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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 17 2020, @06:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the be-very-afraid dept.

‘That Evil Kind of Feeling’: The Inside Story of Black Sabbath’s Iconic Cover Art:

For the look of the cover[*], [designer Keith Macmillan] used Kodak infrared aerochrome film, which was designed for aerial photographs and gave the portrait its pinkish hue. (You can see a similar look on the first album cover he designed, Colosseum's Valentyne Suite.) Later on, he did "a little bit of tweaking in the chemistry to get that slightly dark, surrealistic, evil kind of feeling to it." Since it was sensitive film, he'd boil it and then freeze it, to make the image grainy and undefined.

He decided the shoot should take place at the Mapledurham Watermill, a 15th-century structure in Oxfordshire, about an 80-minute drive from central London. He'd found it with one of his college girlfriends, who lived near it, and had remembered taking a walk around it. "Nowadays it's very much more modernized, beautified, and touristed," he says "Then, it was quite a run-down and quite spooky place. The undergrowth was quite thick and quite tangled, and it just had a kind of eerie feel to it."

He contacted a London model agency, asking for a woman who could portray the ominous figure he'd envisaged for the shot, and picked out Louisa Livingstone. "She was a fantastic model," he says. "She was quite petite, very, very cooperative. I wanted someone petite because it just gave the landscape a bit more grandeur. It made everything else look big."

[*] Here's a link to a picture of the cover.


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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Monday February 17 2020, @12:11PM (2 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Monday February 17 2020, @12:11PM (#959120) Journal

    My ideal record sleeve has the artist and title and bpm well in evidence on the opening, as well as the same info on the top, so it can be crate dug on the side and browsed when djing, and it avoids the shitty juncture (that should have been outlawed long ago) which makes you incorrectly reinsert the vinyl between the juncture and one face, ruining it. So the juncture must be well done or outside, not inside, proving again that the missing link between human and animal is to be found among designers. The face of the record must instead show clearly rpm first and tracklist with duration.

    Anyway The two notable sleeves were some from Soulwax (https://www.discogs.com/Soulwax-Any-Minute-Now/master/59336), for its user unfriendliness as you need to watch it at an angle to see the title, and the absolute genius of one (s)hit wonder "Faccia da Pirla" ("Yo cockface") https://www.discogs.com/Charlie-Faccia-Da-Pirla-Pirla-Dance/release/1207212, [discogs.com] as the sleeve was reflecting, so you had your face peering at yourself from the cover.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 17 2020, @02:33PM (1 child)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday February 17 2020, @02:33PM (#959168) Homepage
    Wow, Cockface so groundbreaking. Naht! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_at_Yourself_%28Uriah_Heep_album%29
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    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Monday February 17 2020, @02:55PM

      by Bot (3902) on Monday February 17 2020, @02:55PM (#959170) Journal

      same tech, conceptually different. Uriah heep showing faces was also preventing sales I guess.

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