imAginary albums
The LPs that don't exist but should
A project that began with a wistful rant
If you are a person of a certain age, you'll quite possibly be feeling some disappointment around the way we now access music.
CDs were bad enough, but now we just download mp3s. Hang on, we used to do that, now we just stream whatever from Spotify and Soundcloud.
All this convenience is very convenient, but it's also joyless and efficient and depressing. It really is.
It feels to me like we've been slowly but inevitably eroding the romance of the LP album since I was but a lass. Do you miss the sly crackle of the needle before it hits the first track? The dexterous flipping from side A to side B? The way we knew the order of the tracks on our favourite records, and the way albums were put together to be a cohesive work of art, not just a string of singles?
Back in the day, we could play the Beatles' I'm so Tired from the White Album backwards and listen for the Paul's dead message. Back then, music wasn't for the background. Our records were cultural artefacts that we cherished, that gave us our identities and helped us find our tribes.
Born of a nostalgia for the heady days of albums with their cover art and liner notes, Imaginary Albums is a long playing collaboration between Blue Mountains writers and artists. Together they have invented ten albums that don't exist, but jolly well should.
These ten imaginary albums are the missed opportunities, the albums we wish existed. They are the uncanny cultural signifiers of our collective vinyl-addled fancies.
how we make imaginary albums
The writer invents the imaginary album - the band, the title, the tracklist and the liner notes - and then passes the baton to ..
..the artist or graphic designer, who creates the cover art and design for the imaginary album.
Together they make a cohesive piece of work that allows the audience to almost suspend disbelief. These imagined albums look and feel like the real thing.
We show them in a lovely space where you can see them and buy a framed limited edition print. There's 10 of each imaginary album.
With any luck, we do it all again next year to tie in with the 2020 Blue Mountains Music Festival.
Woo hoo!
HOW COOL WAS THE SHOW at Platform gallery
It was pretty cool. Kelly and Maddy from Platform Gallery report that people who came in to see the show really appreciated the feelgood magic of Imaginary Albums.
Mark and Nina at Cottontail Press printed out the orders of limited edition prints and had them out to discerning buyers in a jiffy.
After the show at Platform, we had one last spin at Rough Track Workshop and Gallery, 325 Evans Lookout Road, Blackheath last November.
If you fancy showing Imaginary Albums at your hip and groovy establishment, get in touch.
