A few days before the end of the year festivities, when an astronomical quantity of vinyls will be bought, let's go back to five magnificent covers, completely outside the codes and which leave room for some music as splendid as sometimes neglected."

A single figure can show how much the vinyl market has been in crisis in recent months. 160 million. The current world production capacity is 160 million and the demand is estimated to be more than double that, between 320 and 400 million according to the American producer and sound engineer Bobby Owsinski. 

Manufacturing delays are becoming increasingly untenable and more than damaging for independent labels and artists. There are several reasons for this: the fire in February 2020 of the largest vinyl lacquer factory at Apollo Transco in California or the huge quantity of vinyl produced by pop diva Adele for the release of her latest album: there is talk of more than 500,000 vinyls produced. This literally saturated production. And since the resurgence of vinyl for all styles of music, the majors have had to reserve the production lines because of their large volume of orders
The vinyl market is still flourishing, with a 10.2% increase in France and more than 4.5 million records sold in 2020.
This medium now appeals to more than just music lovers who like to "hold" music in their hands and are nostalgic for a time when music was not consumed with a random playlist on a music platform, but was chosen, watched and bought at its true value. The music lover wants to be able to display his collection in his home and communicate his taste in music to any visitor. The vinyl sleeve has thus become a way of demonstrating its originality, its sense of aesthetics for musicians and a new medium for artists. The impalpability of music pushes its listener to want to put images, words, a discourse on what he hears and what better than a thirty centimeters cardboard sleeve? We all remember the cover of the vinyl or CD that introduced us to our favourite musician in our youth or early childhood? What would the Köln Concert be without this more than pure white cover where Keith Jarrett appears in communion with his head bowed over his piano? Or this box set devoted to the work of György Ligeti published by the Wergo label without the drawings by Ligeti himself? 

Does burning music on vinyl still make sense in 2021, at a time when with a few clicks you can access the largest record library ever created by man for only 10€ per month? The way vinyl is recorded has nothing to do with the time of its creation. How long will the love of the object and the sacredness of the listening moment stand up to the (dull) simplicity of listening with a computer and headphones? The surges in music listening media are sometimes more surprising than we think. The cassette has been making a strong comeback for the last year or two.
With the end of year celebrations just around the corner, when an astronomical quantity of vinyl records will be bought, it is an opportunity to explore five magnificent covers, completely outside the codes, which leave room for some equally splendid but unfortunately sometimes neglected music.

This record by Moondog (released in 1969 by Columbia) is considered by connoisseurs as one of his best if not his masterpiece. This eponymous disc is a good entry point for those who want to discover this musician with a fascinating career because jazz musicians as well as classical musicians from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra play music that is neither classical nor jazz but a sort of missing link that would make a step aside from these two aesthetics. Moondog's music is quite unclassifiable and inimitable. We discover him in profile, dressed as always like a prophet with his immense beard of a magician lost in our 20th century. This record features the first version of his absolute hit: Bird's Lament , dedicated to his friend the legendary saxophonist Charlie Parker. To listen to here.

Alan Hovhaness And God Created Great Whales - Columbia Masterwoks - 1971 is a record with a more than majestic cover that illustrates to the letter the masterpiece of this American composer still underestimated in France. This orchestral work, conducted by André Kostelanetz, is intended for humpback whale song and orchestra. Hovhaness incorporates humpback whale songs collected by the bio-acoustician Roger Payne, published under the title Songs of the Humpback Whale by CRM Records, which sold a record 100,000 copies for a recording of sounds from the wild. The disc also includes a number of movements from Jean Sibelius's stage music The Tempest, three of Nikos Skalkottas's thirty-six Greek dances, Kurt Weill's famous Mack The Knife and Mikhail Glinka's no less famous version of Jota Aragonesa. The beautiful humpback whale is drawn by the American painter Thomas B. Allen. To listen to here.

Big Ego published on the Giorno Poetry Systems label in 1978, is a rather unique compilation of musicians, poets, performers and multidisciplinary artists from the United States. From left to right on the cover: John Giorno (poet and founder of the label), Meredith Monk, Philip Glass and two children; of Glass ? Monk? or Giorno? The investigation is launched. This label was born - according to Giorno - from the observation that poetry was 75 years behind music or painting in terms of modern technology and mass media. This is the ambition of this double disc which brings together artists such as Laurie Anderson, Robert Ashley, Patti Smith, William S. Burroughs, Bernard Heidsieck and some musicians such as Philip Glass, Meredith Monk or Otis Brown. Listen to Laurie Anderson, Three Experiences.

Dominique Lawalrée was a Belgian musician who died in 2019 and who unfortunately remains too intimate for curious music lovers. This multi-faceted composer - who could be wrongly called a 'minimalist' - had a musical ear that was more than open to the music of his time. He drew inspiration from composers such asErik Satie, Brian Eno, Federico Mompou and Morton Feldman, and had no qualms about worshipping (to the point of writing listening guides for) The Beatles or Led Zeppelin. In Vis à vis published by Walrus (founded by the musician to publish his music), we find our "big sounding man" (the expression is his own) at the piano in his almost composed and almost improvised works. On the cover, Dominique Lawalrée in his first flat: a simple photo, well anchored in its time with the telephone and the clock hanging on the wall. And a music that is clearly more modern than her wallpaper. To listen to Listen to the quiet voice.

Through The Looking Glass (1983 - RCA Red Seal) by the Japanese singer-songwriter Midori Takada is one of those mythical albums that had little impact on their generation at the beginning but became best-sellers years later and still fascinate music lovers and musicians today for several reasons. Firstly, for its strange and disturbing cover illustrated by the mysterious artist Yoko Ochida as a tribute to the Douanier Rousseau. And secondly for its very particular and personal music which is at the border between the minimalist music inspired by the African experiments of Steve Reich and the ambient music very fashionable at that time. Midori Takada is the only instrumentalist on this record and in only four works she opens the doors to a rhythmic, colourful music (we can hear the ocarina, the harmonium, (cow) bells, coca-cola bottle etc.). This music is richer than it appears at first listen - which is the hallmark of the ambient - because it contains subtle counterpoints of melodies with unheard-of sounds for its time, which require more than a discreet listening. To listen to Mr Henri Rousseau's Dream.

François Mardirossian