Monday, December 12, 2011

Tenement - Taking Everything Ep

Got a rad submission package from Toxic Pop Records the other day....Tenement put together another great looking record with the same personal style and aesthetic they established with their earlier releases. For the cover art, they came up with a cool composition based on found vintage photography. it's sort of a four-panel study of human gross-ness...


The loose layout of the images mixed with the simple typewriter font setting really add to the charm of this cover art. The back panel is rather moody and dark in comparison, quite a compelling composition. A single photo obscured by a black shadow over half the image with no type to speak of except for the Toxic Pop logo. I love it....


These covers were full color printed and folded, not glued. there is also a black and white 6.5"x6.5" double sided insert included. On the front side of the insert is a fucked up found photo of some dude with his face rotting off, and i have to say that I'm never really a fan of this style of shock imagery. I feel like the back cover composition is a perfect example of how you can achieve a "dark and mysterious" vibe with out actually showing the most gnarly imagery you can find in a medical book. Not to single this record out or anything, i've just been noticing it more and more lately and felt it should be noted... This is also where the liner notes live, and I like that the type setting remains consistent to the front cover.


O the flipside of the insert is where the lyric sheet lives. I'll call this the lyric sheet side despite the fact that the combination of the size of the typewriter font and the photocopying make this pretty near impossible to read. Still, I do like the breakup between the images and the type here...


A side label has another random and obscure photo mixed with some hand written type, it's a winner! This actually might be the first time I've ever wished for a small hole on a 7" just so I could see more of the label art....


B side label is also photo based but this one gets a little too literal for me. Who are these dudes? Why are they staring off inn opposite directions? I just don't know...


solid release, thanks for the submission guys....

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