Primal Scream – Beautiful Future album art and singles

Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Feb 26th, 2022. Artwork published in

July 2008

**Source: genius.com** License: All Rights Reserved.

Beautiful Future album cover [More info on Discogs]

Beautiful Future is the ninth studio album by Scottish rock band Primal Scream, released in July 2008. The artwork for the whole campaign was done by Julian House at Intro, embracing a low-fi aesthetic that appears to reference elements of psychological horror/slasher films. The album cover looks like a movie title that was photographed from a TV screen, bathed in blood red and shot at an angle from up close, exposing its raster pattern.

In terms of typography, House went back to Letraset faces from the 1970s. The album cover has Baby Teeth, a design by Milton Glaser that here can be read as claustrophobic, and that shares characteristics with Philip Castle’s lettering for A Clockwork Orange – a reference that is further enforced by the wide open eyes.

For the first single “Can’t Go Back”, House selected all-caps Shatter, set in three tilted lines. This use of the psyched design by Vic Carless ties in with poster designs for movies like Schizo (1976) or Dracula (1973). Shatter is supported by Helvetica Bold, i.e. its unscathed precursor. The B-side of the vinyl release has a cover version of Hawkwind’s “Urban Guerrilla”.

The series is concluded by the second single “Uptown”, featuring another (retro-)futuristic design from the days of rubdown type: it’s Colin Brignall’s Countdown, a name that oscillates between tech euphoria and threat, and ryhmes with the song title.