Box Vox

packaging as content

«
»

October 26, 2010

Immortal Water

ImmortalWater-1

Finally got a chance to design some more music packaging—a cross-referential CD package with an Ouzo-style bottle label for Annabouboula’s long awaited 3rd album, Immortal Water.

The Greek expression “annabouboula” means a confusing noise that aouses passion. We present to you a collection of Greek songs, some old and some new, that convey our confusion and our passion. Our confusion is an ingredient of our identities: Greeks of the Diaspora dreaming of the Greece of a recent past that no longer exists (if indeed it ever existed), as we confront the Greece of the present. Our passion is the main ingredient of Immortal Water, a life-giving potion that flows from the soul and is a distillation of all the varied music we love. We all imagine ourselves, and this is the modern Greek music of our imaginations.

Annabouboula, the band, is the preeminent Greek-American trio consisting of producer/anthropologist Chris Lawrence, guitarist George Barba Yiorgi1, and singer, Anna Paidoussi.

The title track of the new album is based on Marika Papagika’s 1928 recording of a traditional karsilamas 9/8 folk tune of Greek Asia Minor…

“From your sweet eyes, aman aman, immortal water does run; And I asked you for a little bit, aman aman, and to drink you gave me none”

Aidhinikos Horos (The Magic Fountain of Your Eyes)

InsideTrayCard

Tears, fountains, Ouzo, shipwrecks, mermaids… clearly, there are deeper meanings for “Immortal Water” than are dreamt of in my philosophy, but from my limited, mono-cultural perspective, I just really like the idea of “bottled tears” as Annabouboula’s new consumer product.

What they did was take a traditional belly dance and rembetiko music (smokey Greek blues) and electrify them, adding a funky rhythm and a wild psychedelic undertow to these dark and moody songs of passion and heartbreak.

Wikipedia entry on Annabouboula

And the music? The swooping keyboard riff—(a descending glissando, I think it’s called)—in the very first song (Hello Sailor) worked on me like a (psychedelic) undertow and carried me happily out to sea for the duration. (Hear for yourself!)

(Footnoted Digressions, after the fold…)


OpenCD

Footnoted Digressions:

1. George Barba Yiorgi is also known as George Sempepos (and sometimes as “Dr. Gregor Samsa”)

Full Disclosure: George Sempepos was also a fellow member (with me) in the bands “The Green Scene” and “Cargo Cult” in 1980s. It was George’s collection of Ouzo bottles and Greek classic comics that provided the research material for our design of the CD graphics.

Fuller Disclosure: I’ve also contributed English lyrics to a couple of Annabouboula songs—but not on this album.

Buckminster Fuller Disclosure: In my first preliminary design I had included what I thought of as a “Greek key” motif in the border around the label—the sort of square zig-zag pattern like you might see at the top of a castle turret. But George was like: “That’s not a Greek key” and he was right. Looking into it I found this Greek key generator website and realized that I hadn’t even scratched the surface of this geometrically complex pattern. The best and most interesting Greek keys have meandering turns of various orders of magnitude. I revised my border to look less like a castle turret and more like meandering rectangular waves. [Note: design detail of the Greek key appearing in the channel window of the CD’s jewel box]

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Comments are closed.