Thalia (1894) and two widths of Alternate Gothic (1903) all used in all caps for the cover of a 1966 album by the Toronadoes. The release on Design Records includes interpretations of popular tunes such as “A Taste of Honey”, “Zorba the Greek”, and “The Lonely Bull”.

[More info on Discogs]

Instrumental stoner doom from the sunny and shadowed sides of Uri folklore, following in the nebulous footsteps of the Venediger.

Modr have been making music together in various formations for many years. The band originated as a jam side project of the blues/rap group Schiibähunt, as well as from the circle around Vierschret, where the members of Modr, together with Myriam Planzer, interpret Uri legends through storytelling and music.

Drawing from the same reservoir of myths, Modr transform these stories into instrumental stoner doom. In doing so, they explore both the light and dark sides of Uri folklore: deep guitars, heavy drums, and memorable, melodic riffs define their sound.

With their debut EP, Modr delve deep into local traditions and follow the misty traces of the Venediger. The design of the record sleeve reflects the two contrasting vinyl sides: “Schattähalb” – electronically influenced and dark – and “Sunnähalb”, recorded entirely acoustically.

From Wikipedia:

“Asia Minor” is a 1961 instrumental recording by Jimmy Wisner (operating under the name Kokomo so as to not alienate his jazz fans). It is a rock and roll adaptation of Edvard Grieg’s “Piano Concerto in A Minor”, using shellac on the hammers of a cheap piano so as to induce a honky-tonk sound.

Felsted Records released an album with “Asia Minor” plus eleven other tracks.

[More info on Discogs]

For You is an instrumental album by German progressive rock band Profil, recorded in Brutkasten Studios and released in 1982. This is the only known release of the band.

The cover design is credited to Bernd Mayer, who was also a member of the band and played drums and percussion on the album.

Hypnos (by Jean Alessandrini) is in use for the name of the band. The title of the album seems to be handlettered.

[More info on Discogs]

The 1962 album Kings of the Steel Guitar is a compilation featuring multiple artists, including Pete Wade, Leon McAuliffe, Herb Remington, and Jenks Carmen. It was released on the Design Records label and features various steel guitar instrumental tracks like “Oriental Twist” and “Orange Blossom Special”. The title is in PLINC Bookman Swash with News Gothic used for the artist list in Bold and song list in Thin.

[More info on Discogs]

Apollo 100’s Melodies on My Mind is a 1973 compilation album released on the Young Blood label featuring easy listening music by the British instrumental group. The artist name and album are both in Egyptienne Bold Condensed Outline with the song list set in Futura Light.

[More info on Discogs]

Product May Contain trio presents their long-awaited debut album Playgrounds – a release bursting with creativity, blending jazz, folk, electronic, ambient, and rock influences. Using an unconventional setup of vibraphone, double bass, and percussion, the band creates rich, imaginative arrangements. The record captures a journey of growth, self-discovery, and the pure joy of playing together – a manifesto of youthful curiosity and artistic freedom, accompanied typographically by Tor grotesk Mix.

Band photography by Mateusz Piechuta; graphic design by Jacek Rudzki of Znajomy Grafik.

[More info on Discogs]

Tousan was the name used by Allen Toussaint early in his career. This album with instrumentals was released by RCA Records in 1958. The cover photography is by Nolan A. Marshall.

The typography combines Caslon No. 540 Italic with what looks like Condensed Title Gothic No. 11. The tall gothic caps used for “WILD” are from an unidentified typeface.

[More info on Discogs]

For the artwork of We’ll be okay and its digital single releases by Trommel Tobi, designers Jeremias Diekmann and Robert Winter turned to Arthemys Display Light to inject elegance, rhythm, and personality into the visual language. With its elongated proportions, razor-fine strokes, and editorial flair, Arthemys sets the tone for music that balances nuance with intensity.

Used prominently across the artwork, the typeface provides a visual signature that feels both high fashion and underground, modern and mystical. It’s a font that doesn’t just title the music, it amplifies its mood.

We think Diekmann’s use of Arthemys is a masterclass in restraint and precision: letting the type breathe, float, and command without shouting. The result is a visual identity for Trommel Tobi that’s as expressive as it is exacting.

[More info on Discogs]

I came across this showing in a poor reproduction in an exhibition in a very small local museum.

William Walton’s Façade is the musical part of Façade – An Entertainment, which comprises a reading of the Façade poems of Edith Sitwell accompanied by the music. It exists and has been performed in many different versions since its public premier in 1923.

This version, without poetry, was recorded by Chicago Pro Musica and apparently earned a Grammy award for Best New Classical Artist (from Wikipedia).

The fonts chosen for the album art are approximately period appropriate (at least for the original performances, not for this 1984 Reference Recordings version): Bifur for “Façade” and “Chicago Pro Musica”; and Futura for the rest of the text .

[More info on Discogs]

Black Casual, the phototype adaptation of Walter Haettenschweiler’s Lettre Coupé, is probably best known as one of the arcane alphabets of Black Sabbath: it was used on the cover of their 1970 album Paranoid.

Here it can be seen in use on a 1975 French single sleeve by Seven Seas, with music produced Steve Alaimo, Clarence “Blowfly” Reid, and Willie Clarke.

From record collector oopswhoops:

Excellent Jawsploitation Funk instrumentals.
1975 French pressing on RCA-Victor label.

The record probably was released around the time Steven Spielberg’s JAWS came to movie theaters fifty years ago.

The script is either Riviera by Headliners or its close follower Dolphin Script by Lettergraphics.

[More info on Discogs]

A Night at the Beachcomber by guitar virtuoso John Adomono was recorded at the International Market Place, Honolulu, Hawaii, and released by Decca Records in 1961. From his bio at Discogs:

“John played alone, but most people thought there were five or six players on his records,” remembers Lu Woolley, his promoter and booking agent. “People were absolutely wowed by him. Nobody played like him.”

Adomono’s secret weapon was the Ecco-Fonic, a cutting-edge tape-echo machine. Alongside DeArmond’s Tremolo Control, it was one of the first stand-alone effects for the guitars and Adomono was one of the early testers, promoters, and endorsers.

On the uncredited cover, Adomono’s name is shown in red letters from the fett weight of Volta. The wide Clarendon with the superb figure–ground organization was designed by Konrad F. Bauer and Walter Baum and first cast by Bauer in 1956. The typeface used for “Guitarist fantastique” has German roots, too: it’s Berthold’s Akzidenz-Grotesk, known in the US under the name Standard. The bold condensed style is Akzidenz-Grotesk extra, added to the family by Günter Gerhard Lange in 1958.

[More info on Discogs]

Hip Hug-Her is a 1967 album by Booker T. & the M.G.’s, released on Stax Records. The instrumental soul album includes the title track “Hip Hug-Her”, which became a Top 40 hit, along with covers like Groovin’ and Sunny.

The cover was designed by Loring Eutemey with the album title set in Antique.

[More Info on Discogs]

Holiday in Italy features a photo of the Forum Romanum and an all-caps setting of Filmotype Zion. From the back cover:

[More info on Discogs]

Nestor Amaral (1913–1962) was a Brazilian musician, composer and singer who also appeared in several films. In 1957, Hollywood-based budget label Tops Records released a series of holiday-themed albums. Each volume is dedicated to a different country. The cover photographs of two of them are courtesy of Trans World Airlines (TWA). The airline is also mentioned on the back cover and might have been a sponsor of the series.

About the artist (from Holiday in France):

Holiday in France depicts a ceremonial act at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The title is set in Filmotype Hunter. “Nestor Amaral and His Continentals” is again added in Venus Extended Light.

[More info on Discogs]

Holiday in Brazil has a long-exposure photo showing the traffic at Rio’s Copacabana, with a line drawing of two maracas on top. The letterforms of Latin Wide were arranged on a bouncing baseline and embellished with a thin hand-drawn inline. The credit line uses bold Bodoni caps. From the back cover:

[More info on Discogs]

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grown up in Memphis, Tennessee, Bill Justis (1926–1982) was an American pioneer rock and roll musician, composer, and musical arranger, best known for his 1957 Grammy Hall of Fame song, “Raunchy”.

The typographic cover shown here is for an album with instrumental hits, released in 1965 on Smash Records, a subsidiary of Mercury Records. The uncredited design mimicks a concertina fold, with the lines of text alternating between slanted and backslanted treatments.

[More info on Discogs]

Dancer’s Delight is an easy listening album recorded by David Carrol and His Orchestra and released with Mercury Records in 1956. Carroll (1913–2008) was a studio arranger and conductor who served as Mercury’s musical director from 1951 to the early 1960s.

His name and the album title are set in caps from Filmotype Wand. The wide slab serif with low contrast was released the year before, in 1955. In 2015, Charles Gibbons made a digital version, adding Cyrillic and Greek characters. Interestingly, “dance album” at the top left uses a related older design which was reissued by Bauer and ATF as Hellenic Wide. Filmotype had an adaptation as “HW”. The names of the instrumental tracks are rendered in caps from Copperplate Gothic Light Extended, a.k.a. CP36.

[More info on Discogs]

Nijerusalem is a collaboration between Nigerien synth pioneer Mamman Sani and Berlin-based electronic artist Tropikal Camel, released on vinyl and in digital format by Batov Records, London. From the Bandcamp page:

This album is the result of a serendipitous meeting at the Nyege Nyege Festival in Uganda. Both artists shared a residency and studio space, which led to long recording sessions together over the course of two weeks, capturing the organic fusion of Mamman's synth melodies and Tropikal Camel's percussive electronic beats. Despite their divergent backgrounds and ages, Mamman at 73 and Tropikal Camel at 44, they found equilibrium in their collaborative process.

The artwork for the album and two single records was designed by Avi Bohbot, who found a typographic match for the album’s musical patterns in Alterego, designed by Pieter van Rosmalen and released at his Bold Monday foundry. Information is set in Neue Haas Unica.

Alterego is constructed with nothing but horizontals and vertical lines on a grid. Most letters share the same four-verticals width, with some exceptions. On the cover M measures an extra column, and two columns are enough width for the I. Nevertheless, the cover’s stacked lines of Alterego do not form a typographic brick wall. Instead, the result looks organic because what stands out as much as the grid is the uneven distribution of its deviations. The placement of gaps (counters), intersections and subtle deviations in its rhythm such as the slightly shorter middle arm in the E or the dots in the S make all the difference between typographic Schmuck and a legible typeface (setting it at a small size and pinching your eyes helps).

Golden Delicious is a predominantly-instrumental improvisation album by John Stowell, released in 1977 by Inner City Records.

The geometric sans with peculiar letterforms is Morishima Funletter, here accompanying a picture of John Stowell on an electric guitar, taken by Ken Haas, in front of the titular apple. The design is credited to Leo Bliok.

[More info on Discogs]

Text on the back cover is set in two weights of Helvetica, right-aligned.

Fonts from the Flea Market #1316

Second single by Burundi Black B, better known as Burundi Steiphenson Black or Mike Steïphenson, all pseudonyms used by French composer, arranger and producer Michel Bernholc (1941–2002). The precursor, “Burundi Black”, which sampled a recording of drumming by 25 members of the Ingoma people in Burundi, was a hit in 1971. It got itself sampled several times, including by Joni Mitchell for “The Jungle Line” (1975), and by the Beastie Boys for “59 Chrystie Street” (1989).

The follow-up again features instrumental tracks mixing “tribal” drums with synths and electronic guitars. “Marabunta” is custom lettering. The title of the B-side, “Africa Manga”, is shown in Mania, shaded and with a red contour. The project’s name is set in caps from Futura Extra Bold.

[More info on Discogs]

Compilation with tracks by Larry Elgart, Al Hirt, Ralph Flanagan, Perez Prado, King Curtis Combo, Jean Goldkette, Richard Maltby, Bob Scobey, Tito Puente, and Aaron Bell Trio, released by RCA Special Products in 1972. From the back cover:

Having a party? A good way to get everyone in the right mood is to play this party record created especially for a swinging soiree.

The title typeface is David Trooper’s Trooper Roman. “Special Collectors Edition” is added in Helvetica caps.

[More info on Discogs]