INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - LED ZEPPELIN, PRESENCE

While we're on the subject of influential albums and their covers, I wanted to talk about one of my favorites from one of the most important design houses of the 1970s, Hipgnosis. Hipgnosis was stared in 1968 by friends Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell. The duo was later joined in the mid 1970s by a young Peter Christopherson, who would go on to gain acclaim and recognition making his own music as a member of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, Coil and Soisong, as well as releasing solo work as Threshold Houseboys Choir.

Hipgnosis was responsible for many of the most iconic covers of the decade, working with the likes of Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel and Led Zeppelin, just to name a few. It's their 1976 cover for Led Zeppelin's Presence which I want to bring to your attention today. 

 

One of the common traits of Hipgnosis covers, which always drew me to them, was that they usually had some sort of subversive "twist" to them. They were generally photo-real artworks that often relied on in-camera effects to create their surreal auras, though they would also use collage cut-&-paste techniques, something common with Photoshop these days, but much more demanding back then when it was done with physical photographs, blades and glue.

The "hook" with the Presence LP cover was the "object". Designed by Christopherson, it was an enigmatic looking black twisting obelisk type form that appeared to defy normal geometry. Its shape and proportions looked to be at odds with physical space and the cover depicted it in a variety of seemingly benign, mundane contexts of superficial, idyllic mid-century, middle class life. Yet its presence in these scenes lends each of them a nebulously sinister edge. It's obtuse, but it sinks in, almost subliminally, suggesting some kind of conspiratorial plot is taking place. Like some sort of "invasion of the body snatchers" scenario, normality is being subverted here. 

 

I recall seeing this in the shops and being constantly drawn to it. I'd stare at the photos and try to imagine what could be going on. Why was this thing in all these pictures? What was it? What did it do? Its blackness and confounding shape only implied something nefarious. A truly ingenious concoction for an album cover. The record itself wasn't Zeppelin's best, though I find it often unfairly criticized as I quite like most of it, but it's a cover that stays with me after all these years contemplating that "object" and its mysterious purpose...