David Pelham – Page 3 – { feuilleton }

March of the Penguins

top left: David Pelham’s classic design (1972); top right: photography
by Lionel F Williams (Eye) and SOA / Photonica (Cogs) (1996).
bottom left and right: photography by Véronique Rolland (2000 & 2008).

In April this year I wrote about James Pardey’s excellent site devoted to book covers from the Penguin science fiction range. I’m often pointing to various book cover galleries on Flickr and elsewhere but James’s site goes far beyond these, with credits and annotations for every cover on display. He emailed this week to let me know that his site has been considerably expanded, from 160 covers to 250 (!), bringing the timeline closer to the present. In addition the site has improved page layouts which enable you to study the evolution of each title. All design sites should be this good.

And coincidentally, Anne S mentioned in the comments yesterday that she’s been adding some Penguin Classics covers to her Eye Candy for Bibliophiles site. Lots of other worthwhile viewing there, including some of the old Puffin covers for Alan Garner.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Penguin science fiction
• A Clockwork Orange: The Complete Original Score
• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal
• Penguin Surrealism
• Juice from A Clockwork Orange
• Penguin book covers
• Clockwork Orange bubblegum cards
• Alex in the Chelsea Drug Store

Penguin science fiction

The Drought, 1968; design by Richard Hollis, photography by Dr. J Comroe.

James Pardey contacted me earlier this week announcing his site devoted to Penguin Books’ science fiction covers. I posted some of my own dishevelled copies a while back and this news gives me an excuse to throw up another Ballard cover. Pardey’s site is just the kind of thing I enjoy seeing, with a comprehensive collection and detailed notes for each design. The front page is especially good since you can see immediately how the look of the titles evolved, from spare layouts and pictorial covers through to bold graphic design which culminates in David Pelham’s great run as designer during the 1970s. Creative Review posted a talk Pelham gave a couple of years ago which explores his work at Penguin and touches on the covers he did for Ballard. A shame they didn’t do a complete set of Ballard’s titles at the time, I’d have loved to see how he treated the other books.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal
• Penguin Surrealism
• Penguin book covers

Alan Aldridge: The Man With Kaleidoscope Eyes

I’ve never been all that keen on Alan Aldridge‘s brand of psychedelic art but it’s worth noting here the (London) Design Museum retrospective which runs from 10 October to 25 January, 2009. Aldridge’s work as a designer and illustrator for Penguin Books in the Sixties impresses me more than his subsequent illustrated Beatles lyrics and The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper Feast (1973), a pair of books which seemed ubiquitous in the 1970s. Flickr has a decent selection of his book covers which included a run of sf paperbacks in 1967. Ballard’s The Wind from Nowhere is the very slight debut novel which the author prefers to forget. Where Ballard in Penguin is concerned, David Pelham’s work a few years later was a far more suitable match.

Seeing Aldridge honoured with a big retrospective make me wonder why Roger Dean hasn’t yet been given the same accolade. Dean for me is by far the better artist in terms of distinctive and memorable imagery; he’s also a better draughtsman and far more imaginative designer (not to mention having always been a speculative architect). I suspect Dean’s reputation is still blighted by his associations with Yes and the general antipathy which that band’s name generates in a certain middle-aged sector of Britain’s cultural commentariat. Ballard’s name was equally blighted in literary circles by his science fiction associations and it was Barcelona, not London, which honoured him with a major exhibition recently. There may be some home-grown reappraisals in the offing but I won’t hold my breath.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The book covers archive
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ballard in Barcelona
• The New Love Poetry
• Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal
• Penguin designer David Pelham talks
• Barney Bubbles: artist and designer

A Clockwork Orange: The Complete Original Score

CBS 73059; construction by Karenlee Grant, photo by David Vine (1972).

A1 Timesteps (13:50)
A2 March From A Clockwork Orange (7:00)
B1 Title Music From A Clockwork Orange (2:21)
B2 La Gazza Ladra (5:50)
B3 Theme From A Clockwork Orange (1:44)
B4 Ninth Symphony: Second Movement (4:52)
B5 William Tell Overture (1:17)
B6 Country Lane (4:43)

Viddy well the stuff of obsessions, O my brothers: Kubrick, cover design and electronic music in one convenient 12-inch package. Those of us in Britain who were too young to see A Clockwork Orange during its initial run had to wait a long time for its re-release after Stanley K withdrew the film from circulation. Until bootleg VHS copies started to turn up in the 80s I knew the film mostly from the MAD Magazine parody and the soundtrack album which was ubiquitous in secondhand record shops. Having become familiar with the score, an additional layer of frustration was added when it became apparent that two soundtrack albums had appeared in the 1970s, the “official” one, which was a mix of the orchestral and electronic music used in the film, and another which contained all the music Walter (later Wendy) Carlos recorded.

The Wendy Carlos music was the principal attraction for this electronic music obsessive and I fretted for a long while trying to find a copy of her Complete Original Score album which was paraded in all its elusive glory on old CBS vinyl inner sleeves. Half the tracks are present on the official release but the omissions are crucial: Timesteps, the incredible composition which accompanies Alex’s first deprogramming session was edited down from thirteen to five minutes, there was Carlos’s Moog version of Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra (an orchestral version is used in the film) and also an original piece, Country Lane, intended to accompany Alex’s police brutality session at the hands of his former droogs. The score was one of the first projects to successfully incorporate a vocoder into electronic compositions; Rachel Elkind, Carlos’s regular collaborator, provided the vocalisations. Finally securing a copy was no disappointment, in fact I was overwhelmed. This is still my favourite Wendy Carlos album and one of my top five favourite analogue synth albums. The transcription of La Gazza Ladra is nothing short of miraculous, thundering away with the power of a full orchestra yet created by laboriously recording one note at a time. (Wendy Carlos’s very thorough website goes into detail about the recording process.)

Continue reading “A Clockwork Orange: The Complete Original Score”

Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal

Detail from La Havane by René Portocarrero; photo by C. Marker.

This week’s book finds are a pair of titles I hadn’t come across before in these particular editions, another haul from the vast continent that is the Penguin Books back catalogue. Labyrinths I’ve had for years in a later edition (see below) but the cover of this one seems more suited to Borges (as much as he can be illustrated) than the somewhat bland Surrealism of illustrator Peter Goodfellow. René Portocarrero (1912–1985) was a Cuban painter with a post-Picasso style who specialised in hallucinogenic profiles like the one here. And it’s a guess but I’d bet the “C. Marker” who photographed the painting is French filmmaker Chris Marker (who I compared to Borges last year), director of La Jetée and Sans Soleil. Marker worked as a photo-journalist for many years and made a documentary entitled ¡Cuba Sí! in 1961.

Continue reading “Penguin Labyrinths and the Thief’s Journal”