3 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 3 album covers documented under the "surrealism" design theme, spanning the 1970s, 1990s. These covers sit within the rock, alternative tradition and feature work by The Dismemberment Plan, Pixies, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Each entry below includes the cover artwork, the designers and photographers behind it, and a short story about the visual choices that defined the release.
Travis Morrison made the strange digital cover of Emergency & I himself, pushing the pixels at a time when some people around the band thought the result looked terrible. Its warped cartoon world was consciously influenced by Fantastic Planet, using surreal imagery to express the anxiety and alienation running through the album.
For Pixies' final album before their original breakup, Vaughan Oliver and Simon Larbalestier built a false planetary surface from salt and real bull's eyes. The result is one of the strangest sleeves in the band's 4AD catalog: tactile, bodily and deliberately deceptive.
Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger created his first album cover for this progressive rock masterpiece, featuring his signature biomechanical imagery that would later define the Alien film franchise. The gatefold reveals an intricate maze of organic machinery.