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wax poetics - cover story; album cover art - wax poetics - books

Cover Story: Album Cover Art, the second book by esteemed music journal Wax Poetics, graphically narrates the vibrant subculture of record collecting through the art of the album cover. It’s a must-have for record connoisseurs and art aficionados alike. As a music, art, and pop-culture book—sized and priced for impulse purchase— Cover Story easily spans multiple audiences. World-renown DJs, writers, and collectors handpicked Cover Story’s pastiche of rare, unique, and inspired album covers. Illustrated as a visual essay, Cover Story exhibits the diverse art forms and design styles of the record cover, each telling its own story

Debuting in December 2001, Brooklyn-born Wax Poetics hit newsstands with a new vision for music journalism. The Wax Poetics audience has grown exponentially, making musical anthropologists out of average music listeners. Cover Story: Album Cover Art vividly explores an element of music culture that has withered with the advent of MP3s and digital downloading. Records possess a visual as well as an aural capacity for storytelling. The record cover—eye candy for the music lover—speaks a language rooted in the environment and era of the music itself. And, more intimately, a record can create a profound sense of analogy with its owner, and it’s this relationship that we share. The Wax Poetics team: editor-in-chief Andre Torres; editor Brian DiGenti; contributing editors Matt Rogers, Andrew “DJ Monk One” Mason, Dante Carfagna, and J. P. Jones; contributing photo editor Brian “B+” Cross; contributing writers Jeff “Chairman” Mao, Oliver Wang, Robbie Busch, and Dave Tompkins; and label head Amir Abdullah