Leftfield Artwork In The Indy Pop Mainstream. Modern Psychedelic Album Covers

Over the last few years there has been a surge of very avante garde, digital, unusual and leftfield artwork styles appearing in the indy world.

All good album artwork should be an extension of the music it is representing, showing in someway or another the essence of the album, performing the task of a visual version of the audio contained within. Whether this be an illustration of the album's ideas or theme or an abstract visual language depicting the textures and sounds of the work.

These album new digital abstract covers are very much an extension of the music itself. Its psychedelic pop sensibilities, merged with modern electronic music production creating extremely infectious Indy pop music but also retaining a sense of playfulness, spontaneity and artistic merit.

Apply those adjectives to the artwork and you can easily see parallels. The artwork reflecting the digital, organic, mischievous and spontaneous nature of the music.

Could this be described as minimal? Well I suppose it could, a distinct lack of text, overlaid imagery or logos or traditional album cover artwork, suggest that the designer and client wanted the image to do the talking. But the It’s not minimal in so much as there are no limit on colours, no geometric neatly lined out shapes. It is minimal chaos. Its fun, its abstract but it is also coherent in the message.

I’m really enjoying this style of artwork and its something id love to experiment with myself. The fact that it may turn people off is a bonus, sometimes artwork can work as a filter. To stop the people who require their album covers to consist of a Photoshopped image of the artist or singer with some boring soulless commercial typography on, or a literal Pictionary depiction of the album title. I know that it’s not to everyone’s taste, but then what of any value is?