The Music, Message, Band, and Everything Else: Tripdavon’s Album Poster
When searching for an album ad, I wanted to stick to the basics in order to find a deliverable that would fit the criteria in project 2. This way, I hoped to be able to pick something up in my analysis that would be directly applicable to my own work. After ignoring some interesting Myspace pages, I came across the site of the California-based band, Tripdavon. I immediately noticed the differences between their album poster for their first release: Tripdavon, and the album cover itself, and began picking apart the specifics.
The Album
The album description can be found on the band’s store website here:
http://www.tripdavon.com/store/
The intriguing thing about Tripdavon is how they present the genre they cater to, as the site describes their sounds on the first album as, “an eclectic collection of tracks that run the full spectrum of moods to suit your attitude. From Driving Rock to Introspective acoustic, this band has what you want.” The unspecific style and chaotic presentation of the album cover leaves much to be assumed. The border of spectators and scattering flames across what appears to be a burning field, seem to suggest some sort of destructive, chaotic notion to the band’s message.
The Poster
Fortunately, the poster offered some additional insight into the band itself and why some of those themes are necessary. A high contrast yellow banner stripe draws the band name out from the red motif of both the album and poster presentations. The audience is back, this time without a border separating it from the fire portrayed on the album cover, observing the band. Although the band is not on fire, a dense red color overlay gives it a similar effect to the album, as if to suggest juxtaposition between the band and the messages in the music. The rhetorical emphasis of this is supported by the album list displaying featured songs in opposing bold and normal typeface. An interesting choice was to limit the font size of the band website to that of the copyright information at the bottom of the poster, almost as if to suggest its unimportance, which seems rather unlikely. Another question is raised by the theme of the audience silhouettes, which may be in place not merely to show similarities between the album cover and the poster, but the band’s attentiveness to the fans as a primary concern evident in their music.
Nothing terribly flashy, but these elements seem to combine the album, band, and their messages well in a neatly packaged presentation with only a few themes that seem to beg for greater refinement.
The layer on top of them looks like a sheet that is dividing you from them. Almost like they are slowing being introduced by you and you could choose to continue to see more or just walk away. Not a very good promotional option. I do not like the layout of the photograph because each member looks very distant from one another. They all seem very uninteresting and uncomfortable to be there. It almost seems like they are in a waiting room.
Even in the promotional piece with the fire in the background and them as silhouette seems a bit off. The silhouette affect makes the musicians seem even more distant and not important, because the observer is more encouraged to look at the fire then the artist.
Is the silhouettes looking at the observer or themselves?
Are they watching something burn? Or are they turning their backs to it?
Submitted by CatTail1986 on Sun, 02/24/2008 - 21:00.The whole concept behind the silhouettes continues to perplex me as well. I've probably analyzed the use of fire, and the highlighted barrier between the silhouettes a dozen times now and still can't piece together a rational reasoning behind it. I can only assume that based on the music adhering to the rock genre in some sense, the red/fire motif is utilized to emphasize strong emotions of some sort, or perhaps decadence of society in the burning imagery. The poster itself does very little to explain the use of red by simply slapping it over a band image as well, and the shift in placement of the silhouettes leaves much to personal interpretation as pointed out.
Definitely a good lesson in improper placement and its implications.
Submitted by bfawaz on Mon, 02/25/2008 - 09:28.So, I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty sure that the silhouettes are the band. If you look at the poster, you can match up each of the silhouettes with a member of the band.
To me, it all looks pretty unprofessional. I feel like this is the same pose that so many bands have done. You can really do a more creative band photo.
Submitted by zmcnulty on Sun, 02/24/2008 - 22:37.