Record cover design
The records published by my imaginary band, The Nihilists( see this for the band's details!: click here).
01
Flour Titanium Joy
The very first album of the band, published in 1974. This album mainly consists of psychedelic rock and indie rock. As its cover suggest, this album would be quirky and "ridiculous"- the cyclopse-like creature with its feet upwards, the word " Titanium" is also written backwards. The band got asked a lot about the mysterious symbols besides the main figure- it's actually only a combination of the group members' initials. Rolling Stone rating 4.1/5.
02
Alphabetic Learner
The band's second album, published in 1975. This album continued and heightened the quirkiness and the band's signature style from the first album. The rhythm in this album mostly imitates the tone of music from children's cartoons, creating a dreamy, childhood-like atmosphere, yet the lyrics and some purposely off-key notes would suddenly pull the listeners out of this dream into a twisted version of wonderland, thus giving the audience a sense of chilliness and weirdness when listening to this album. New audience might take a while to accept this album. Rolling Stone rating 4.4/5.
The album cover continues the weirdness from the songs, imitating children's drawings. The cover design also include a ridicule version of the famous House-Tree-Person psycological test.
03
The Nihilists
The third album of the band, also the most famous and the best( regarded by critics and many fans), one. Published in 1977, this album is the work of many mature experienments in music, and it includes the greatest number of songs compared to the other albums. Just as its cover shows, this album is quite a colorful one- it consists of styles like blues rock, country rock, glitter rock, hard rock, etc. Although there have been criticizes about this album being ununited and too messy( much like its chaotic cover), this album is no doubt a splendid one. Rolling Stone rating 5/5.
04
Penny Fudge
The fourth album the band published in 1979. This is the most controversial album- the critics and some of the fans accused the band of adding more pop elements in this album for better sales, and it's against their rock spirit. There had also been rumors of lead singer Woolly, who's the only woman in the band, dictating the band as this album reflects mostly about women's dilemmas in patriachy and sacarsms towards the Hollywood spirit. Thus, despite being accused of its 'commericial style', the album in fact has the lowest sale of all the five albums. Rolling Stone rating 3.7/5. It wasn't until the 21st century did people really read into it.
05
Eternal Sleep
The fifth and final album of the band( or all the original band members), published in 1981, this album mainly consists of shoegazing rock. In this album, the band changed its usual quirky compositionand gave up its usual accentuate on vocal, but to pursue a more soft and gentle rythm( except few songs in this album that have been intense, which is also not exactly the band's usual style). Like all shoegazing rock, the vocal is elusive and hypnotic, hidden under heavy effector sound. This album was an inspiring one to the fans as the band experimented with new styles and the public thought this might mean that the rumors of the band having conflicts and were breaking up were untrue. However, looking back from the futurte, the melancholy tone of the album somewhat foreshadowed the upcoming event.
Three months after publishing this album, lead singer Agnes Woolly died of plane crash at the age of 27. The band broke up.
Five years and seven months after Woolly passed, the rest of the band members joined spontaneously to make the sixth album Saltlake Loonies( some of the songs based on Woolly's unfinished tapes), in rememberance of Agnes Woolly.