Lemur Voice — Divided
The Art Corner was a series of articles by graphic artist Mattias Norén, who was part of the DPRP team and designed the layout we had at the time. In this series, Mattias reviewed the artwork of albums. The series started in January 1999 and ran for about 18 months.
The original introduction of the series is included below and will tell you what it was all about. This category no longer runs, so information about submitting an album for review has been removed, but we're keeping the archived articles as a separate series in the Features category.
Check out Mattias Norén's company website: ProgArt!
Dear visitor of The Art Corner!
Some people say that it's just the inside that counts, but I'm actually one of those men that cares much about the outside as well! :-)
The Art Corner only concentrates on the outside. What I think about the inside, the music, I'll keep for myself in this case.
Each album has been given 1 to 5 points in seven different categories.
- Design / Composition: Is the idea and layout good?
- Technical skill: Is the artist good at what he is doing?
- Connection to the music: Is the artwork inspired by the music, album title and the lyrics? Does it feel good to look at the cover at the same time you listening to the music?
- Logotype: How good is the design of the logotype?
- Typography: How good is the typography? (cover and backcover)
- Booklet: How good is the typography, artwork, layout and paper quality?
- Disc: How good is the typography, artwork, layout on the disc?
Mattias Norén
Lemur Voice — Divided (Telstar / Sky - TCD 20002-2, 1999)
Design
Artwork by Goswijn Simons
Painting in artwork by Goswijn Simons
Portrait paintings on back of booklet by Lonneke Pennings
Pictures by John Wouters
Scores
| category | score |
|---|---|
| Design and composition | |
| Technical skill | |
| Connection to the music | |
| Logotype | |
| Typography | |
| Booklet | |
| Disc |
Score: 3.0
Comments
There has been a lot of talk about the similarities between this cover and the new Dream Theater cover (Scenes From A Memory). Someone said that Lemur Voice had made a copy of DT's artwork. Please get those thought out of your head! First of all, I think that Divided was released before Scenes From A Memory, so if one of these is a copy it must be the DT disc. But I actually don't think a cover with a distorted face on it can be called a copy. There must be hundreds of albums with the same motive on. Take, for example, Brave by Marillion.
I find Divided more striking than Scenes. I guess it's because of the clearer colours and the large logotype. On the other hand, I think Scenes is better executed and has a lot more emotions in it. The booklet of Divided is a sad chapter, though, filled with ugly pictures. It's also hard to read some lyrics because there is too much going on in the images behind the words. On the back of the booklet, there are five paintings of the band members. They are really nice, but they don't work very well together with the rest of the artwork.
Another thing that annoys me is that the record company's name is printed in the lower left corner of the front cover. Yikes!
Still, this cover is 10 times better than the one on the previous Lemur Voice album, Insights, but I do prefer the simpler booklet of that album compared to the Divided mess.
Update!
Guitarist Marcel Coenen is running the Facebook page for Lemur Voice.
