Here's the publishers' description of one of them.
Explore the world as you never knew it with Vargic's Astonishing Miscellany of Curious Maps.
Vargic's Miscellany is a collection of 64 maps and infographics. See the world mapped out by stereotypes; discover the Internet in cartographical form; marvel at the maps of global technology and culture; and explore the world through infographics and statistics.
This wonderful and strange atlas is a treasure trove of interesting, unexpected and bizarre facts - a glorious celebration of our big beautiful diverse world.
Martin Vargic is an amateur graphic designer from Slovakia who rose to international fame in late January 2014, when his work 'Map of the Internet 1.0' went viral, generating hundreds of thousands of hits and Facebook shares.
Thanks to Kenneth Field for the tipoff to the fact that it is International Music Day today.
The day has been celebrated since 1975 at the initiative of the world-renowned violinist and humanist Lord Yehudi Menuhin, then President of the International Music Council under UNESCO.
The decision was made in 1973 at the Council’s General Assembly in Lausanne, with the aim of promoting peace, cultural exchange, and mutual respect among nations through the universal language of music.
Kenneth has been creating a map a day all year so far, using AI to create them.
- Take a tour through Britain’s Top 50 music locations with a specially-designed road trip and playlist - Find out how the places, spaces and people of the British Isles have inspired composers, songwriters and musicians from classical to pop and beyond - Visit over 700 live music venues and over 350 festivals including those in the most stunning locations
Features of the Great British Music Map:
- Fold-out map and reference guide showing all of Britain’s musical locations and must-visits on a single sheet - Features Britain’s top 50 music locations as well as a unique road trip that connects them all (with accompanying playlist) - Full-colour, two-sided map printed on FCS-certified professional mapping paper - Map reverse features space for notes and even a place to rest your mug - Other Great British maps include the Great British Adventure Map and the Great British Food & Drink Map
A close friend used to have all four-album covers of Brian Eno’s ambient music series framed reverentially in smooth beech and hung as art in his living room.
Music for Airports (1979), The Plateaux of Mirror (with Harold Budd 1980), Day of Radiance (with Laraaji 1980), and On Land (1982) all share a cover art theme of partial map representations with a topographically knowing nod to pop art.
Hung in sequence on a wall the album covers were as striking and as artistic as the music they represent.
It is probably not possible for a single recording to be acknowledged as the starting point for a whole musical genre but ‘Ambient 1 Music For Airports’ comes some way to achieving that feat. Although it certainly was not the first ‘ambient music’, it was the first record to specifically adopt the label ‘ambient music’. Brian Eno had started exploring abstract electronica in his 1975 album ‘Discreet Music’ before moving onto work with Talking Heads and producing their ground breaking albums ‘More Songs about Buildings and Food (1978), ‘Fear of Music (1979) and ‘Remain in Light’ (1980)’’, a trilogy that sound-tracked my late teenage years.
As a teenager, ambient music was as unfathomable as penguins trying to grasp jazz, it simply was not on my radar until I got an ‘in’ with the Brian Eno/David Byrne genre busting, or is that genre defining, I’m not quite sure which even now, ‘My Life in The Bush of Ghosts’ (1981).
Here's the track 'Regiment':
Producer, Associated Performer, Composer: Brian Eno
Producer, Associated Performer, Composer: David Byrne
Drums, Associated Performer: Chris Frantz
Bass Guitar, Associated Performer: Busta Cherry Jones
Associated Performer, Drums: David van Tieghem
Associated Performer, Voice: Dunya Yusin
This was an album that employed samples of radio shows, sermons, an exorcism, chanting of the Qu’ran, cawing rooks and the voice of Lebanese singer Samira Tewfik. Few albums have had to fend off so many lawsuits, offending as it did both some Christians and some Muslims. Its initial critical reception was mixed but not from me - now I had to explore everything that Eno had made, and that included his ambient work.
It was whilst in Berlin producing David Bowie’s Low album in 1977 that Eno started work on ‘Music for Airports’ and he added parts that were looped from Robert Wyatt on piano and the avant-garde jazz guitarist Fred Frith, who I once saw in the 1980s in an upstairs room of a pub in Sheffield with three men and a dog.
Wyatt and Frith were both involved with Mike Oldfield early in his career too... more on Oldfield throughout the blog.
Although musicians contributed, Eno stated that machines predominantly made the album. In this it was a precursor for a whole direction for the creation of music to go in and this found further expression in the manic chop and paste rhythmic assemblage that ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’ became.
Music for Airports is a wandering, rather aimless piece of music whose tone is set by piano motifs that are arrhythmic and with melody barely hinted at.
Eno describes his ambient music as something that “is intended to induce calm and a space to think”, he has also referred to it as “music to resign you to the possibility of death” which doesn’t appear to be the ideal music to listen to in an airport waiting room.
What ‘Music for Airports’ does not do is demand active attention and in that it has a lineage back to ‘Musique d’ameublement’ (Furniture Music), the phrase given by French composer and pianist Erik Satie (1866-1925) to his sparse piano motif led minimalist compositions.
Satie’s work, instantly recognizable, a century after his death, were an influence on the young Brian Eno and that is both acknowledged by Eno himself and is straight-forward to recognize when listened to side by side. Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 is perhaps the most widely known of his short works.
Which brings us back to the cover-art of Eno’s quartet of ambient albums.
A representation of the abstract landscapes that the music inside conjures with.
A melancholic air of beauty is all round, a grey day of scudding clouds and intermittent drizzle is evoked, a beauty that is sometimes so under-stated that it is hard to see, something that the cartographic suggestions give possibility to.
Or maybe that’s just the geographer in me.
And quite striking on a living room wall.
Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.
This is a chunky book and a great endeavour from the cartographer Damien Saunder.
It is clothed in black cloth and with an embossed LP with cartographic meridians.
It features a wealth of album covers, quite a few of which are familiar but many of which are new to me.
I have been discovering some new bands from this book, which is always a good sign.
Publishers' description:
Presenting 415 album covers – beautifully reproduced, expertly laid out and accompanied by deeply researched text – Maps on Vinyl will especially appeal to map enthusiasts, vinyl junkies, music fans, graphic designers and artists.
The book is the brainchild of renowned Australian cartographer Damien Saunder, whose expertise has been utilised by Apple, National Geographic, Earth (the world’s largest atlas) and even Roger Federer. A keen crate-digger, he has amassed possibly the world’s most extensive private collection of records featuring maps on their covers, resulting in this one-of-a-kind book.
Records by artists including Madonna, Oasis, Coldplay, Grateful Dead, Bob Marley, XTC, MC5, Queen, New Order, James Brown, Brian Eno and Weezer are featured, with cover art created by many giants of the design world, including Peter Saville, Curtis McNair, Richard Gray, Alton Kelly, Stanley Mouse, Neville Garrick, Roger Dean and Pedro Bell.
The records headlined span music from 1939 to today, and the book is divided into eight chapters highlighting different aspects of the collection – ‘C(art)ography’, ‘We Built This City’, ‘On the Road’, ‘African Beats’, ‘Astroworlds’, ‘Ocean Whispers’, ‘Maps with Attitude’ and ‘Music from Here’.
Maps on Vinyl is a beautiful artefact, but it’s also an important historical and cultural document, revealing how maps have been used in album cover design to reinforce a lyrical story, share a political view, express concern for the state of the world or creatively identify the origins of the music and the people who make it.
My copy was was purchased from Stanford's in London and is a signed first edition, and was also purchased with my RGS discount.
It's definitely a coffee table kind of book. One to browse and point out - "oh yes, I had that on vinyl" or "one of my favourites"...
I used to use Radio Garden but it changed its interface... I used to listen to a American classic rock radio station which was based in Chicago, and which used to go out during the evening rush hour at a time when I was going to bed, so I'd fall asleep listening to the traffic building up on the interstate, and some great tunes... then that stopped broadcasting free of charge and needed an app which didn't work outside the USA.
Tune Journey is a globe featuring hundreds of circles - each of which is a radio station... spin the globe and dive into radio stations around the world.
At the moment this is still open and free, and looks excellent.
Why not head for a random country and see what's on the radio.
I popped to Iceland of course, and the first radio station I clicked on was playing this lengthy raga featuring Jan Garbarek, Ustad Fateh Ali Khan and musicians from Pakistan.
I remember when albums came on vinyl and inside a large 12" square cardboard sleeve, perhaps with additional liners, booklets and other designs which opened out in different ways. The cover design was important as were all the notes, lyrics and other elements of the packaging.
CDs don't have the same magic, and of course many people now stream music rather than owning physical products.
Some album covers have geographical features on them, and there used to be a collection of these which I blogged about some time ago on my old Geography and all that Jazz blog. It's an idea that comes back from time to time.
Do you have ideas for examples of album covers which were quite geographical in their imagery.
This would make a good challenge for students - to find a suitable image and then label it with the feature, although you may need to provide them with some.
Here's an example.
Houses of the Holy (1973) - Led Zeppelin
This was designed by Aubrey Powell, an Old Elean (which means he was a pupil at the school where I currently teach in Ely) and features the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.
More on his work with Hipgnosis later on the blog.
Here's one closer to home for me.
The Stranglers had an album in 2004 called 'Norfolk Coast' and the cover photo by Harrison Funk was taken on the Norfolk coast... at Hunstanton. It was mostly written by their bass player who retreated to Holme-next-the-Sea on the coast in 1999 when feeling disillusioned and wrote a lot of music which became the album.
The cover is shot on the carstone boulders revealed when the tide goes out at Hunstanton near to its famous stripy cliffs.
Sadly, the seaweed which used to cloak the boulders has largely disappeared over the years...
Maps also feature on lots of albums of course, and I shall certainly be sharing examples from the wonderful book 'Maps on Vinyl' by cartographer Damien Saunder which I have on the shelves of my GeoLibrary. More on this to come.
Can you share your favourite examples of geographical features on album covers?
Visit the Google Form here to make your suggestions and I'll add some of them in a later update post.
