records

Slick 45 record sleeve with a nice modern pattern for the German label Heliodor. Anyone know what typeface that is?

(Via Kavel’s awesome record envelope)

In the first part of our new Record Gallery Series Mike Davis (aka MIKE THE 2600 KING) - uber cool designer for Burlesque of North America has put together a gallery of some of his favorite record covers. This well rounded collection includes covers by design heavyweights like Milton Glaser to design unknowns, as in the case of the local/ private press lps.

In addition, he has created an exclusive dj mix for grain edit with songs taken from the records featured in the gallery. We hope you enjoy it.

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The Asian American Film Festival is in San Francisco now, so I had a chance to check out “Blood Brothers” which is one of the more recent films produced by John Woo. Anyone else seen this? Overall I thought it was pretty cheesy, but the ending wasn’t too bad. On the way to the theater I stopped by my friend Cool Chris’s record shop. Chris runs Groove Merchant which is notorious amongst beat diggers and record collectors as the place to go if you want to find rare jazz, funk and library lps. While I was there Chris hit me off with a copy of the record above.

The John Hawkins lp seen above is part of a series of 45s (the little records..7″) initiated by CAPAC (Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada Limited). I’m less concerned with the music on this album as I am with the design of the logo. The rounded letters take form as records with the lines of different weights creating the grooves. It wasn’t uncommon to see logo treatments like this in the 1970s and I think this is one of the better examples.

I think I found the inspiration for the yellow jumpsuits in Wes Anderson’s classic bottle rocket film. Its right here in Tofu magazine’s online gallery of 1960’s Asian record covers. The gallery features records from Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau between 1964-1969. There are some killer examples of Asian pop psych and beat, although mostly covers of American songs from that time period. Be sure to check the audio clips, because who wouldn’t want to hear Rita Chao’s “Yummy Yummy Yummy“?