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Design from an island just beyond Babylon
Aug. 21st, 2007 12:10 amI'm lucky to live near one of Berlin's most famous specialist record shops, Hard Wax in Kreuzberg. Up five flights of stairs at the back of a second courtyard, Hard Wax feels more like an esoteric supply source for DJs than a commercial record outlet. I'm not, to be honest, terribly interested in the club music they sell there, but I love to pop in to look at the reggae sleeves. It's all on vinyl, much of it is vintage, and the sleeves are simply fabulous.
You know me by now. I'm interested in exquisite, principled cultural otherness, whether that's located in kabuki theatre, the architecture of Rudolf Steiner, or Nyahbhinghi reggae. I'm interested in ways of being in the world which are radically different from the ways I know. These sleeves have that kind of strangeness in spades. They're full of eccentricity and charm, of the warmth, colour and vigour of Jamaica, of the feel of the 1970s, of spiritual values, of struggle and rebellion, and of reggae's doped-up, positive and peaceful vibes. The sleeves I picked to show you were mostly made between about 1970 and 1982 -- reggae's heyday.
There are lots of awful reggae sleeves too, of course. Horrible, horrible compilations, appalling uses of red, green and gold, drop-shadow brush script, crappy copies of gansta rap poses. Since selling out to Babylon is a very central concept to Rastafarians, it's interesting that reggae artists whose complete catalogues I looked at seemed to start releasing eye-hurting sleeves when Babylonian stuff started happening in their careers:
a) they moved from Jamaica to the US.
b) they signed to a major label.
c) they employed the services of a professional designer, or used a computer.
d) 1983 arrived, or any date subsequent.
e) cd replaced vinyl.
When I shared the delights of these sleeves with Hisae, she started telling me about an outsider artist, a 56 year-old black man from Washington DC who's been making his own sleeves, for imaginary soul records featuring himself, since the late 60s. Mingering Mike has "released" 52 albums and 20 singles. There's no music, just these hand-painted covers made of construction paper from the drugstore. The records are cardboard, painted with grooves.
Below you can see a couple of his sleeves, taken from his website. For me, they have quite a similar quality to the vintage reggae sleeves. And although they're homemade parodies of an entirely commercial form, Babylon seems to have had surprisingly little say in their design.
You know me by now. I'm interested in exquisite, principled cultural otherness, whether that's located in kabuki theatre, the architecture of Rudolf Steiner, or Nyahbhinghi reggae. I'm interested in ways of being in the world which are radically different from the ways I know. These sleeves have that kind of strangeness in spades. They're full of eccentricity and charm, of the warmth, colour and vigour of Jamaica, of the feel of the 1970s, of spiritual values, of struggle and rebellion, and of reggae's doped-up, positive and peaceful vibes. The sleeves I picked to show you were mostly made between about 1970 and 1982 -- reggae's heyday.There are lots of awful reggae sleeves too, of course. Horrible, horrible compilations, appalling uses of red, green and gold, drop-shadow brush script, crappy copies of gansta rap poses. Since selling out to Babylon is a very central concept to Rastafarians, it's interesting that reggae artists whose complete catalogues I looked at seemed to start releasing eye-hurting sleeves when Babylonian stuff started happening in their careers:a) they moved from Jamaica to the US.
b) they signed to a major label.
c) they employed the services of a professional designer, or used a computer.
d) 1983 arrived, or any date subsequent.
e) cd replaced vinyl.
When I shared the delights of these sleeves with Hisae, she started telling me about an outsider artist, a 56 year-old black man from Washington DC who's been making his own sleeves, for imaginary soul records featuring himself, since the late 60s. Mingering Mike has "released" 52 albums and 20 singles. There's no music, just these hand-painted covers made of construction paper from the drugstore. The records are cardboard, painted with grooves.Below you can see a couple of his sleeves, taken from his website. For me, they have quite a similar quality to the vintage reggae sleeves. And although they're homemade parodies of an entirely commercial form, Babylon seems to have had surprisingly little say in their design.