"Perish Together As Fools" by Baltic Defense is a half-decent album but the cover's rubbish: a pretentious shot of a Cornish coastline at dusk.

Operator Topology's "There Wasn't An Afterlife" sounds promising, but the cover of a BMW 540i on a beach somehow lets it down.

Can anyone get the album covers together to post up?

Central Scots - You Have Seized Happiness

Sugary Glaswegian indie pop. Their 1985 single Kissing Circle garnered praise on the John Peel show, receiving the rare accolade of being played three times in a row, twice at different speeds, while Peel hummed and hahed over whether he preferred the faster or slower version of the song.

You Have Seized Happiness was released in December of the same year. It featured 8 tracks over 23 minutes and included a new, faster version of Kissing Circle, which had been rerecorded to suit Peel's tastes.

The band were subsequently signed to EMI, with their eponymous album emerging belatedly in 1991, following a long period of inactivity. Vocalist Sarah Cunningham later admitted that the delay was due to a combination of the label forgetting that the group were on their roster and the band member's uncertainty over whether they had actually been signed:

"We had a 50 grand advance from EMI sitting in a joint bank account. We weren't sure whether we were allowed to spend it, so we all just pretended that it wasn't there."

Central Scot's major label debut fleshed-out the frail lo-fi sound of their earlier work, at the expense of the group's fey charm. Released during the height of grunge, the record made very little impact and the band officially split in 1992. All four members now pursue careers outside the music industry.

You Have Seized Happiness was reissued in 2006 by the Russian Label - Green Tundra. It included 7 previously unreleased bonus tracks and the original version of Kissing Circle.

The daughter of Charlie Daniels, this Liz Phair-influenced, New York-based songstress followed up her successful Exile on Bleeker Street debut with this scathing concept album, a sombre treatise on the vagaries of fame. Her short career juddered to an awkward halt when she was dropped by EMI in January 2008.

cant get the text on the picture but this combo was too good to pass up

presenting Post Dural Puncture Headache with their fabulous debut The Dictates Of Reason.

Kevin Alejandra, We are always doing.

Kevin Alejandro may not be a familiar name in the charts, but he has been providing the soundtrack to competition dancing for the past 4 decades.

His career spans the world, from the dancehalls of Jamaica to the clubs of New York, but it was in the discos of northern England that Kevin Alejandro found his true niche, as young men, slashed of shirt and gold of medallion, strutted their stuff in venues such as The Cat's Whiskers in Burnley competing in regional heats for the World Disco Dance Championships.

Every night Kevin and his backing band played song after song - the hi-hat, the thumping basslines, the horns, all backed Kevin's trademark reverb wah wah guitar sound.

This re-release from 1978 contains the classics:

Back on the Bus
Town to Town
My shirt's open, but the bar's closed
and
If it's Friday, it must be Disco

Originally conceived as a chronicle of life on the road for a working disco band, it soon became the anthem for the dancing youth of the period, as they too travelled from competition to competition, heat to heat, in search of glory and titles.

If your dad has a nylon shirt and a medallion tucked away in his wardrobe, if he ever looks misty eyed at the mention of The Wigan Casino, buy this album and watch him relive the days when dancing MATTERED.

Bringing a self consciously literary approach to the mid 90s indie scene, this Ipswich four piece built up a loyal following on the Suffolk scene but were out of step with the prevailing trend for mancunian drug monkeys rhyming "mind" with "find" and went their separate ways just after the release of this, their swansong.

While perhaps not as immediately irresistible - or, arguably, even danceable - as his breakthrough EP What Makes Us Human on the short-lived Salzburg-based experimental-electronica label Austro-Hungarian Compromise, the cognoscenti of the still-burgeoning minimal-tech oompah scene are as one in hailing Vision Span's limited-edition follow-up, the single-sided 12" Flat In A Week (EMI Austria, 2007), as the high point of a career that would prove to be frustratingly brief. With the buzz still building and the white label of this seminal tune already having found its way into many of the crates that count, Vision Span, along with so many other rising talents, was destined to fall victim to the infamous EMI roster culling of January 2008.

The legendary Pindus, with their long player "...bustle too, I believe".

my new outfit is Uropeltis Smithi (Shakatak meets Joy Division)...

Irish/Armenian MC Billy J. Murphy released his debut Out Of The Tires to much critical acclaim in 1998. A welcome addition to the burgeoning County Antrim Hip-Hop scene, Billy's earnest tales of life on Belfast's mean streets quickly garnered him a vocal, if small, band of followers. Billy died in 2001, the victim of an accidental, self-inflicted nail-gun injury.

To the Town Gossip by Croissant Park Administration Building

Following on from the underground success of their critically-lauded debut, "Fuck You, Lieutenant Pigeon," Milton Keynes' finest are back! To the Town Gossip is full of the brutal, crunching riffs and uncomprimising lyrics Croissant fans know and love, touching upon the subjects other bands dare not broach, such as: being a bit sad, war and poverty and that, and not getting a Scalextrix for Christmas.

The album is preceded by the ubiquitous, Tool-esque single, "Kill Zanussi," which in an unprecedented piece of guerilla marketing, will be given away free with this week's Sunday Sport.

Featuring cameos from stars such as him out of Toploader and a bloke who looks a bit like Peter Gabriel, the sophomore outing from these five hip, young gunslingers sure knows how to RAWK!

piece by Al Bumreviewcliches

Another luddite, sorry - how do I get the image onto the site?

(In simple English if possible....ta).

how easy this seems to be - somebody tell EMI they can save yet more money by sacking all the Art Directors

The erstwhile Salzburg electroglitch duo Niederbipp allegedly rush-released their debut (and, as fate would have it, only) album Most Men Dread It, on the Austro-Hungarian Compromise label, in response to the shock defection to EMI Austria of their label-mate Vision Span. Revenge seemed to be theirs when it was announced in January 2008 that Vision Span was one of the many burgeoning young talents who had fallen victim to EMI's arbitrary axe. Unfortunately Austro-Hungarian Compromise themselves ceased trading within hours of the Niederbipp album's release and all copies were immediately impounded by the official receiver. Nobody to this day has ever heard it or even seen a track list for it. Just as well? Let time be the judge.

When the couple were asked in an interview (printed in the launch - and, as fate would have it, only - issue of Pastoral Elegy magazine) what the "It" in the album's title might possibly refer to, band members Wise and Otherwise (better known as Reini and Helge by their loyal, if relatively few, fans) would only respond enigmatically "We change the world".

Margaret emerged from the now famous Hebridean Plastic Duck collective which also produced Blind Haggis McBeans and The Treestumps.
This Celtic tinged singer/songwriter/painter and decorator with the voice of an angel through a singstar mic garnered a small but loyal following by reversing conventional record label business models and paying people to attend her gigs.
Daughter of millionaire sump lid entrepeneur Alfie Fragrant, this rare talent later fled the music scene only to emerge twenty years later after a long battle with the sauce.

Sankey Canal never got their fair share of respect. Their first and only album "Fire If I Can" never got a proper release thanks to the vinyl shortage. Some say that all the budget was blown on the album sleeve, leaving nothing left for marketing. The lead singer's son later surfaced as a member of Gomez.

Norway's premier soundscape masters with that difficult 3rd album

Hopea Pedicellata's Even Alone In Genders was released as a limited edition, 490gram vinyl edition of 300 on Sigur Ros' Samstarálfukeytágætishvarf-heimdottir label in September. The album followed the seminal 7" single This Is How They Killed Us In The Past, and cemented the band's position as Wellingborough's leading exponents of drifting, ethereal post-rock.

The story goes that three gals from Aberdeen, Mississippi found wild Afro-Korean drummer, Muki, asleep in the corner of a dive bar called the Comet in Seattle when on a road trip designed to erase the memories of a hat-trick of failed romances. Ridiculously refreshed at 2.15 in the morning they agreed there and then to join forces to create a fearsome combination of wistful blues-folk over the worse-for wear drummer's insane polyrhythms. The songwriting sisters, Regan and Ursula Marvoe, left little doubt that the combo's name alluded to the fact that they were never going to trouble with men again. The twelve songs lyrically spanned all manner of hideous misfortunes befalling bad types who wronged perfectly innocent maidens, played with vigor on acoustic guitars and fiddles, atop Muki's massive overdubbed percussion. Released in 1981 on Dripping Seamen Records with the distinctive pair of sou'westered sailors as its logo, the album was a big hit at Southern college radio but failed to make any impression on John Peel and was thus consigned to undeserved obscurity.

After winning American Idol in 2004 and enjoying the rarified life of a pop group with number one album in seven countries Kidinnu's self penned second album took them on a completely different trajectory. The four nineteen year old boys from North Beach ditched their management and attempted to go it alone, later they realised they had made a mistake. The concept album was a disaster as they played out the story of their troubled upbringing amongst drink, drugs and divorce. Julie Burchill would christen it ‘Toytown Traumas'. The album did not get into the American charts but became a smash hit in Albania where they emigrated in 2008

Bo, I cannot believe you remember the fantastic PD!

Daisy Bates did a few dates with them on their only swing through Lawrence, KS. I read somewhere that they discovered her when she performed at a Nils Lofgren tribute open tribute night. Who knew.

Having served his time with scots folk-prog outfit Trossach who released all their recordings on the mail order only Bladderwrack label, James is finally breaking out on his own in tandem with Helpmaboab records; "In their very shell" is a startling concept piece about the intertwining of female emancipation with the life of rope-farmed mussels in the Firth of Forth and concludes with the heartbreaking tour-de-force that is "The maiden's moule mariniere".

Up From Slavery! - "Death A New Terror....."

If ever a band could be considered dour, raincoat wearing Northerners it was Oldham's "Up From Slavery!". The vocalist and songwriters obvious love of Dostoevsky was apparent in the song titles often mirroring books by the novelist "The house of the dead", "The idiot" and "Dream of a ridicolous man". At their prime they famously turned down a support slot on a Leonard Cohen U.K. tour because "He's just too jolly". The band's career ended sadly in tragedy when the singer died after ingested a minature trumpet he'd won in a christmas cracker. The bassist and drummer now both have jobs outside the music industry as a Butlin's Redcoat and the man inside Tellytubby's Tinky Winky costume.

Original press release (September 1978):

Marking a radical change in style, And The Common Cold - Dashmesh Regiment's long-awaited follow-up to their 1975 powerhouse double LP A Rune With A View - is a raw, vital return to the band's roots as disaffected teenagers prowling the mean streets of Cheam. The title track rips into the complacency of jaded establishment values from the get-go, as lead singer Giles Standard-Lamp spits with coruscating New Wave venom, "Sniffling, snuffling/Snot-caked hanky/Colds are crap/Flu's quite wanky". Dashmesh are angry with the world these days . . . and all set to rock it to its core!

The long awaited re-release of Rudy's only album, 1995's The Most Acceptable Hypocrisy. Rudy were Britpop also-rans from Stoke Poges, famed for their politeness. Their debut single 'If You Don't Mind', featured here, charted briefly and led to an offer to support Pulp on their UK tour. Sadly, Rudy had to cancel at the last minute after Lisa I'Anson physically attacked the band live on Radio 1 after they each answered her question, 'Do you prefer Blur or Oasis?' with a civil 'No comment', leading to the hospitalisation of founder Rudy Anstruther.
According to Anstruther in his extensive sleeve notes, which include seven pages of 'Thank you's', the band broke up shortly after the release of this album after two, to this day unnamed, members 'Got slightly het up' at rehearsals for their tour as support act to Dodgy. Little is known of the members' whereabouts since the band's 'incredibly amicable' split, although it's believed that all have left the music business and joined City banks. Anstruther was briefly chair of The Politeness Society but was evicted in a coup.

...No Wisdom Without Love

sunk without trace in spite of, or perhaps because, they were heavily plugged on Radio 2 as an Australian Peter Paul & Mary for the Noughties.

Wikipedia found me a real musician: "Mikkei Redemption (born June 16, 1983 in Tarzana, California) is a hardcore punk guitarist."

When Mikkei embarks on a solo career, it is possible that his first album might be called "the middle being human", but it probably won't have this picture on the cover.

(For copyright reasons, I have not embedded the picture. Once a lawyer, always a lawyer.)

Philshil (to his friends) was conceived at some Gladstonedburied Festerval in the mid 70s and it seems like the mud was still in his bones when he made this. If you like Roy Harper and Nick Drake, then avoid this sub-folk twaddle, John Martyn even at his drunkest could fart out a better album. It should have been released in 1993 but has only surfaced now since his Mum, the "celeb chef" of "Old Naked Hippy Bint Goes Wok About With Some Hairy Bykers Ending up At A Cottage Near A River" is the cook du jour on some bollocks cable channel soon to be bought by the BBC, with our money. Bastards!

and Bastard Arse! for this album ever existing

"The interweb has been alive with die hard Abnoba fans
downloading their latest album 'Certain to be Wrong' ever
since the band broke into the record company, stole the
master tapes and made the entire album available for free

Lead singer River Bourne and the rest of the band have gone into
hiding - but rumours are rife that they have been hiding in River's
parents basement. The album is a mix of the bands usual
melodic eclectism crossed with samples of road construction
and traffic noise from the nearby A41.

Brother and sister duo Robert and Felice Cooper moved from Vancouver to London in 1998 and have been recording under the name 'Canadians In Britain' ever since. 'Fall from The Trees', their first release on Independiente captures their melodic acoustic sound and beguiling melodies that The Times called 'quite lovely'.

It went on to sell about seven copies.

New York singer songwriter returns with her major label debut, 'Old Things We Don't Know' - a collection of Mislan's modern takes on 60's soul classics. Her erratic live shows and a series of tabloid outbursts as well as her booming voice and tendency to ride the tube without any trousers on have led to comparisons to Amy Winehouse, comparisons which Mislan describe as 'fucking ridiculous.'

Communes Of The Drome Department, the grindcore noise merchants who were massive in Germany throughout the mid-nineties, called it a day earlier this year after their last album, 'it should be rejected' was, ironically, rejected by their record label, EMI, who didn't consider the album to have the commercial appeal that EMI were hoping for.

The 72 minute concept album was described by those who heard it as 'making 'metal machine music' sound like Abba'.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2208/2214810922_9ea79cd6a4.jpg?v=0

"Oh darling, take it in comfort, let it into your body!" by SHALOM.

3rd album by idiosyncratic one-man doom metal project from Ukraine. Met with mixed critical reception and general ambivalence from record buying public.

My band was called Breakin' News and their album was "Just Doesn't Interest Me." The cover was a boring close up of the centre of a yellow flower.

What's interesting is how authentic most of the covers and album titles are, especially Vision Span's "Flat In A Week" and it's retro cool cover.

I'm cheating on the album titles as the quotes on the page are the same everytime I go to it so I'm just taking what I can from what's there while still trying to be random in my choice.

Jefferson Drum's "Quite A Different Kind" was easily ignored with this cover: http://www.flickr.com/photos/macomaco/2360928595/

Of more interest was Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg's first and only album "Even... Knowledge, Was Foolproof" with this cover:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/katyaford/2352273787/

Perhaps the most fey and pretentious band I've had to endure was Langston Hughes Medal and their dreadful "Don't Deserve That Either" album from last year. Cover can be seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24567277@N00/2366990519/

One of the better albums from last year was Grey Thrush with their "Price To Pay For Maturity" album. Cover can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maginashun/2365867501/