Boxes of unsold twelve inch vinyl all at a knock-down price are great for sleeve hunting, and this trio came out a 50p box recently.
The first twelve inch is on the End Recordings label, spun off from a London based underground dance venue which ran until 2009. It’s a 2004 Killer Loop remix of an earlier release, and limited to 1,000 copies. The cover reflects nicely the cut up techno remix culture. One side has a grainy snap of what look like DAT masters (remember them?) all neatly shelved together, while the flip side exhorts buyers to ‘collect end rec’ with a blur of hand-drawn lettering. I’m guessing this sleeve was designed for the series but only two were issued. Designer unknown, I’ve stuck both sides up.
The Loop Da Loop 12″ of Hazel (three versions) has a clever play on the old Warhol screen print legacy, via a printed mug of soup image from Tony Campbell (design by M4). It’s on the Mercury label, dated 1999, though they’ve kept their logo quite discreet. Well, miniscule really. The screen print feel is enhanced by printing on the rough side of the card (though for all I know it could just be a posterized Photoshop effect).
The colourful cut-up faces cover is from Plastic City America, a label based in New York in the late nineties. It’s a generic sleeve, used for a number of the label’s 12″ vinyl releases, and credited to U C Graphic. It owes a debt to those mix and match games where you got a number of pictures of faces cut into three and could make up endless variations. By comparison the reverse is totally minimal, white with just a few lines of type.
The artwork later appeared on a CD compilation in 2001. Researching it, I discovered that the label used a variation on the theme for a number of their vinyl releases, which look great together. I’ll stick a trio of them blow, grabbed off the web.
ST33 