4 most popular British Indie Record labels

1- Rough Trade -The big daddy of British indie labels, Rough Trade has had its ups and downs since 1978  Its early roster was an embarrassment of riches: the Smiths, the Fall, and Stiff Little Fingers whose Inflammable Material, Rough Trade’s first ever album release, sold more than 100,000 copies. The label went bust in 1991, losing a decade, but soon after its relaunch in 2000, Travis happened upon a little-known New York band called The Strokes. Now owned by Beggars Group, the label manages acts as diverse as Antony & the

 Johnsons and Micachu

2- Creation - Whereas most labels attract signings with lucrative deals, Creation, according to a former label manager, “used to drink and drug the bands into submission”. This worked a treat with Oasis, its biggest success story, and Primal Scream, neck-and-neck in the debauchery stakes. However, despite a host of great names on their roster, Alan McGee’s company never got the hang of turning a profit


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3C7DECI0jU&feature=player_detailpage

3- Domino- Domino Records was founded in 1993, when Laurence Bell set it up to license American records for the UK. It has yielded some very handsome returns. In 2006, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not by Arctic Monkeys, became the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history. Before that, Domino had scored big hits with the first two albums by Franz Ferdinand, who eschewed the majors in favour of the little south London label. With the help of its star acts, Domino continues to release offbeat materials.

4 - 4AD - With the punk era in ashes, 4AD negotiated a space for atmospheric, darkly emotional music from bands such as Bauhaus and the Cocteau Twins. Later in the 1980s, it diversified, releasing M/A/R/R/S’s cut-up classic “Pump Up the Volume” and turning its attention to the US rock scene. Here it found its greatest success, the Pixies, as well as Throwing Muses and, later, the Breeders. Thirty years on, 4AD is in rude health, thanks to a new breed of US acts, notably Deerhunter, Ariel Pink and Gang Gang Dance.

Digipack Feedback

We origionaly wanted to do the four panel digipack becuase we thought it would be easier to work with and more managable, however after class discussion on the 13/10/11 it has been made apparent that to do a 6 panel digipack would be more beneficial, with alot more imagery to work with.

Digipak - CD cover ideas

 I wouldnt use any of these exact designs as i dont think they are relative enough, or proffesional looking enough to be placed on a CD digipack. However they do give a rough idea of the style and tone Alice and i will be going for...

 I took this image from the internet and just messed around with the exposure. I dont have photoshop at home so i couldnt do anything fancy, however i like the simplicity of the photo.

 What i would have liked to do to this image is burn the background and blur it, so that the focal point is Ezgi... I like the tight framing of this image and i also like the idea of adding a boarder.

I edited the boarder on this one and filled it in black using paint. Although i have done nothing technical to the image, i think it gives a slightly indie tone, by making it bold but basic...

Digipak - different types

Here is the most commonly used case that displays two parts of which one folds over the other with the CD in between the two sides. I think this is the best idea to use as its simple and easy to work with. We would have to create the inner and outer design, plus the design on the CD face itself.

 

 

 

 

 

This is another example of a digipak that folds out into three parts. On this one we would be designing 6 panels, one would be the front cover of the album, one would display the song list, one would be holding the cd, and the other three would be advertising the artist and the album. With this design there is more for us to work with, but at the same time sometimes less is more!

This third example extends the life of the album even further by having eight panels to work with! Often two CD's would be sold in this sort of digipack, and a sleevle would also be part of the design, enclosing a booklet with either song lyrics or a photo gallery of the band or artist. Although this digipack style alows more development of ideas, in our case i think it could be over powering. Instead i think this sort of digipack should be limited to companys like Ministry of Sound, for thinks like R&B Summer Classics..

I think Alice and i are most suited to the origional 4 panel digipack. It will be relativly easy to work with, yet its simplicity will allow us to expand and develop each panel idea. Also it gives us more time to edit and manipulate each image using software such as PhotoShop.

Digipak - CD covers - ancillary

We have create a CD cover as part of our ancillary task. So i have looked into other artists CD covers to gain some ideas for our own:

 This example shows a hand sketched design approach to an album cover, which i think allows the album name to be better represented. I think it also suggests a more narrative based album instead of performance based one, because the image is suggestive of a story, or it could be representative of the genre of music...

 This is Baby shambles Shotter's Nation (2007-2010) album cover. This album uses magazine cut outs and black and white imagery to represent the indie genre. I like the brassy black and white image of the female, framed over the faded black background of a her passed out on the bed; it gives a very retro classic edge on a relatively contemporary album.   i think this album could be great inspiration for our own, and we could re-create this look using photoshop.



I this the simplicity of this album cover example speeks quite strongly through connotations and colour. The origional standad shade of red gives it a mellow tone, whilst the contrasting white hand outline bring it into quite an alternative genre- American idie rock. This album has a very un-offencive feel to it, and i like that.

Vampire weekends album cover looks slightly like a faded polariod photo and could imply a classic indie genre. The opacity of the colours has been reduced, and fading from the centre gives the cover a sort of aged beauty. I love this look, and its appealing to our genre. If i was to use this idea i think i use the reduced opacity but i would also fade the boarder into back instead of white, as our music video has a darker tone to it in my opinion.

Feedback

During lesson time, Alice and i presented our present, blogged, ideas to our peers in order to find out what the general audience feedback was and see what possible ideas other people had..

Lauren from our class and a few others thought that the relationship between the characters wasnt best suited to the lyrics, and they interpreted a more accepting boyfriend who was letting go of his girlfriend in the understanding that he knew she was sick.

 From this Alice and i discussed the narrative of our video, and from class suggestions, thought about changing the storyboard so that in the video, the characters are shot in different time zones. The audience is in the present of the girl dieing with the male watching her in the bathroom and saying goodbye, but then during the male lip sync hes shot in the bathroom on his own looking at the bath as if shes there, but shes not...

Filming styles

I played our track over this video and although it doesnt always fit i loved the business of the video against the slow intro, and i also loved the layout of the screen and the way it was split into sections. This led me to then research the video below, which when played over our track fitted quite well, and the video itself followed a similar idea to the first; where the scenery was divided into sections, although this time is was blended more..



I loved this frame below, its different and could be used to show four different time in one persons life..



Shes mostly gone

Some other place

I'm getting by

In other ways

These lyrics could link to the video showing different activities he does to get by, showing them on screen all at once! However it may be easier to re-create this effect using a similar style to the first video where the screen is split by a white background.