“The light was very influential for me in terms of what we did with Hipgnosis,” Powell later revealed in a Record Collector interview.Ĭulled from performances on the European leg of Pink Floyd’s Division Bell tour of 1994, Pulse was a forward-looking album – both sonically and visually. Hipgnosis co-founder Aubrey Powell first visited the neighbouring island of Formentera with Dave Gilmour in 1968, and later returned with Syd Barrett. The movie told an ominous tale of heroin addiction set against the spectacular backdrop of the Balearic island of Ibiza, but while Pink Floyd’s music reflected the island’s unique golden light, the Hipgnosis-designed sleeve (depicting a film still of two characters playing around a windmill, processed in a dark room to make it appear like a psychedelic trip) also holds its own among the best Pink Floyd album covers.Īdmittedly, it no doubt helped that the band and their design team had prior knowledge of the Balearics. Though recorded for the soundtrack to Barbet Schroeder’s 1969 film, More, the music Pink Floyd delivered for the Franco-Swiss filmmaker was robust enough to work as a standalone album. Photography: Robert Truman | Design: Aubrey Powell, Peter Curzon, Michael Johnson The power to change the normal into the abnormal by a simple twist of fate. It’s partly sci-fi and partly about power. As she passed the street lights at the side of the road, they would seem to curve in an unusual manner. He came up with an interesting concept and, with some input from me, we decided on a young woman walking a desert road near Joshua Tree in California. “At the top was Michael Johnson from the Johnson Banks studio. “So I set about compiling a list of people I wanted to work with,” Powell continued. Of its conception, Hipgnosis’ co-founder Aubrey Powell told The Browse Gallery: “The design for The Early Years had been very dry and a graphic based on the original Pink Floyd touring van of 1966, which was black with a diagonal white stripe. Though a posthumously released collection, The Later Years nonetheless sports a sleeve more than worthy of its place alongside the best Pink Floyd album covers. Illustration: Nick Mason (original artwork) | Photography: Tony May (CD reissue) | Design: Hipgnosis (Storm Thorgerson and Peter Curzon), Jon Crossland (CD reissue) For the 1996 CD reissue, however, Hipgnosis’ Storm Thorgerson and Peter Curzon came up with the idea of a three-dimensional depiction of Mason’s original idea, and the real-life relic was duly constructed, mostly out of wood, by Jon Crossland and photographed by Tony May. That captured the compilation’s spirit: while it was a seemingly random assortment of tracks, it included the band’s first two Syd Barrett-fronted hits, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, along with then hard-to-source cuts such as Julia Dream, Paint Box and Careful With That Axe, Eugene, and the previously unreleased Biding My Time – all of which ensured the collection was a must-have for fans.įittingly, Relics came housed in a memorable sleeve depicting its very own “antique and curio”, with a black-and-white line drawing by Nick Mason depicting a wonderfully Heath Robinson-esque dream machine, conjured directly from Mason’s imagination. ![]() Photography: Aubrey Powell, Peter Christopherson (uncredited) | Design: TCP (Hipgnosis)įirst issued by EMI’s budget label, Starline, in 1971, to help maintain Pink Floyd’s profile while they grappled with that year’s Meddle, Relics was subtitled A Bizarre Collection Of Antiques And Curios. ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s generally viewed as the best point of entry for newcomers, while the specially re-recorded version of Money and a unique edit of Shine On You Crazy Diamond also ensure it’s an essential purchase for dedicated fans. Though the band viewed it as a compromise, A Collection Of Great Dance Songs has since become a mandatory release. The title, A Collection Of Great Dance Songs, reportedly derived from drummer Nick Mason’s sardonic comment that their US label “probably thought we were a dance band”, so designers Hipgnosis (working under the pseudonym TCP) came up with a cover image depicting a pair of dancers held in place. However, when they discovered the band had nothing new in the can, they decided upon a “best of” collection, to be released in time for 1981’s Christmas holiday season. 20: ‘A Collection Of Great Dance Songs’ (1981)Īfter The Wall became a global smash, Pink Floyd’s US label, Columbia, were keen to issue more product.
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