Worst looking CD/LP artwork

[71 dB]

Sure are a lot of stars on that bed sheet.

'And that stain is from when you were five...'

Even I'm the only one who sees 'bed sheet' in this photo, it's still a bad cover.

I don't think this competes in the "worst looking artwork" category, but it isn't good either. I tried manipulating the cover to be more like it should have been:

[Brian]

Wait, is that 1960s Batman and Robin? And why are they standing with their feet right on the edge?

[steve ridgway]

I don't think this competes in the "worst looking artwork" category, but it isn't good either. I tried manipulating the cover to be more like it should have been:

But it's sci-fi artwork; the music ought to have a theremin or at least an ondes martenot .

[pjme]

Edward Chapman and Raymond Massey – "All the universe or nothingness? Which shall it be, Passworthy, which shall it be?"- 
Source: https://www.moriareviews.com/sciencefiction/things-to-come-1936.htm


And just for information:



This is a fragment from a work by Belgo-Flemish artist Berlinde Debruyckere - some may find her (wax/skin/horses/wood/blankets....) work unsettling
https://sculpturemagazine.art/suffering-and-desire-a-conversation-with-berlinde-de-bruyckere/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlinde_De_Bruyckere



This one is by Léon Spilliaert- a great Symbolist painter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Spilliaert

[71 dB]

But it's sci-fi artwork; the music ought to have a theremin or at least an ondes martenot .

I hardly know any work by Bliss, so I wouldn't know what the music is about, but I guess at least one work on the SACD justifies this kind of cover art.

[pjme]

About the Theremin in science fiction movies:

Back home in Russia, the theremin soon made its cinematic debut in Dmitri Shostakovich's score for the 1930 film 'Odna', but mainly as a sound effect.

While it retained its devotees, it took a few years for the theremin to make a mainstream comeback in the United States. The 1944 musical 'Lady in the Dark' marked its first Hollywood appearance. Soon after, Hungarian immigrant and composer Miklós Rózsa famously incorporated a theremin when he was composing the score for Alfred Hitchcock's 1945 film 'Spellbound.'

After Rózsa won the Academy Award for his score, other filmmakers and composers took note.

The earliest Hollywood use of theremins capitalized on the warbly eerieness of the instrument as a way of depicting foreboding situations or characters who were unstable. Soon, though, it would be indelibly remembered as the sound of science fiction.

Rockets and Bombs and Aliens, Oh My!
The end of World War II brought about three developments that thrust science into the public consciousness like never before... Nazi Germany's successful V-2 rockets, the dawn of the Atomic Age starting at the end of the war in 1945, and the "flying saucer" craze that followed only two years later.

Always opportunistic, Hollywood followed the science trend beginning a long tradition of taking enormous liberties with the subject matter.

The first sci-fi movie to use a theremin was 1950's 'Rocketship X-M', a B-movie that tripled the action with rockets, Martians, and atomic devastation all in one go. The theremin was performed by Samuel Hoffman on a score written by Ferde Grofé Sr.

Samuel Hoffman had been an enthusiastic theremin advocate since 1930 and started scoring films himself around this time. His performance on Miklós Rózsa's aforementioned Academy Award-winning score for "Spellbound" in 1945 made him the go-to thereminist in Hollywood.

Theremins became the iconic sound of 1950's sci-fi with 'The Day the Earth Stood Still', scored by Bernard Herrmann and released in 1951. With their tremulous whine, theremins easily provoked the otherworldly fear, creeping menace, and unknown dangers of the new scientific era.

How fitting that an instrument born of science became the sound of science itself.

Source: https://www.spotlightonpodcast.com/blog/the-instrument-that-wouldnt-die-the-story-of-early-cinema-film-scores-and-the-theremin/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ERaqvPyXws

[DavidW]

I hardly know any work by Bliss, so I wouldn't know what the music is about, but I guess at least one work on the SACD justifies this kind of cover art.

The album's primary piece is the movie suite. Again, as I've said before on this thread, CONTEXT IS KEY!

[71 dB]

The album's primary piece is the movie suite. Again, as I've said before on this thread, CONTEXT IS KEY!

I had to check the SACD and clearly the suite you talk about is Things to Come, F 131. Since I had never heard about such movie, I checked it out on IMDB. Seems to be a H.G.Wells story filmed in 1936.

[Madiel]

The album's primary piece is the movie suite. Again, as I've said before on this thread, CONTEXT IS KEY!

Why bother with context if you can be upset without it? See also: Olympics opening ceremony.

[KevinP]

I'll back off a bit on my last post given that it's a still from a very old movie and wasn't, as I had assumed, shot specifically for this cover.

I will, however leave you with this one, music and all.

[ritter]

Couldn't they come up with a typesetting that won't lead the unseasoned buyer to think that "Pavane pour une" and "infante défunte" are two different works?



This is plain sloppy...

[Spotted Horses]

Couldn't they come up with a typesetting that won't lead the unseasoned buyer to think that "Pavane pour une" and "infante défunte" are two different works?



This is plain sloppy...

Couldn't say. The image is so small I can't read any of the text.

[ritter]

Is that better? 

[71 dB]

Couldn't they come up with a typesetting that won't lead the unseasoned buyer to think that "Pavane pour une" and "infante défunte" are two different works?



This is plain sloppy...

Frankly that's the least of the problems for me. I find that ugly cover art and I don't like how Marc Soustrot is poking with the baton like trying to give a lobotomy to someone!   

[Madiel]

Eh, it's Danacord. Standards are not exactly high.

[KevinP]

He's got a slight cringe face and the baton almost looks like a toothpick.

[ShineyMcShineShine]

Does anyone else read this as "The Virgin Christ-child"?

[JBS]

Does anyone else read this as "The Virgin Christ-child"?

Yes. The ampersand could be missed easily. But the 8s lurking in the background like figures in a test for colorblindness are a bigger fail.

[KevinP]

Their ability to count is not even the worst problem, but ironic that 'trio' is the only word that can be read easily.

[71 dB]

Their ability to count is not even the worst problem, but ironic that 'trio' is the only word that can be read easily.

Good thing they say in the cover there is a fountain, because otherwise we would hardly know it for the very large man (J. W. Depew I assume) blocking it effectively!