Joni Mitchell’s self-designed The Hissing of Summer Lawns scatters a bit of stardust, the olive green sleeve is one of Votel’s favourite hues. There are clusters of covers with reflective facade images, others of road bridges, fish-eye lens images, and many more sub-themes. He’s included many examples of Eastern European records – Communist regimes were, it seems very keen on modern buildings on record covers. The dynamic forms of Brazilian modernism pop up on several sleeves in the show, although Votel says that these were more popular with non-Brazilians than Brazilian musicians, for whom the buildings were rather less exotic. Votel comments that the musician probably had no idea it would become such a hugely popular tourist destination when he chose it quite soon after it opened. In Paris, The Stranglers’ JJ Burnel stands in front of the Pompidou Centre for his Euroman Cometh album. A stark image of London’s Centre Point is the unlikely cover star of Newcastle folk-rockers Lindisfarne’s All Fall Down album. The pick of these images is the sleeve for Pierre Henry’s Messe De Liverpool, composed for the alternative inauguration of the building, with the form of the building created in words. Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower pops up a few times, as does Frederick Gibberd’s Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, singled out by Jarvis Cocker, who wrote the catalogue introduction, as his favourite. Created for a record of ‘library’ background music by Music De Wolfe, Nick Bantock memorably depicts the tower being bent by a giant insect. Mostly drawn from the 1950s-70s, some relate to specific buildings, such as a trio featuring the Post Office Tower including Rubber Ruff, the first design that came to Votel’s mind for the show. In the exhibition and catalogue, the sleeves are loosely grouped into sub-themes. Doing the exhibition’s destroyed my house,’ he says, although you get the impression he doesn't mind too much – this was obviously a labour of love. ‘One things for sure, these records weren’t sat together in my collection. It’s amazing how often the architect doesn’t get a credit,’ he says, adding that as a designer, he’s sometimes bought records for their cover art, rather than for the music. ‘Some of the record sleeves are genius, others are the laziest in the world. And while most of the covers stick to the gallery’s modernist brief, his interpretation is flexible enough to take in Egyptian pyramids. ‘I’ve tried to show stuff people haven’t seen before and I think I’ve succeeded,’ he says, adding that his only rule was that he didn’t buy any more records but just chose from what he had already, and avoided retro nostalgia. Votel was keen not to present the obvious covers – citing Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which feature’s Chicago’s famous Marina City ‘corn cob’ high-rises as among those he sought to avoid. So what sort of modern architecture ends up on record sleeves? The answer is all sorts, from iconic forms (Le Corbusier, Brasília, Pompidou Centre, Trellick Tower) to far more banal and bonkers choices. The resulting exhibition is House Music – Architecture on Record Sleeves, featuring 100 architectural sleeves from Votel’s own collection. Not only is Andy Votel a DJ, record label owner (Finders Keepers Records) and collector of some 7,000 records, he’s also a fan of modern architecture and the designer of some 300 record sleeves including The Architect by singer/songwriter Jane Weaver (who also happens to be his wife). When Manchester’s The Modernist Gallery wanted to stage an exhibition about modernist architecture on record sleeves, they knew just the person to turn to.
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