In the run-up to the festive season, when an astronomical number of vinyl records will be on sale, let's take a look back at five magnificent covers, completely outside the box, which make way for some music as splendid as it is sometimes overlooked. "

A single figure can show just how much of a crisis the vinyl market has been in recent months. 160 million. Current worldwide production capacity is 160 million, and demand is estimated at more than double that - between 320 and 400 million, according to American producer and sound engineer Bobby Owsinski. 

Manufacturing lead times are becoming increasingly untenable, with delays that are more than damaging for independent labels and artists. There are several reasons for this: the fire in February 2020 at Apollo Transco's largest vinyl lacquer plant in California, or the huge quantity of vinyl produced by pop diva Adèle for the release of her latest album: we're talking about over 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 their production lines because of the sheer volume of orders
The vinyl market is still flourishing, with growth of 10.2% in France and more than 4.5 million records sold by 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 wasn't consumed with a playlist randomly thrown together on some music platform, but was chosen, watched and bought for 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 means of demonstrating originality and a sense of aesthetics for musicians, and a new medium for artists. The impalpability of music pushes listeners to want to put images, words, a discourse on what they hear, and what better way than with a thirty-centimetre cardboard sleeve? We all remember the vinyl or CD cover that introduced us to our favorite musician in our youth or early childhood? What would the Köln Concert be without that uncluttered white cover showing Keith Jarrett taking communion with his head bowed over his piano? Or the Wergo box set devoted to the works of György Ligeti without the drawings by Ligeti himself? 

Does it still make sense to record music on vinyl in 2021, when you can access the largest record library ever created by mankind for just €10 a month with just a few clicks of the mouse? The way vinyl is recorded has nothing to do with the era in which it was created. How much longer will the love of the object and the sacralization of the listening moment stand up to the (dreary) simplicity of listening with a computer and headphones? Surges in music listening media are sometimes more surprising than we think. Cassettes have been making a strong comeback over the past year or two.
With the festive season just around the corner, when an astronomical number of vinyl records will be on sale, it's a good time to explore five magnificent covers, completely outside the box, which make way for some equally splendid but unfortunately sometimes overlooked music.

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

Alan Hovhaness And God Created Great Whales - Columbia Masterwoks - 1971 is an album with a more than majestic cover, illustrating to the letter the masterpiece by this American composer, still underestimated in France. This orchestral work, conducted by André Kostelanetz, is scored for humpback whale song and orchestra. Hovhaness incorporates humpback whale songs collected by bio-acoustician Roger Payne, and published under the title Songs of the Humpback Whale by CRM Records, with record sales for a recording of sounds from nature (100,000 copies). The album also includes a number of movements from Jean Sibelius's incidental music La Tempête, three of Nikos Skalkottas's thirty-six Greek dances, Kurt Weill's famous Mack The Knife and the no less famous version of Mikhail Glinka's Jota Aragonesa. The beautiful humpback whale is drawn by American painter Thomas B. Allen. Listen 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 label founder), Meredith Monk, Philip Glass and two children; Glass? Monk? or Giorno? The inquiry is launched. This label was born - according to Giorno - from the observation that poetry was 75 years behind music and painting in terms of modern technology and mass media. Such 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 musicians such as Philip Glass, Meredith Monk and Otis Brown. Listen to Laurie Anderson, Three Experiences.

Dominique Lawalrée was a Belgian musician who passed away in 2019, and who unfortunately remains too intimate for curious music lovers. This multi-faceted composer - who could be wrongly described as 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) The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. In Vis à vis published by Editions Walrus (founded by the musician to publish his music), we find our "fat man full of sounds" (the expression is his) at the piano in his almost composed, almost improvised works. The cover shows Dominique Lawalrée in his first apartment: a simple photo, firmly anchored in its time, with the telephone and clock hanging on the wall. And the music is clearly more modern than the wallpaper. To listen to Listen to the quiet voice.

Through The Looking Glass (1983 - RCA Red Seal) by Japanese composer and performer Midori Takada is one of those mythical albums that had little impact on their generation at first, but years later became bestsellers that still fascinate music lovers and musicians today, for several reasons. Firstly, for its strange, almost disturbing cover, illustrated by the mysterious artist Yoko Ochida as a tribute to the Douanier Rousseau. And secondly, for its very distinctive, personal music, which straddles the border between minimalist music inspired by the African experimentation of Steve Reich and the ambient music that was very much in vogue at the time. Midori Takada is the only instrumentalist on this album, and in just four works, she opens the doors to a rhythmic, colorful music (you can hear the ocarina, harmonium, cowbells, Coca-Cola bottle, etc.). This music is richer than it appears on first listen - which is the hallmark of ambient - as it conceals subtle counterpoints of melodies with sounds unheard of for its time, which require more than just discreet listening. To listen to Mr Henri Rousseau's Dream.

François Mardirossian