Category Archives: album

NME’s “Worst Ever” Album Covers

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The NME jumped on the WTF album cover bandwagon with a list of its own “Worst Ever” album covers, but this once cutting-edge music pub has clearly fallen out of touch. Naming the Beatles (Magical Mystery Tour), Black Sabbath, and a few other luminaries in their worst-ever list was not only lazy, but a little bewildering. There are PLENTY of MORE awful LP covers than the ones they pictured…

For example, get an eyeful of the boring, stupid, but ultimately NOT “worst ever” cover for a Chris Brown recording called Graffiti,

Now granted, I don’t know anything about Chris Brown aside from the fact that he beat the living daylights out of his girlfriend a few years back and that his music does NOT appeal (give us old-school Isaac Hayes funk over reheated me-too hip hop any day of the week), but this album cover certainly is NOT one of the “worst ever” in spite of what the NME staff coughs up.

Granted, NME gets points for the Chumbawumba “live birth” album cover for Anarchy, and one from Royal Trux which is so vile it beggars belief. If NME were running a “three worst album covers ever” post, they might have something, but the other 47 or so are nowhere near close to being the worst ever made. No, this is just sad, lazy and pretty weak. Not to get all record nerdy about it, but five seconds worth of digging will come up with far more horrifying images, believe me.

NME doesn’t even get a pass on the sourcing of these covers, as many other collections of “best ever” and “worst ever” photos are tagged “as voted by you”. Not so on this particular group of awful album covers…ahh, NME, once upon a time you were tops in your field. Today?

And when it comes to “worst album covers”, with few exceptions, none of the records in the NME collection come close to being topped by this:

You may commence screaming now.

WTF Album Covers on Youtube

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We aren’t the only ones on the web obsessed with bad album covers–there are more bad album cover vids on Youtube than you can shake a copy of a Village People 12-inch single at. Which is probably a subtle hint that Turntabling should get into a bit of that, eh?



When I get some of the Turntabling Collection’s most horrifying album covers posted for posterity on Youtube, rest assured you’ll learn about it here.

–Joe Wallace

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Hyperbubble Drastic Cinematic Vinyl LP

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Drastic Cinematic is an ultra-indie vinyl LP from the label Pure Pop For Now People and will be quite rare and extremely hard to find soon–it’s a limited edition of 100 copies with a fabulous hand-designed/hand assembled cover.

The album itself? Utterly fantastic, especially if you’re a fan of soundtrack sounds by Tangerine Dream.

Hyperbubble is better known for bright, up-tempo robot pop with plenty of genre influences from bubblegum to electronica, but Drastic Cinematic is a departure from that–the soundtrack-y vibe is all through this vinyl record and Hyperbubble lays it on THICK with fat, heavy analog synth rhythms and pulsing beats that call to mind some of the most exciting electronic soundtracks of the 70s and early 80s.

Standout moments on this album include the great-for-driving Night Cruiser, and Blame It On The Bot. And don’t overlook the opening track Vox Noir which has an excellent “Beach Boys gone goth” sound.

If you were a fan of the soundtrack for The Park Is Mine or Thief, you owe it to yourself to own this. Sure, Drastic Cinematic by Hyperbubble is available via MP3 in the usual places, but the vinyl version of this is, in my mind, definitive. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, though I must say for transparency’s sake that the band used some of my photography for the album cover–maybe I’m not so impartial? Either way, if you are a fan of synth soundtrack music, have a listen and you will not regret it.

–Joe Wallace