalities creating different perspectives within relationship. "Transpose" addresses the change in perspective that comes when struggling with anxiety and how it can tremendously affect day to day life, especially if you haven't struggled with it before. "We Move Like The Ocean" shows a struggle between two people in a relationship and how they are different enough to cause them to feel as though the writer is in a shaky situation, like they're in the ocean. 

The audience for this cover would be primarily listeners of the band since they would be the ones affected by a change in aesthetics for the band. 

Flower Boy Remixed

"Flower Boy" by Tyler the Creator Remixed

 

This album was an easy pick for me because I absolutely love the original artwork for this album and it is some that I feel like lines up perfectly with the collection of songs offered on the album. I chose to remix the album artwork for the "Flower Boy" album by Tyler the Creator, released earlier this summer.

 Keeping the name of the album, I pretty much completely changed the artwork, implementing my own photography to show a more literal depiction of what I thought the album artwork could look like alternatively. I think that the name "Flower Boy" is a really great album name for this album so I wanted to keep the name. I chose to change the album artwork to make it more real and relatable for the audience, given that it is a work of photography rather than a digitally created image. 

Tyler's original artwork is a beautifully produced digital image, that has been drawn on some form of illustrator app, I'm sure, by professionals. By choosing to use the text-technology of photography, I took the album artwork into the real world and translated it easily so that the audience, Tyler's listeners. 

The music on the album itself is colorful and dreamy, with some more heavy rap songs featured as well to contrast, so I chose to edit my photo by increasing the use of highlight and the saturation of the image to help highlight the dreaminess of the album. I think that by making this image one that is generally light-hearted and bright, it helped to draw comparisons with how Tyler created (lol) this album. This album contrasted many of his previous works which is another reason why I loved it so much. In comparison to previous works, this album wasn't as vulgar or offensive and almost seemed to be indicative of a change in him as an artist. 

Project 2 Remix Intro

Intro to Project 2

Hi friends and welcome to my blog for Project 2 for WEPO, Fall 2017!

For Project 2, I took on remixing issues in the music realm and decided to focus on something often overlooked, album artwork. Album artwork is something that is crucial to a work of music but something that many people often overlook when thinking about a collection of tunes. While the songs are what generally bring an artist to their big break, it is important to note that their album artwork is what becomes indicative of their image; often representing a bigger moral or theme that they support as a person. In this project, I took on some of my favorite albums and decided to change their covers into a more literal interpretation of what the album title is saying. Through doing this, there is more of a connection between the title and the album artwork, making it a bit harder to dismiss. With the minimalism aesthetic dominating the fashion world and the design platforms, many artists have turned to these trends to cover their albums instead of creating artwork that is really indicative of what the album truly is and what they are trying to say it is. 

In this project, I have remixed the covers of three of my favorite albums. Those albums are "Flower Boy" by Tyler the Creator, "Language and Perspective" by Bad Suns, and "Depression Cherry" by Beach House. In remixing these three album covers, I have drawn parallels with the album titles to create covers that I feel like accurately represent the themes throughout the album.