We Will Only Propagate Exceptional Objects
There are many scientists who believe, that it
takes months for a new born child to establish a sense of individuality. The
new born doesn't make a distinction between themselves and their mother. It
takes some time before a child understands that their mother is a separate
entity. Upon making this discovery, initially, we are filled with a great
anxiety. Of course, over time, we develop a real appreciation for our
individuality, and all that it awards us. From the moment of our first "self"
discovery, until our death, we develop, discard and rebuild our sense of
identity countless times. We all do this, even boring people. Once we've
established a comfortable self-sense of our current identity, we want to parade
it. We want to campaign for it. We want the whole world to know, "look
look, this is me, how you like me now?". To project our self identity into
the outer and, to amplify the howl of our self expression, we have many tools
at our disposal; our art, our clothing and hair style, the way we talk..., and,
for a lot of us, the objects that populate our living spaces. There are myriad vendors, attempting to
contribute to our identity campaigns, creating rather dull and uninspiring
products. Making the production of any new objects, at this point, almost seem
criminal. In reaction to this, we unveil, the Skeletal Lamping Collection 08.
of Montreal
has, from the beginning, taken great pains to always put a lot of thought and
care into the art packaging for our records. We've always felt that the
packaging was just as important as the music inside of it. We've worked within
the constraints of conventional album packaging, and have tried to create
something fantastically uncommon every time. Now, we find ourselves in the
middle of an exciting epoch: A time, when new technology has shattered the
conventional business model and has set a paradigm shift in motion. For some
people in the music biz, this is terrifying. For us, it is a fucking miracle!
While the kings are in a stupor, we are going to take full advantage of the
changing guard.
The concept behind the Skeletal Lamping
Collection is this: ideally, every object that you bring into your home,
should feel exceptional to you. Otherwise, it just adds to the clutter and
chaos of your life. We feel that there's
no reason to produce another object that just sits on a shelf. We only want to
produce objects that have a function and that can be treasured for their
singularness. Objects that can transform a room, bend the mind and inform your
dreams. A CD has little value, as an object, and the conventional, right angle
plagued CD packaging, we've been forced to endure forever, has nothing new to
offer us either. That is why, instead of following the tired path of the past,
we've decided, to release a table top floral beast, a lantern, a collection of
wall decals, a stallion shaped print, a collection of pins, and a clothing and
tote bag line as our album packaging instead. All art objects in the Skeletal
Lamping Collection were designed by the Apollinaire Rave collective artists:
Gemini Tactics and The Bee With Wheels.
One of the most exciting aspects of our escape
from the trappings of conventional album packaging is that, upon buying Skeletal
Lamping, a person is given the option to choose from a number of different
items in the Skeletal Lamping Collection. Digital downloading of albums
has brought upon an unfortunate situation, wherein, with your purchase, you
only receive, at best, a thumbnail sized image of the album's cover art, to
look at on your mp3 player or computer. In our minds, this is unacceptable. We
feel a person should not be punished for opting to purchase a record digitally,
nor should one have to choose between, either, fantastic art object or ease of
purchase.
We hope this idea catches on and, in the
future, square CD packaging will be abandoned forever and, only interesting art
objects will fill record stores. We envision a time when, you'll be walking
around your local record shop and be like, "What's the new Radiohead album
again? Oh yeah, a bonsai tree in the shape of a deformed goat, I see it over
there".
-Kevin Barnes
