Emotional Attachment

I was reading a recent interview on Indietracks with PJ Court from The Primitives who, in the late ’80s, were one of my favorite bands: “…Nothing will replace the ceremony of putting on a vinyl record. The bottom line is there’s no emotional attachment to an mp3.” It made me reflect...

The Art And Soul Of Futura

No, I’m not talking about the artist who created the creepy Pointman character for UNKLE. I’m referring to the typeface, which has been around since 1927 and is still in wide use today. How’s that for an aptly named font? As much as I love Futura, though, I struggle to use it these days. I...

Random/Shuffle.

Prince famously released his album Lovesexy on CD as, at first, one long uninterrupted track. As in, you couldn’t skip around the album, save for using the fast forward/rewind button. I thought that was an audacious way of “forcing” the listener to hear the album, in sequence, as intended....

Visual Continuity

In the record store’s heyday, I used to love browsing singles, considering how the artwork related to the albums that spawned them. And this was regardless of whether I liked the band or not. In this age of a-la-carte song downloading, an album having actual singles with “b-sides”...

By The Numbers

You may have noticed Stripmall Architecture’s catalogue system, each release having an “Object” or “Document” number attached to it. But, I’m willing to bet that most music fans don’t pay attention to catalogue numbers attached to any given release by any artist. And...