Coil – Horse Rotorvator album art
CD cover
Horse Rotorvator is an album by English band Coil, featuring John Balance and Peter Christopherson. This is the band’s second studio album.
From Wikipedia:
The album title was inspired by a dream of Balance’s in which the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse slit the throats of their horses and assembled their jawbones into a device large enough to “plough up the waiting world.”
Initially released in the UK in 1986 by Force & Form, this post shows the 1988 re-release.
The cover was designed by Peter Christopherson himself. In the center, a fisheye photo by John Balance is framed by a circular contour. The title and the band name are shown in the four corners – COIL / HORSE / ROTOR / VATOR – in capital letters from Palatino.
The pale tones of the background and the typography, together with the image of a bronze horse, create an unexpected medieval aesthetic. I find the interior of the CD interesting, and by complementing the design with the fish-eye photo of the marble statue, there’s a connection between the ancient subject and the more or less modern style of photography. The Coil logo on the left-hand page with the acknowledgements also takes its place in this medieval aesthetic with a yellowish hue.
The design reinforces the neopagan spirit that the group asserts in its music and in the aesthetics it constructs.
CD booklet with acknowledgements in Palatino Italic
CD booklet with faux small caps
