The scene is lit very strongly which says a lot about the band, it connotes that they have ‘nothing to hide’ and are upfront about their music, where what you see is what you get. Contrastingly, the sky is blue which is cool and refreshing, being a calming colour this adds an interesting twist to the cover with contrasting emotions. The texture in the front of the image has been used to denote the rocky baron landscape which the men are sitting in and the red colouration can be interpreted and signifies anger, rage and lust, all of which a very strong emotions. The text is also positioned at equidistance between the edge of the cover and the top, this technique is used for aesthetic pleasure. This visual technique is vital for the consumer to identify the band before the album. The word Muse is much bigger than the name of the album so that it will be the first thing to be read and so that the reading path goes from the word ‘Muse’ to ‘Black Holes and Revelations’. For identifying the band, a more linguistic approach is used, the word: ‘MUSE’ is spelt out in capital letters and in a bold font, taking up one ninth of the cover space, it is positioned on the left hand side so it will be the dominant reading line and therefore the first thing that is read.
Furthermore, the ground is bright orange whilst the sky is bright blue, these two colours are at opposite ends of the colour wheel and placing them together has been used for the aesthetic pleasure of the consumer. This technique is used so that the picture does not look awkward to the eye and is easier to look at. The rule of thirds is also used in the framing of the men at the table who take up the lower third of the shot. Firstly, the rule of thirds is clearly apparent as the land takes up two thirds of the bottom of the cover and the sky takes up one third at the top. Many visual techniques are used on the cover to connote and denote different things or just to comply with the common conventions of the genre. Because indie consumers are normally focused consumers they need original, interesting and cleaver content, because of this the album cover adopts a incoherence by showing Mars, the four men wearing elaborate clothing and the horses on the table which are all seemingly random things to make it interesting for this target audience, this is another example of how the genre is evident. This repeating pattern is shown throughout the indie fan base and indie artists on MTV and other music channels, this makes it a modern convention of the indie genre and therefore identifiable as ‘indie’. The outfits are also a key for the identification of the genre this is because two of the men sitting at the table are wearing clothing with a repeating pattern on it. The reason that they do not show themselves on their cover art is because they want to prove a point that they are more about the music than their image and this separates them from other genres of music, making the album cover key for consumers identifying the genre.
The artist’s are not shown on the cover showing that the artist’s are indie due to this being a convention of the indie genre. The album cover consists of four men sitting round a table which has horses on whilst on the planet Mars, this quirky situation signifies that the cover is part of something a bit alternative and from that the genre is clearly evident as indie. This would also help me understand the use of semiotics in imagery As it was in the same genre as my chosen track for my own music video I believed it would be very useful to gain a greater understanding of the genres artwork for when I have to create my own.
I chose this album cover because it caught my eye as it was packed with semiotics and therefore it would be interpreted differently by different audiences. I have chosen to analyse the album cover ‘Black Holes and Revelations’ by Muse.