A 70s party at the Lightship Visual studio? We wish! Sadly no, just the new desktop for this week. This one comes from the inside of one of Hipgnosis’ finest. A party scene for 10cc’s very wonderful ‘How Dare You?’ album of 1975. There’s an intriguing telephonic theme running through the artwork of this album and some clever repetition of characters, some distraught, some cold and distant, others very sinister, building up a pseudo narrative which comes to a head at the party. All the characters on the outside of the sleeve reappear in this social scene, cleverly subverted by the fact that they’re all on the phone to outside ‘parties’. Maybe they’re ringing people on the other side of the room too. The possibilities are endless. The band, shortly about to disengage from each other can also be found amongst this cast of dozens. Highlight of the sleeve for mine though, is George Hardie’s liner graphics doing some rather macabre things with exploded drawings. The sleeve would be worth the purchase price of the 12″ alone, but this is also 10cc finest 45 minutes.

Posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
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