After an unsuccessful search for a web video of the opening credits of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”, I am writing about one of the most underrated albums ever.
Tubeway Army’s “Replicas” Is not only a phenomenal record but the design of the cover is also amazing. It fully demonstrates the stark emptiness of the album and is intensely of the moment (the moment in this case being England in 1979). The title of the record refers to the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K. Dick. The book was later the basis of the film “Blade Runner”. The dystopian future referenced in all these works is plainly evident in the album art. Alone in a sparse room an androidish man is greeted with a skewed reflection of himself in a window. He looks frozen and mechanical. The light bulb in the room lies perfectly in the middle of the images but the unexpected heaviness of the right side of the frame makes this seem impossible. While there is a line down the middle of the image created by the window frame, my eye is drawn to the man standing on the right side to such an extent that I want him to have more space. The room is empty yet he feels crushed. The whole image feels stagnant yet off kilter. This feeling is added to by the way the text is crushed up into the top right corner.
Another way that the artist moves our eye around the frame is to reflect images from one side of the picture to the other. For instance, the top right lettering is reflected by the neon sigh coming through the window. The light fixture on the bottom right of the image draws a visual line up to the crescent moon visible in the window which in turn creates visual tension with the light bulb. All of these elements add to the solitude of the figure in the center of the frame. These feelings of isolation and futurism are the main themes of the album and come through perfectly in the stark cover art.
