Nicolas Lobo: Album Graphics

Album Graphics documents Nicolas Lobo’s engagement with the Go-Go scene, a musical subgenre associated with funk that originated in the Washington, D.C area in the 1970s. The subgenre remains primarily popular in the area as a uniquely regional music style. Produced as dancehall music, the Go-Go sound focuses on lo-fi percussion instruments and funk-style jamming in place of dance tracks. While recordings are popular, the substance of Go-Go is the live show. This may explain why Go-Go has never enjoyed wider success through in the recording industry. For a year, Lobo worked as an outsider offering free graphic design services to Go-Go bands and promoters. Because of the informal nature of Go-Go recording and distribution, the graphic identity of Go-Go is spread across a variety of mediums, from T-shirts and Twitter page layouts to jewel box sized .jpg files and animated .gif files culled from VHS tapes. Lobo’s attempts to produce album covers, concert flyers, myspace layouts and other graphic designs were met with varying levels of success and acceptance. Lobo’s efforts, which marry his signature scribbling with some version of the pre-existing visual language native to the Go-Go scene, along with chat room threads and emails generated during the design process, are the contents of this book. Part hyper-extended liner notes for a non-existent album, part ethnographic coffee table book gone awry, Album Graphics settles in a third place: neither of the Go-Go scene nor entirely outside of it.

Item Details
Nicolas Lobo: Album Graphics - Nicolas Lobo
hardcover
ISBN 9780984056637
9 x 6 in.
100 pgs.
$15.00