"I’ve walked on water,
Run through fire.
Can’t seem to feel it anymore."
You’re Factory
Records. Design maestro Peter Saville is creating the most wonderfully
enigmatic record sleeves for you. May as well have a go at redesigning the traditional
cassette case. By basically super-sizing it. And making it much more purple-y.
The vinyl
junkies all bemoaned the loss of great sleeve art with the advent of CDs, and
now again with downloads, but it was always cassette artwork that niggled me.
The completely different dimensions always meant the sleeves were simply shrunk
or poorly cropped. Few labels went to the trouble of producing specially designed
cassette sleeves that truly celebrated the songs within.
When Factory
came to reissue the Joy Division and New Order albums in 1985, they addressed this
issue. Entirely for my sake, I’m sure. The results were, as befits Factory,
completely unworkable. A case too large and fragile for the cassette sections
of most stores – they were always wedged in to the shelves of Our Price and
took a mighty battering from folk yanking them in and out. The three I have all
sit awkwardly in my collection to this day – waiting for colleagues that will
never join them. But ‘Unknown Pleasures’ does come with two lovely textured postcards
– with the classic cover image now replicated as silver on white. So every
cloud has a … "No, no Michael – let’s leave it there, before you embarrass
yourself."
Spotify linky:
