Coil – Horse Rotorvator album art
Source: genius.com License: All Rights Reserved.
CD cover
Horse Rotorvator is an album by English band Coil, featuring John Balance and Peter Christopherson. This is the band’s second studio album.
From Wikipedia:
The album title was inspired by a dream of Balance’s in which the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse slit the throats of their horses and assembled their jawbones into a device large enough to “plough up the waiting world.”
Initially released in the UK in 1986 by Force & Form, this post shows the 1988 re-release.
The cover was designed by Peter Christopherson himself. In the center, a fisheye photo by John Balance is framed by a circular contour. The title and the band name are shown in the four corners – COIL / HORSE / ROTOR / VATOR – in capital letters from Palatino.
The pale tones of the background and the typography, together with the image of a bronze horse, create an unexpected medieval aesthetic. I find the interior of the CD interesting, and by complementing the design with the fish-eye photo of the marble statue, there’s a connection between the ancient subject and the more or less modern style of photography. The Coil logo on the left-hand page with the acknowledgements also takes its place in this medieval aesthetic with a yellowish hue.
The design reinforces the neopagan spirit that the group asserts in its music and in the aesthetics it constructs.
Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.
CD booklet with acknowledgements in Palatino Italic
Source: ia802906.us.archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.
CD booklet with faux small caps
This post was originally published at Fonts In Use