April 5, 2009

Suehiro Maruo's music covers

I don't belive I have to introduce Suehiro Maruo (丸尾末広), he is a well known figure of the internet underbelly. It shouldn't be surprising to learn that he has been commissioned to illustrate album covers for several different bands over the years, of course mostly punk and hardcore releases with various degrees of obscurity. On to the good stuff:

ASSFORT - "FREE PUNK CUSTOMIZE KIT", 2001. デスマーチ艦隊 - "空にはとどろ。号砲の。", 1998. セルロイド - "分裂病者のダンスパーティ", 1985(?).

犬神サーカス団 - "呪恋", 2008. Michiro,Get the Help! - "オデッセイ・1985・SEX", 1985.

GASTUNK - "To Fans", 1986. NIHIL TENTION - "かまきり", 1997. 恐悪狂人団 - "合掌", 1992.

"365 A TRIBUTE TO THE STALIN", 2001. THE STALIN - "虫", 1983.

"個性派ブレンド クラシック ~OLDIES TRACKS~", 2005. "個性派ブレンド~黄昏編~", 2002. "個性派ブレンド~純情・情熱編~", 2002. All by メリー (Merry).

恐悪狂人団 - "NO!~有為転変を乗り越えて不壊不動の境地に至れ!~", 1988. MERZBOW - "Psychorazer", 1997.

井内賢吾 - "あなたの狂気の春が咲く", 1997. AUTO-MOD - "レクイエム~滅びゆく時代ヘのレクイエム~", 1983. BALZAC - "全能ナル無数ノ眼ハ死ヲ指サス", 2000.

FUNERAL PARTY - "DREAM OF EMBRYO", 1985.

From the booklet of Naked City - "S/T", 1989. 筋肉少女帯 - "元祖高木ブー伝説", 1989. "Great Jewish Music: Marc Bolan", 1998.

As a bonus I give you this video from Michiro Endo's old project VIDEO STALIN filled with Maruo imagery

VIDEO STALIN - 24時間愛のファシズム
VIDEO STALIN - 24 Hour Love Fascism

22 comments:

jimpac said...

Some very, very sick shit on display here, dude. Must say I probably wouldn't care much for most of the music but Maruo's imagery is bad-ass. Looking forward to future posts. Best regards from good ol' blighty!
Jim

Firefly said...

DO WANT! Your blog is kickin'. Keep it up.

Also, who knew that Maruo did covers for ASSFORT and THE STALIN? That is truly awesome.

Ryan S said...

Fantastic first post, dude. Gave you a shout-out properly on Same Hat!

RosenRed said...

Congrats! I've seen quite a few first posts, but yours is really something! You made it to my RSS!

Epikt said...

Hi,
Do you know if this 'Dream of Embryo' (I haven't heard about it yet) has something to do with 'Taiji no yume' in 'Dogra Magra' by Yumeno Kyusaku ?
It's usually translated as "Dream of Fetus", but you never know...

By the way, there already an album titled 'Taiji no yume', refering to Yumeno's novel, by Sai Yoshiko (1977). And Maruo did a book titled 'Yume no Q-saku'...
(yep, I love to make connections between things)

Anyway, great first posts. Maruo and Togawa, you could not have done better.

Anonymous said...

Not wanting to appear rude, but what's the image in your header from ?

Great first post.

ADAM

Le Lezard Noir said...

belle brochette

zytroop said...

@jimpac: I think it's pretty tame for Mr. Maruo actually :)

@Firefly: Thanks!

@ryan: Thanks for the support ryan

@RosenRed: Hah, I'll do my best to keep you subscribed.

@Epikt: I have not read Dogra Magra, I've only seen the movie, and I have not heard the music of FUNERAL PARTY so I don't know if they took any inspiration from the book. But things being named XXX no yume is not anything to get excited about, it's a very common phrase :P

@ADAM: Asking questions is never rude. The header image is related to the late great Shūji Terayama, you will definetly see more from him on this blog later on!

@Le LEzard Noir: Oui oui

Azraelito said...

hi from argentina..

Incredible all the covers of maruo and the information..

Really a giant for me, that is so underrated in a lot of countries!!

good to have a blogspot with this kind of info and authors..

keep up the goodk work

sorry for my english that sucks!!

saludos from argentina..

Okada said...

Great post! Maruo's colored works are among my favorites.
All the best with the blog!

zytroop said...

@jimpac: that's given
@Azraelito: Thanks. I don't know if I agree that Maruo is underrated, he is definitely underpublished though.
@Okada: thanks

Anonymous said...

Wow! Great stuff! Can we get some higher-res shots on a rapidshare?

...just asking...

zytroop said...

@Anonymous: I would if I could but the Dream of Embryo picture is the biggest one I've got. Your best bet is to do a google image search for all the titles, that is what I did.

nattliga_toner said...

Actually, I got Funeral Party's "Dream of Embryo" in the mail just the other day. Beautiful cover and a great single!

I'll see if I can't dig out the old scanner out of the closet and make a HQ scan of the cover, if anybody's interested?

zytroop said...

@nattliga_toner: Please do. And what kind of music is it on the single?

nattliga_toner said...

All right, here's a 600 dpi scan of the cover (4232x4208) in .TIF-format.

http://rapidshare.com/files/234062633/fp.rar.html

Regarding the music, I'd say it's something like dark minimal synth. The title track in particular is very cool, loops of distorted screams and such!

Funeral Party also did two tracks on a compilation called "Vision of the Emotion" also on Pafe Records, but as far as I know that's all that they recorded.

zytroop said...

thanks for the high res cover and the funeral party background!

Unknown said...

Hey! Just wanted to give you heads up that I reposted this post on a blog I run (Beautiful/Decay Magazine):

http://beautifuldecay.com/2009/06/08/suehiro-maruo/

zytroop said...

@Fei: cool man, I love B/D

pair dog said...

Awesome list, zy!
I was just wondering a few weeks back after seeing Merry's koseiha blend classic compilation *in vinyl form* at A-Kon just how many bands have used Maruo's art for their jacket covers. Still kickin' myself for not buying that thing ...

BTW, would you happen to know if that art piece comes from one of his books? And if so, which? I seriously can't seem to find a bigger image of it *anywhere* and it's frustrating me even moreso that I didn't buy the vinyl Merry release.

zytroop said...

@Xio: Thanks. You SHOULD have bought the 12" just to frame it. The music one can live without :P

I don't recall seeing the Bland Classics cover in his artbooks. But I do know that the art for junjou jounetsu-hen can be found in Maruograph EX1. Though the book is a bit too small for my taste in artbooks

katie said...

I think Suehiro Maruo is great. He has a very clear style and is instantly recognizable. I found a site that has several scans of his manga and many for sale: http://www.akatako.net/