Android (Remaster-2008) 02. Brainstorm 03. Climbatize 05. Diesel Power 06. Everybody In The Place (Fairground Edit) 07.
Fire (Edit) 08. Firestarter 09. Invanders Must Die 10. Invisible Sun 11.
Medusa's Path 12. Mindfields 13.
No Man Army 15. Poison (remastered) 17. Rat poison (remastered) 19. Smack My Bitch Up 20. The Day Is My Enemy 22.
Their Law (05-Edit) 23. Voodoo People (Original Mix) 24. Voodoo People (Pendulum Remix) 25. Weather experience.
What makes an album cover great—or important? Obviously, a pleasing visual aesthetic is paramount, but of course, that’s subjective. Is the image unique? Does it undeniably grab one’s attention? Does it shock and stir, or does it simply please the eye? Does it succeed as a complete graphic, as opposed to simply slapping some text over an image?
Was it groundbreaking or relevant at the time, and has it wedged itself into our cultural memory to this day? This isn’t about the music or the act behind it—at least, that’s what we kept having to tell ourselves during this selection process. It’s strictly about the image. Even in a time when album art has been reduced from the expansive real estate of a vinyl sleeve to the 150-pixel icon on your Spotify stream, that cover still serves as a signifier—from an enticing vehicle for music discovery to the familiar ID in your saved favorites. It’s still a vital part of the package. With that in mind, and after much deliberation, we give you our 100 favorites.
Tortoise – It’s All Around You (2004). I don’t think this is anyone’s favorite album by the synth-tinged post-rock outfit Tortoise—many critics found it to be a mere shadow of their former works—but the cover for It’s All Around You is the one to rule them all. A slightly cropped version of a 1997 work by New York-based artist, this surreal depiction of Washington’s Mount Rainier composites facets of the natural landscape in an almost cubist manner, like a best-of brochure for the great outdoors that looms over the city.
Indeed, for those willing to look beyond our urban silos, the magic and beauty of the natural world is all around you. Interestingly, Mount Rainier’s volcanic activity and glacial ice threaten the entire valley at its feet, rendering its beauty ironically deceptive. Sadly, it’s an apt metaphor for the cover it graces. Take my advice: Enjoy this image, but then go listen to Standards. —Monica Howe 99.
Kavinsky – OutRun (2013). How do you follow up iconic album art like Demon Days? You could make another great album cover, or you could make another four like the Gorillaz did.
Music Discography Torrents
The iTunes edition of Plastic Beach features four different covers, all showing the featured island in the day, evening, twilight and night. As with everything Gorillaz, there is more than meets the eye, and the album has a complementary video, which explains the creation of the plastic paradise. —Chase Welcher 96. Carl Craig – More Songs About Food and Revolutionary Art (1997). Inventive, and exquisitely electronic, Craig goes his own way here and creates one of the most interesting electronic albums ever (I guess you can call it a techno classic, although I hate that term). The cover art has a statement from Jeff Sawell written in statesman-like script: “Revolutionary art is not determined by its avant-garde content, nor its formal or technical trickery, its interpretation of reality or its verisimilitude, but rather, by how much it revolutionises our thinking and imagination, overturning our preconceptions, bias and prejudice and inspiring us to change ourselves and the world” Declaration, indeed. —Dennis Kane 95.
Fingers – Amnesia (1988). The Ultramajic team is at the top of the game when it comes to aesthetic creativity in the electronic music scene.
Not only is their design work in a league of its own, but their music catalog is fresh, different, and perfect for any techno or house head looking for something new. Label boss Jimmy Edgar’s Majenta has cover art that stands out for the imprint. A bald yet alluring, glowing feminine figure is illuminated in the forefront, with a majestic blend of purple and red in the background. On her forehead, her own image is repeated, creating a distinct and memorable illustration. —Joe Wiseman 92.
The Cinematic Orchestra – Motion (1999). Worlds marked a large turning point for Porter Robinson. It signaled a change from his bass-heavy music of the past (like his EP Spitfire) to his more alternative form of electronic music. Worlds also signaled a change from live DJ sets to ones focusing on real-time sampling and live instruments for Robinson’s tour in support of Worlds. The cover art was done by David Aguado, who also did the cover for the single. Worlds features the signature 【=◈︿◈=】 symbol used by Porter Robinson, with a floating hand (similar to the one in the ) holding a cube, displayed against a backdrop of thin, colorful clouds. —Chase Welcher 90.
The Chemical Brothers – Exit Planet Dust (1995). On one level, the name Hercules & Love Affair could allude to the drama rife in ancient mythology, an era run amok with gods, monsters, mortals, death, tragedy and war. From album opener “Time Will” to the infectious “Blind,” melodrama is found throughout the perfectly crafted debut from producer Andy Butler and his merry cast of flamboyant vocalists and weirdos. Upon immediate glance, the album’s cover tells its story in full: a trio of hand-drawn Atlas sculptures in flashy neon colors carrying the weight and turmoil of the world on their individual shoulders. Its design reflects the music within: colorful and loud, but serious when it needs to be. The cover is classic and modern all at once, exactly like the heavily disco-inspired cuts and vintage house across the album.
Like Butler himself and mirrored via the artwork, Hercules & Love Affair represents the best of the past filtered through the new hope of the future. —John Ochoa 84. Groove Armada – Lovebox (2002). While Lovebox did little to move out from under the shadows of Groove Armada’s previous albums, the imagery slapped across the exterior of its sleeve is arguably the most eye-catching from their body of work. The title, also that of the London duo’s game-changing club nights and festival fun, is hard to miss, as it is displayed in a crossword-borrowing concept illuminated in all its neon-sign glory.
The blue, pink and yellow hues from the letters are now eternally burned on the inside of my eyelids, and I can’t close my eyes whenever listening to the LP without visualizing this lambent illustration of a light fixture that could easily fit well in almost any nightclub you would have stepped in during the early noughties. If that doesn’t say a job well done to you, then you, my friend, are a tough crowd. Azari & III – Azari & III (2011). Much like Disney’s The Little Mermaid penis faux pas, the sexual undertones of Azari & III are hidden in absolute, all-too-obvious plain sight. The cover—a pointed skyscraper gently and loosely clasped by the giant yet gentle hand of a presumed woman—is phallic hypersexuality presented in gorgeous art form.
Its teasing foreplay, moments before fellatio, is a sexy balance between lovemaking and loin savagery. All the makings of sex in its purest form. Once the needle hits the record, there’s no telling where night will go. To this day, I get aroused just looking at it. —John Ochoa 82. Mylo – Destroy Rock & Roll (2004).
In retrospect, statements like Destroy Rock & Roll on electronica-era album covers feel like that stupid brand of audacity that’s easy to lampoon in films like All Gone Pete Tong. The album cover is pretty great, though. A less-informed person in the modern age would assume it to be Banksy. Maybe that’s a statement on Banksy; maybe it’s a statement on pop.
Maybe it’s a statement on how cheesy some underground things look through a mainstream filter. All I know is that “Drop the Pressure” feels like Galantis’ “Peanut Butter Jelly,” so musically, the album still holds up to this day. —Marcus Dowling 81. Ratatat – Classics (2006).
Classics is a classic. The sophomore LP of the Brooklyn electronic-rock duo is legendary, and the art might even stand out in some people’s heads more than the music itself. Filled completely with the image of a growling feline, the artwork highlights one of the biggest tracks off the LP, which for obvious reasons was titled “Wildcat.” The record was a hit, and the art has stuck in my head ever since hearing the track for the first time. —Joe Wiseman 80.
Fatboy Slim – You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (1998). From the album’s title (taken from the marketing slogan for Virginia Slims cigarettes) to its cover, featuring a s self-satisfied-looking, overweight man sporting a T-shirt that says “I’M #1 SO WHY TRY HARDER,” everything about Fatboy Slim’s 1998 album You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby, smacked of wicked humor and a certain sort of modern malaise.
It was a visual message in line with the sonic ethos of the commercial smash, which was packed with big-beat feel-goodness, including hits like “The Rockafeller Skank” and “Gangster Trippin.” An alternative album cover featuring Norman Cook’s own massive vinyl collection was released in North America because we, presumably, are prudes. —Katie Bain 79. Mantronix – The Album (1985). This cover art was designed by Bendik Kaltenborn, best known for his illustrations in The New Yorker magazine. I love the aesthetic that Kaltenborn goes for in this work; all of his illustrations have a colorful, vintage look to them.
His portraits are uniquely characteristic, and the typefaces he uses are fun and change often, even within the same sentence. He said Terje wanted “something that played with the idea of a cheesy ‘70s album cover” for It’s Album Time, he delivered wonderfully on that request. The cover features a suave rendition of Terje in a blue leisure suit, sitting at his piano with a handful of tropical drinks.
The album art seems like something straight out of your parents’ record collection. All it needs is that familiar, musty old-record smell. —Chase Welcher 77.
Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral (1994). Russell Mills’ Wound, the mixed-media piece that became the cover art for this album, was inspired by the juxtaposition of pain and healing, two themes that form the crux of The Downward Spiral.
Support. As with most of Reznor’s releases for this album, what you saw on the cover was only a portion of the full work. Mills embedded everyting from dead insects and blood to feathers and teeth on his canvas, a twisted creative menagerie that was echoed again in the video for “Closer,” which featured twisted and disparate images inspired by Joel-Peter Witkin. Acidic, warm, uncomfortable, beautiful, terrifying—NIN in a nutshell. —Rich Thomas 76. Brian Eno – Music for Airports (1978). Dub-influenced techno, heavy synth strings and ambient cycles are all aspects of this slept-on LP. Tom Thiel and Max Loderbauer (Moritz von Oswald trio) created a unified work that has hints of jungle, as well as serial music.
The cover art is constructed of ribbons of the same image bitmapped with various digital texture. Almost like a Madonna painting, but with the head horizontal not vertical, the art is fragmented and melancholy, like the music. —Dennis Kane 74. The Orb – Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (1991). Autechre’s glitchy and buzzing IDM sound was something I thought was only for nerds when I was turned onto this album. I was an Ibiza house guy then, crazier about Modjo’s “Lady” than being keen on raving too deeply. However, when I began to understand the whole art-as-music dynamic that governed part of the Manchester scene, Autechre’s Draft 7.30 definitely made more sense to me.
Creating a sound and experiencing it through all senses is important. Using a piece of architecture to represent the feel and style of loops and chords is audacious, and if you nail it, it ends up on lists like these. —Marcus Dowling 69. The Bloody Beetroots – Romborama (2009). The Bloody Beetroots stood out from the pack right from the get-go via a unique sound that meshed gripping rock guitars and heavy electro.
Like creator Sir Bob Cornelius Rifo, the Bloody Beetroots project was punk rock to the rotten core—so much so that Rifo boasts a tattoo of the year 1977—when punk rock was born—on his chest as an ink billboard advertising his full-fledged dedication to the movement. Italian comics illustrator Tanino Liberatore nailed the anarchist spirit of Rifo and Romborama on the album artwork. It spits in your face with no regard to human decency or social restraint. Somehow, you’re left wiping your grin and begging for more. —John Ochoa 68. Glasser – Ring (2010). This gorgeous fractal couldn’t more perfectly herald the kaleidoscope of layered vocals, swirling synths and percussive textures found within the debut LP by Glasser, aka Cameron Mesirow.
Along with the art for her Apply EP, it was created by, who told she made the painting “by shattering a piece of glass on a panel, and then using the shards as a stencil, lifting up one at a time and spraying paint in the hole left by the missing piece.” The same year as Ring’s release, Auerbach and Mesirow partnered as (get it?), under which they designed a two-person pump organ that “cannot be played alone. Each player has a keyboard with alternating notes of a four-octave scale. Each player must pump to supply the wind to the other player’s notes.” It’s a lyrical metaphor for any symbiotic relationship—whether that of close friends or collaborative partners, or in this pair’s case, both. —Monica Howe 67.
Happy Mondays – Bummed (1988). The blushing beauty on the cover looks like she’s up to something. Open it up, and you’ll in fact see she’s a naked lady. You see, Bummed, in this sense, doesn’t mean your Monday is any less happy; it just means you’re having “the sex.” On their second album, the Manchester band embraced more electronic elements, helping marry their post-punk, rock-centric scene with the acid house movement happening throughout the rest of the UK.
We all know dance music is pretty sexy. It makes sense. —Kat Bein 66. – Kala (2007). I highly suggest looking up a large-scale version of this image so you can fully appreciate all of its intricacies. Traditionally a symbol of freedom, the bird showcased on the Urban Animals cover is made of dilapidated buildings, smoke stacks and other less-than-flattering signs of city life.
Claude’s third studio album—and 100th dirtybird release—came with a cover that’s nothing less than a stroke of genius, as it reminds us we are all urban animals seeking refuge in whatever deep, dark (club) space we can find. —Anum Khan 60. Armand Van Helden – Killing Puritans (2000).
“This year, Van Helden is Armand and Dangerous,” the promo for Killing Puritans declared. If you’re like me, you had to read that twice. Don’t let the terrible pun deter you from taking a listen to this album, however, which showcases Van Helden’s adeptness at mixing jazz, drum & bass, house, rap, breakbeat, electronica and more.
If you bought a physical copy of it, you’ll remember that symbols replaced letters throughout, meaning people had to decipher a code to even figure out the track list. That’s not the only thing hidden about this album: The startling cover was so controversial that UK versions were sold in cardboard sleeves that covered the image. —Anum Khan 59. Dan Deacon – Spiderman of the Rings (2007). Oh, Dan Deacon, you lovable weirdo. You wizard of controlled chaos. Thank you for your noise, your sublime pairings of disquieting pixel blips and, and for ridiculous titles like 2007’s Spiderman of the Rings and its appropriately bizarre cover.
Designed by —a Philadelphia-based artist, gallery curator and musician in his own right—collaged elements bring us a rocket-launcher-laden girl too taken with a bone she’s found to worry about the ticking clock at her back. What does it mean, and what does it have to do with Marvel or Tolkien? Maybe it’s an open love letter to the general nerdiness shared by Deacon, a geek on so many levels, and Furgal, a self-professed Hobbit-lover and creator of a. And maybe it’s not meant for us to comprehend on a cerebral level at all.
Hey, that’s fine. Sometimes weird is just weird. —Monica Howe 58. MSTRKRFT – The Looks (2006). According to Jesse F. Keeler, the mustached half of MSTRKRFT, the title for The Looks—the electro duo’s debut album—was inspired by an American Idol episode in which judge Randy Jackson critiqued a female contestant on having “the looks” to make it big but lacking the actual talent. Keeler and his partner Al-P found it comical, as the concept of “the looks” means nothing, especially in terms of dance music.
“This music isn’t about what we look like or a deep statement on how the music industry looks or anything,” he told. “It’s about what we can make the dancefloor look like, which is full.” It’s ironic, though, how much the looks of The Looks played into the initial MSTRKRFT aesthetic.
I look at the cover now and still, to this day, have trouble distinguishing it from the used electronica bins and an of Montreal album cover reject. Raul gutierrez saenz pdf to word. It makes sense, as MSTRKRFT bridged the early electro days with the dance punk revivalism of the aughts. The cover art, created by design/art duo Seripop, won the Juno Award for Best CD/DVD Cover Design of the Year in 2007. The blurry mess of half robot noise and half punk spritz resonates on the swirly face of The Looks. It’s a fingerprint documenting an era via future art.
—John Ochoa 57. Tangerine Dream – Rubycon (1975). You can always count on producer Juan de Guillebon for something eye-popping and unique.
You might remember the mesmerizing video for “She’s Bad,” as featured in our, and here’s the album art to go with it. Gracing DyE’s sophomore LP is this Dragon Ball-inspired design by Parisian graphic design studio, featuring photography by UK artist. A mashup of ‘80s pop colors, manga influence and that mysterious plex-meets-rock centerpiece, it’s a perfect visual for this quirkily danceable journey through the throwback sounds of disco, electro and the French avant-garde. —Monica Howe 54.
Arca – Xen (2014). Xen features an ambient and experimental techno funk sound that’s symbolized on the cover through a hyper-idealized and pulchritudinous woman. Similar to how A Tribe Called Quest’s sensual woman in Afrocentric body paint represented the full-bodied and soulful grooves and vibe of the group, Arca’s sensuous woman, who appears to also be a melting candle, gives a seductive, deviant and wild sense to what lies behind the cover. Given this album was his first, Arca’s woman could be stylized in so many ways it could represent a theme he can return to often throughout his career to come.
—Marcus Dowling 53. Tosca – Opera (1998). Put Opera on repeat.
Then put it on repeat again. Its downtempo trip-hop take on electronic is best understood with a few big spoonfuls, ideally when the atmosphere is thick and heavy. The album’s light use of lyrics and heavy use of sampling lets what’s truly important—the music—breathe. The cover photograph showcases the opera house in Tosca’s native Vienna. The rain, the old-school car, the black-and-whiteness—it’s exactly the type of environment I’d want to listen to Opera in, preferably on repeat. —Anum Khan 52. A Guy Called Gerald – Hot Lemonade (1989).
Upon first glance, it’s difficult to tell what the cover of Four Tet’s gorgeous 2010 album There Is Love in You is actually composed of. From a distance, it looks like dozens of tiny, multicolored circles. Up close, one can see that each of these circles contains bits of computer-rendered graphic design, as well as images of flowers. Perhaps that’s the key here. While clearly digitally composed, the cover contains trace elements of the organic, which speaks to an album on which hundreds of robot-like electronic beats compose music that is most definitely alive. —Katie Bain 46. KMFDM – Angst (1993).
When I was a moody pre-teen listening to Blink-182, my mom decided it was time to introduce me to real punk rock. After an intro to the Clash and the Sex Pistols, I fell down a rabbit hole of infinite angry possibility. I eventually found goth music and, finally, industrial.
KMFDM’s industrial metal is special, just as danceable as it is headbanging. On Angst, the band captures every feeling a disillusioned teenager could have and presents it with lyrical style. On intro song “Sucks,” the singer asks, “Are you ready for this?” and then interjects that “We don’t care.” The cover perfectly captures this kind of reality. It’s like, yeah, you’re angsty, but you know you love it. —Kat Bein 45. Massive Attack – 100th Window (2003). I first discovered DJ Koze back in my college radio days.
When digging through new CDs to play at KCPR, this album cover seemed to jump out from the rest. It features German producer DJ Koze riding atop a reindeer, sitting in a psychedelic and colorful forest environment. Needless to say, I played the album on air and fell in love with its unique sound. Amygdala features collaborations with Caribou and Matthew Dear, and the track “Ich Schreib’ Dir ein Buch 2013” contains a motown choir covering “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” which is twisted and warped into the deep and eclectic soundscape that is DJ Koze. —Chase Welcher 43.
UNKLE – Never, Never, Land (2003). UNKLE’s second album, Never, Never, Land, should be amazing. DJ Shadow was on the first UNKLE record and is gone by the second. I’ll never forget when taking in the art for this one in the record store—when doing that was a thing—I noted the smooth ohm on the cover of their debut Psyence Fiction appeared to have been ripped apart, which made the direction of the record immediately apparent. This is far more free jazz and much less a boom-bap of a record, with a cover that feels—like the music—similar, yet wholly different from before. —Marcus Dowling 42.
Girl Talk – Feed the Animals (2008). By the late aughts, Gregg Gillis, the former biomedical engineer known to most as mashup genius Girl Talk, had perfected his method: take seconds-long snippets of some of the best and most recognizable songs in popular music, and layer them on top of each other in the most surprising and joy-inspiring combinations imaginable.
It was a winning equation that came fully formulated on Girl Talk’s 2008 Feed the Animals, and the cover art—the “GT” initials ablaze in the pristinely manicured front lawn of a cookie-cutter suburban abode—perfectly illustrated Gillis’ art form of raiding the safe and standard hits of Top 40 radio and turning them on their asses into something a bit more fire. —Katie Bain 41. SBTRKT – SBTRKT (2011). SBTRKT’s Aaron Jerome would likely not take kindly to Disclosure’s Settle coming in ahead of his self-titled debut LP on this list, what with the that the Lawrence brothers’ artistic direction has resembled his own on more than one occasion (it’s been said that is biting his style as well).
Accusations aside, SBTRKT’s signature identity is unmistakably his own. Worn live and in his marketing, his masks are “inspired by many native and ancient societies from a global viewpoint,” according to, the masks’ designer, who—like Jerome—chooses to create under a veil of anonymity.
“Initially, the idea behind the mask was to give freedom to the music,”. “I’d rather not talk about myself as a person, and let the music speak for itself. The name SBTRKT is me taking myself away from that whole process.” It’s fitting for a producer known for remixing and collaborating with a variety of other artists.
With the familiar voices of Sampha, Jessie Ware and others at the forefront on the album—as well as on last year’s follow-up, Wonder Where We Land (a close contender for this list, btw)—the listener’s usual frontman-focused linchpin is gone, leaving us to consider the musical undercurrent beneath the facade. —Monica Howe 40. Brian Briggs – Brian Damage (1980).
It was a familiar sight in 2008 to see friends imitating this image, slumping against a wall so only the top of each person’s head was visible. Crystal Castles’ infamous cover to their debut album started a trend and a garnered a new generation of listeners to electronic music. The cover reminds me of my freshman year of college, when I first started DJing and was rockin’ acid-washed super skinny jeans with a leather jacket, blasting “Air War” out of my headphones. The nostalgia is real.
—Joe Wiseman 38. Jon Hopkins – Immunity (2013). Drop a book on the ground, or even tap a table lightly with your hand. The resulting energy ripples, like in a body of water, are exactly what I think of when I think of Immunity.
Individual tracks rely heavily on sluggish bass sequences that are just as experimental as they are fleeting. The album’s jagged, crystalline cover art is, surprisingly, not computer-generated at all, instead created by a chemical reaction photographed by biochemist Linden Gledhill under an extremely high-power microscope. The red and purple forms you see in the artwork are actually clusters of food dye molecules crystallizing over a period of time, viewed through a spectral lens to bring out the colors. For Hopkins, such chemical reactions serve to visualize different components of his music and different sounds in his head, a process he often describes as best represented in color changes.
The Creators Project highlighted the phenomenon in, which I definitely recommend giving a watch. —David Matthews 37. Felix da Housecat – Devin Dazzle & the Neon Fever (2004).
Devin Dazzle and his gang of Neon Fever gals chronicle their clubbing (mis)adventures on this concept album, the fifth for Felix da Housecat. He trades in his electro and house know-how for a heavily synth-pop project, producing a body of work that could have come straight from 1984. Then there’s the absolutely fabulous album cover, centering around Devin Dazzle’s Elvis-meets- Tron ensemble that’s literally electrifying. Fun fact: the artwork was designed by Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, who’s featured in the EDC Las Vegas 2015 print magazine (just flip to ). All I can say is, I wish my fantasies looked this fantastic. —Anum Khan 36.
Die Antwoord – Ten$ion (2012). Hey, it’s Die Antwoord’s Yo-Landi Vi$$er in giant angel wings—with her trademark insect eyes and alien hair—munching stoically on a bloody heart. Those familiar with the “Freeky” antics of South Africa’s favorite (only?) zef-rap act most likely didn’t bat an eye when their sophomore LP Ten$ion dropped in 2012, bearing this striking image as its badge. As pointed out, it was less than a year after Daenerys Targaryen devoured a horse’s heart on Game of Thrones; cardiovascular consumption was all the rage. And honestly, if Die Antwoord wrapped up a live set with Yo-Landi riding off on a dragon, would you even be surprised? —Monica Howe 35.
Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express (1977). This was a huge record from these titans of electronica. What makes the original cover of this so great is the bleed, the tonality, and the photographer’s signature. The band is presented like some ersatz lounge act, really one of the first postmodern ironic graphic gestures seen. The painters, Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke, had done similar portraits as a show invite, but this was a major artistic gesture and commentary on the idea of an artist portrait. Sadly, a lot of it is lost in the formatting of the American cover.
The colors are changed, and the framing is clumsily altered. The original comes with a great poster, as well. —Dennis Kane 34. Yellow Magic Orchestra – X∞Multiplies (1980). If there’s one go-to album for the bedroom on this list, it would have to be Air’s Moon Safari. This album feels as good as it sounds, comparable to warm towels out of the drier or a soft, white robe after a long bath.
It’s kind of surprising that this lovely and very feminine journey was created by the two Frenchmen on the cover, but every lighthearted guitar pluck and neatly placed horn fits perfectly into place and creates a wondrous escape to ecstasy. —Troy Kurtz 32. Klaxons – Surfing the Void (2010). If you think nothing good comes out of drinking, just take a look at this Klaxons cover. After returning home following a booze-filled night out, the band’s members ended up searching through (what else?) pictures of cats in spacesuits. Dual streaming is required for html viewing chrome. After realizing how funny a billboard of the image would look, the group decided to make it a reality.
Polydor got a real US space suit (to which they added the flags and badges you see on the cover), and Jamie Reynold’s cat was offered up to model. The end result is one of the top 100 electronic album covers of all time. —Anum Khan 31. Pretty Lights – Glowing in the Darkest Night (2010). Taking a deep dive into the Pretty Lights catalog is akin to taking a trip to deep space, which makes the interstellar expedition-themed cover of 2010’s Glowing in the Darkest Night both visually appealing and wholly appropriate. The clean design and rich color tones give the image the look and feel of a 1960s movie poster (the 2001: A Space Odyssey vibes are strong), while the solo figure standing in the red field in the bottom-left corner adds a sort of ominous feel to the image. You can’t, after all, have light(s) without some darkness.
—Katie Bain 30. Battles – Mirrored (2007). There’s no way to take in all this album cover offers with just one look. As soon as I saw it was in the running for our list, I knew it had to make the cut.
Texas Discography Mp3 Torrent
While Mirrored may lack the bleeps and bloops of your usual electronic album, it showcases Battles’ acute adeptness at using technology to modify and reshape what a rock band could sound like. This pristine photography comes from the mind of Tim Saccenti, also the director of the “Atlas” music video (and the designer of the #88 album cover on this list). —Anum Khan 29.
DJ Shadow – Endtroducing. The cover for DJ Shadow’s debut full-length hit the nail on the head for crate-diggers far and wide, who’d spent the better bulk of their life sifting through vinyl selections at in-the-cut spots for those rare records filling up the spaces in their carefully curated crates. Is a staple for sample-based music, as it was created almost entirely in the span of two years from spliced-together snippets straight from wax that only someone of Shadow’s caliber is capable of digging up. Therefore, the image provided by photog B+ did more than just completely encapsulate the ethos behind Shadow’s soul and significance as an artist; it offered a snapshot worth 1,000 words, signifying an entire cultural movement.
Burial – Untrue (2007). Burial’s dark and twisted conglomeration of dubstep, garage, hardcore and house rocked the music world in the mid 2000s, but nobody knew who the man was behind the music. After releasing two widely acclaimed records that earned him a Mercury Prize nomination, the rumor mill was alive with wild speculations that Burial was a new side project of artists like Fatboy Slim, Four Tet or Aphex Twin. But in 2008, Will Bevan took to his Myspace blog and announced to the world that he’s just a low-key person who wanted to make some tunes. His humble declaration shocked the music blogs and set the internet ablaze.
Finally, listeners could place the face on Untrue as that of a man uninterested with the fame and aplomb currently driving today’s dance music stars. —Troy Kurtz 27. Major Lazer – Guns Don’t Kill People Lazers Do (2009). 2009’s Guns Don’t Kill People Lazers Do was a portal into the wild and wacky world of Major Lazer, a group that in sound and spirit very much embodied EDM’s cultural takeover of that era. Illustrated by London-based artist Ferry Gouw—the man responsible for creating the entire Major Lazer visual concept, including last year’s animated television series—the cover art served as a CliffsNotes primer for a cartoonishly violent, goofy and sexed-up visual aesthetic that perfectly matched the album’s aggressive and larger-than-life, dancehall-infused sound. —Katie Bain 26. Plastikman – Sheet One (1993).
The illicit references are hard to ignore here—an obvious nod to the psychotropic poison of choice of the hordes of techno heads who would frequent the unregulated, anything-goes raves of yesteryear. Designed to mimic a sheet of LSD, legend has it that the cover once led to a man being taken into custody, after a police officer saw the album sitting in plain sight on the dashboard of his car. That acid-tinged aesthetic is echoed in the minimalist approach employed by Richie Hawtin throughout the debut album of his Plastikman alias.
It was a stroke of genius, to the say the least. Fischerspooner – #1 (2000). Receiving a polarized response upon its release in 2001, #1 was hailed by some as a pioneering release, more art-directed than written. Others, like Pitchfork, referred to Casey Spooner and Warren Fischer as “liberal-arts dilettantes” and “snotty white Americans” “exploring their self-obsessed, nerdy sexuality.” Say what you will about the tunes, but the cover epitomized the smarmy, hyper-stylized world of electroclash, which helped the electronic music movement back onto its feet after it got drunk on big beat and face-planted outside of the bar. —Rich Thomas 24.
Caribou – Our Love (2014). I clearly remember watching Caribou perform “Can’t Do Without You” at this year’s Coachella. It was a little over a week after a tumultuous breakup, and I had started falling for another girl from my past. As I lay flat on the grassy floor at the Mojave tent after a day’s worth of dry heat and intense sun, my mind and my feet finally at ease for a brief moment, I envisioned the cover of Our Love. I imagined the kaleidoscopic spectrum to be the visual equivalent of falling in love. It’s warm, it’s bright, it’s unpredictable.
It looks right. It feels right. —John Ochoa 23. Lemon Jelly – Lost Horizons (2002). Lemon Jelly’s trip-hop classic Lost Horizons had album art that didn’t truly speak to me until, say, 2005—when Showtime debuted Weeds. According to Malvina Reynolds’ theme song “Little Boxes,” the suburbs are “all built out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.” Though no homes are in the idyllic suburban plot on Lost Horizon’s cover, trip-hop has always been one of those sounds that, for me, is like the show Weeds—all in discovering the dirt in the layers, as the samples provide the haunting echoes lying beneath the picturesque surfaces. —Marcus Dowling 22.
Walter Carlos – Clockwork Orange (1972). What makes Dive so special (and Awake too, for the same reason) is the fact that Scott Hansen was able to use his years’ worth of design and media skills to create the full work in its entirety, from album artwork to posters to live video projections to merchandise.
It doesn’t matter if Dive borrows heavy inspiration from older ambient acts Boards of Canada or Ulrich Schnauss; the LP is untouchable, and purely Tycho. It’s an absolute triumph of ambient electronic music, an amalgamation of audio elements ranging from electronic components to analog instruments that make listening to Dive such an intensely immersive, multifaceted, 50-minute experience. —David Matthews 20. Radiohead – Kid A (2000). Cold, angular, alienating—the artwork for Radiohead’s groundbreaking fourth studio album was a joint design effort between Thom Yorke and Dan Rickwood (aka Stanley Donwood), who has worked with Radiohead on their cover art since the release of the My Iron Lung EP in 1994. As with all the best album art, what you saw on the cover panel was just the tip of the iceberg, pun intended. Yorke and Rickwood apparently became infatuated with the website for the, a research organization that provided no shortage of mind-numbing, fear-inducing statistics on the planet’s slow demise.
At least that’s what was probably going through Yorke’s head at the time. —Rich Thomas 19. Funki Porcini – Fast Asleep (2002). A cheeky note in the credits for this album reads: The Uterus Goldmine modelled and designed by Openmind (132 layers and counting). Openmind is, of course, Ninja Tune’s own Kevin Foakes, aka DJ Food, aka Strictly Kev, who has been a cornerstone of the groundbreaking British label from both a music and design perspective. This cover depicts the title treatment spelled out using vintage synths—the ultimate eye candy for gear-spotters—and a girl fast asleep on a circuit board rug.
The music, like the album cover, is a lush and inviting yet complex pastiche of downtempo bliss, a departure from the head-nodding trip-hop stylings of Funki’s previous LP. —Rich Thomas 18. – The Way Things Fall (2013). This is the duo’s fifth artist album, and the cover really nails the sound.
Though released in 2013, there’s this nurturing, Devo-style thing happening that feels very new-wave-inspired. Who are these women? What exactly is their job? Is it perhaps the architecture of the universe they’re contemplating?
And if that’s the case, it’s noteworthy they’re women. Is there some sort of Atlas Shrugged statement here about women being unable to balance the weight of the universe? This one proves that simple yet evocative is always the way to go.
—Marcus Dowling 17. Cybotron – Enter (1983). It’s practically impossible to separate my undying appreciation for the timeless tracks this album brought to the dance music table from the art that set its tone. We debated which cover should be deemed more iconic: this or Random Access Memories—an album backed by a marketing campaign that could rival the ad dollars spent by mass-consumed, corporately produced products, but which fell disastrously short in the ears of many disco-donning robot fanatics. In the end, Homework emerged victoriously. Its sleek design could trigger a dance party merely from its recognized importance to an era of groundbreaking grooves.
Prodigy Discography Torrent Mp3 Classics
A sew-on Daft Punk patch—a nod to the punk rock practice of shouting allegiance to each fan’s favorite bands by stitching their names in a sprawling fashion on articles of clothing—is depicted on silky black fabric. To this very day, I still picture this image in my head whenever seminal jams like “Around the World” and “Da Funk” take total control of dancefloors.
Well played, Daft Punk. New Order – Power, Corruption & Lies (1983). Like so many great albums, Moby’s enduring Play effectively captured the cultural zeitgeist of the era in which it was released, while also remaining timeless. It marked a watershed moment for electronic music’s crossover into the mainstream, becoming massively popular, introducing millions of people (including this then-teenaged Midwesterner) to computer music, and remaining Moby’s most commercially successful project to date.
The cover, a split-second image of Moby suspended in mid-air in front of a green wall, summarizes this moment-in-time idea, while also serving as a study in equilibrium. An anonymous hand clutches a light meter in the bottom-left corner, balancing Moby’s ecstatically jumping figure and the text and “play” symbol in the alternate corners and complementing the clean design. In sound and image, Play was altogether an instant classic that, to this day, remains instantly recognizable. —Katie Bain 10. LCD Soundsystem – LCD Soundsystem (2005). LCD Soundsystem exploded into popular culture with their 2005 self-titled artist album written entirely by their lead singer and DFA label cofounder James Murphy.
Before Daft Punk was winning Grammys, Daft Punk was playing in his house. And before you even started collecting records, James Murphy showed you that his record collection is better than yours in “Losing my Edge.” Both this art and the band’s name are a nostalgic reference to the past days of music and the influences they have on modern dance culture. A black-and-white photo of a disco ball covers the album, showing us its missing pieces and seeming to lie on the floor, broken like the disco records of the infamous Disco Demolition Night of 1979. —Chase Welcher 9. Gary Numan – The Pleasure Principle (1979). Try as I might, I don’t think any amount of downward dog or chaturanga could get me to achieve Grace Jones’ impeccable arabesque here.
And that’s because it’s virtually impossible. The cover for this album was created by Jones’ then-partner Jean-Paul Goude, who combined separate images to create it (just consider him the original Photoshop wizard).
Arranged chronologically, Island Life showcases Jones’ artistic development over the first nine years of her career. In 1996, the album was re-released with a bright yellow background, although everyone knows the classic azure is the bona fide choice of color for this masterpiece. —Anum Khan 7.
The Prodigy – Music for the Jilted Generation (1994). The Prodigy’s first album, had all the aesthetic flair of the Beatles’ White Album, but Music for the Jilted Generation more than made up for its predecessor’s lack of panache. Though Liam Howlett has maintained time and time again that the album was never political in nature, all three unique pieces of artwork—front cover, rear sleeve and inside sleeve, all designed by different artists—had an air of defiance about them ( is particularly relevant today). Stuart Haygarth’s screaming face was the perfect visual complement to songs like “Their Law,” “Break & Enter” and “Poison,” and it distanced the band even further from their brightly colored rave roots. —Rich Thomas 6.
Disclosure – Settle (2013). The image is deceptively simple: the rough outline of a gender-neutral face sketched over a mid-’90s baby picture of the brothers Disclosure, Guy and Howard Lawrence. Designed by a friend of the English producers, “the face” that appeared on the cover of the duo’s 2013 debut LP Settle made the boys at once look like dolls and robots, and has since become synonymous with the Disclosure juggernaut. Projected onstage during their lives sets, the image has also appeared on everything from baseball caps to stickers to the paper fans that were handed out to attendees of Coachella’s Gobi tent when Disclosure played the 2013 festival just before becoming insanely famous and critically adored. (It did indeed get sweaty inside that tent. I still have my fan in a shoebox somewhere.) There’s even the Disclosure Face app that will place “the face” over a photo of your own. This widespread cultural impact stems from cover art that is at once fresh and vintage, much like the millennial house music that Settle is packed with.
Treated to look like the worn sleeve of a vinyl album, the cover also nods to the crate-digging roots of the house scene, and thus the influences that birthed Disclosure into existence. Sometimes the simplest idea is the most impactful. —Katie Bain 5. Basement Jaxx – Remedy (1999). It’s only fitting for Basement Jaxx to kick down the doors of the music world with an album cover as loud as their debut release. When they dropped Remedy, the world stopped for just one second. It was the funky bass slaps of “Red Alert,” the bouncy goofiness of “Same Old Show,” and the vocoder drive of “Yo-Yo.” Remedy taught us that you don’t have to be serious to be taken seriously.
The cover speaks volumes. Naked men and women are stacked like sardines, bodies alternating between white and black men and women, equals in the same production line. It reflects the extended DNA of the duo, Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe, who credit much of their successful sound to the soulful singers—often black females—featured throughout their discography. “The idea was to make landscape-like hills and mountains, but only using living, human flesh, naked and together, showing no separation between black, white or any other color,” says Buxton.
“I still remember the shoot day very clearly. I went in and moved the bodies all around, asking them to move closer.
I was bright red with embarrassment, with bits and boobs popping out all over the place.” It’s not sexual in any real sense, but instead a statement on the power of people and innate humanity, an essential factor within the Basement Jaxx universe. The Remedy cover pits human among, not against, human, and the songs within unite the world under one sound. —John Ochoa 4. Justice – Cross (2007). You cannot think of Justice without thinking about the cross. Their 2007 LP Cross—or † —has become an iconic album, and the glowing cross has become a powerful symbol in their live performances.
On Cross, Justice repurposes the ancient icon and gives it a 21st-century feeling by making it three-dimensional and giving it depth. Justice would keep playing with this symbolism for their 2011 album Audio, Video, Disco, where they displayed a large stone cross lying in a field. Many references have been made between rave culture and the church, and the power of Justice’s cross really does make me believe that.
—Chase Welcher 3. Rustie – Green Language (2014). After releasing his debut album Glass Swords, Rustie admitted he had some maturing to do. It was a brilliant mess of arena-size synths and Seinfeld-inspired bass riffs, but the Scottish producer knew he “went kind of quite crazy taking the piss with kitsch sounds and over-the-top silliness.” Green Language is named after the “language of the birds,” which revolves around the idea of human communication with birds through song. Not only do the two flamingos look visually exquisite, but they represent a refined elegance in Rustie’s sparkling sound that manages to fuse his love of grime, trance and hip-hop. —Troy Kurtz 2.
Massive Attack – Mezzanine (1998). This squeamish-unfriendly, up-close-and-personal photograph of a South African beetle—snapped by Nick Knight, whose images of insects landed him lauded placements in the Museum of Natural History—makes me question my tolerance for insects as a whole. But I won’t let my personal unease take away from the cover’s spot-on summation of the album’s turbulent creation process. In the same way the creepy-crawly subject is magnified, to the point where it resembles an arachnid from Starship Troopers, it calls to mind the collective’s uphill struggle to reach a finished product. Despite Tricky walking away following a fallout with member 3D, the Bristol outfit still pulled off one of its strongest opuses to date.
I don’t believe they could have found a more unsettling cover to represent both the album’s journey and the resulting collection of cerebral electronic rock punctuated by striking statements of jazz, reggae and funk. Kraftwerk – The Man-Machine (1978). The best line I’ve ever read about Kraftwerk came from a 1975 interview in Creem magazine from legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, in which he quoted a friend describing the group’s Florian Schneider as looking “like he could build a computer or push a button and blow up half the world with the same amount of emotion.” True story: I bought a vinyl copy of The Man-Machine without having heard one note of Kraftwerk. Sure, I knew their name and their legacy; but embarrassingly, I had never given them a listen. My purchase was based purely on visual aesthetic—and that title, so powerful and deep.
Daft Punk introduced me to technological singularity via their Discovery and Human After All days, but The Man-Machine is the grandfather of human-technology symbiosis. If sound and image were ever to reach perfect balance, The Man-Machine is the prototype marriage of the two elements. Yet I’m still mystified by this artwork. Should I be scared? Are these actually men or dapper, pale-skinned vampires?
Their attire doesn’t feel like a carefully selected wardrobe for a photo shoot, but rather, a glimpse of uniformed soldiers in a post-nuclear dystopia. Looking eastward, their stoic faces say more than the music ever could: “We are your leaders. We may resemble the past, but we are setting a path for the future.” —John Ochoa Share.
1 Left/Right Bloom. 2 Left/Right Fall. 3 Left/Right Burn. 4 Bonnie X Clyde, Purge Torn.
5 Chris Lake & Chris Lorenzo Nothing Better. 6 Craig Williams Give It a Minute. 7 Craig Williams Everybody. 8 Cut Snake Dr Um. 9 Cut Snake Party Tutorial. 10 Dombresky & Tony Romera Girls Night Out.
11 Redlight ft. Sweetie Irie Zum Zum. 12 Rell the Soundbender x Rawtek Baja. 13 Rell the Soundbender x B!tch Be Cool Diablo House. 14 Yultron ft.
EP What Evil Lurks 1991.02 Album Experience 1992.11 Single Charly 1991.08 Single Everybody in the Place 1991.12 Single Fire 1992.10 Single Out of Space 1992.11 Single Wind it Up 1993 Album Music for the Jilted Generation 1994 Single One Love 1993 Single No Good (Start the Dance) 1994 Single Voodoo People 1994 Single Poison 1995 Album The Fat of the Land 1997 Single Firestarter 1996 Single Breathe 1996 Single Smack My Bitch Up 1997 Compilation The Dirtchamber Sessions Vol.
Black Smoke (Original Mix) 02. Breathe (Original Mix) 03. Ckaustrophobic Sting (Original Mix) 04. Climbatize (Original Mix) 05. Colours (Original Mix) 06.
Death Of The Prodigy Dancers (Original Mix) 07. Diesel Power (Original Mix) 08. Firestarter (Original Mix) 09. Fuel My Fire (Original Mix) 10. Girls (Original Mix) 11.
Invaders Must Die (Original Mix) 12. Jericho (Original Mix) 13. Memphis Bell (Original Mix) 14.
No Good (Start The Dance) (Original Mix) 15. Omen (Original Mix) 16.
Piranha (Original Mix) 17. Poison (Original Mix) 18. Run With The Wolves (Original Mix) 19.
Serila Thrilla (Original Mix) 20. Smack My Bitch Up (Original Mix) 21. Spitfire (Original Mix) 22. Take Me To The Hospital (Original Mix) 23. The Way It (Original Mix) 24.
Their Law (feat. Pop Will Eat Itself) (Original Mix) 25.
Thunder (Original Mix) 26. Voodoo People (Original Mix) 27.
Wake Up Call (Original Mix) 28. Warrior's Dance (Original Mix) 29. World's On Fire (Original Mix) 30. You Will Be Under My Wheels (Original Mix).