DIGIPAK RESEARCH: Concept Albums

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• I can't write an album as a whole, but I want to include interludes and have the concept that this could be some sort of narrative

Article on Pink Floyd's Animals, based on George Orwell's Animal Farm:

http://www.openculture.com/2017/04/pink-floyd-adapts-orwells-animal-farm-into-its-1977-concept-album-animals.html

A book looking at the concept albums as a whole:

Roger Waters And Pink Floyd

Beyond its elucidation and critique of traditional ‘notation-centric’ musicology, this book's primary emphasis is on the negotiation and construction of meaning within the extended musical multimedia works of the classic British group Pink Floyd. Encompassing the concept albums that the group released from 1973 to 1983, during Roger Waters’ final period with the band, chapters are devoted to Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut(1983), along with Waters’ third solo album Amused to Death (1993). This book's analysis of album covers, lyrics, music and film makes use of techniques of literary and film criticism, while employing the combined lenses of musical hermeneutics and discourse analysis, so as to illustrate how sonic and musical information contribute to listeners’ interpretations of the discerning messages of these monumental musical artifacts. Ultimately, it demonstrates how their words, sounds, and images work together in order to communicate one fundamental concern, which—to paraphrase the music journalist Karl Dallas—is to affirm human values against everything in life that should conspire against them

A udiscovermusic article looking at Kendrick Lamar's good kid, maad city:

The best concept records still have fabulous singles. There is a reason that people know ‘Juicy’ by the Notorious BIG, ‘Mercy Mercy Me’ by Marvin Gaye, or ‘Ziggy Stardust’ by David Bowie despite maybe never hearing the full albums that feature them. Those singles alone are strong enough that even someone with just a casual knowledge of the albums they come from, can’t deny the talent that is behind them. The same could be said for ‘B__ch, Don’t Kill My Vibe’ or ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’ from Kendrick Lamar’s major-label debut, Good Kid, mAAd City.
It’s been five years since the release of Good Kid, mAAd City, and the album not only holds a place in the hip-hop cannon but it shifted the culture. It’s even been incorporated into the curriculum in several universities.
The Good Kid, mAAd City cover art features a childhood Polaroid of Kendrick with his uncles and grandfather. There is a baby bottle, a 40-oz bottle and one uncle is flashing a gang sign. In the background is a picture on the wall featuring Kendrick and his father. Everyone’s eyes are blacked out. Speaking on the cover art, Lamar says, “That photo says so much about my life, and about how I was raised in Compton, and the things I've seen, just through them innocent eyes. You don't see nobody else's eyes, but you see my eyes are innocent, and tryna figure out what is goin' on.”
The title on the cover also reads: “a short film by Kendrick Lamar”. This is not an accident. Good Kid, mAAd City is cinematic and tells a gripping specific narrative. It’s a day in the life of the protagonist, K Dot, as he becomes Kendrick Lamar and in it, hooks up with his girl, robs a house, and goes through misadventures, which makes him question hood politics.

IMPACT OF DIGITISATION:
Audiences listen less and less to full albums, this was started through the CD player where you can jump to tunes, with the vinyl you could move the player but not to precise moments and you risked damaging the record. 
The advent of iTunes brought mass consumption, digital disruption, basically killing the album.
Pink Floyd wanted to avoid their concept albums with a single flow to be played randomly,
so they engaged in a court battle, but they eventually gave in, read more in this Guardian article:

The band's decision to offer fragments of their famous concept albums for 99p each on iTunes is likely to disappoint prog rock purists who applauded their stand against EMI.
During March's legal battle, lawyers for the band told a high court judge the tracks that made up Pink Floyd's seminal albums could not be unbundled and sold as individual downloads.
Robert Howe QC told the court it would have been "a very odd result" if band members were able to control how their music was sold in its physical form, but there was "a free-for-all with no limitation on online distribution".
The judge eventually sided with the band, telling the label it had to adhere to a clause in its contract with the group intended to "preserve the artistic integrity of the albums". He also ordered EMI to pay Pink Floyd's costs.

Now due to Spotify albums are less and less listened to in their entirety in one setting, however Brett Anderson in this interview thinks the concept album still has a loyal, strong following:



An article by The Independent: 

A Telegraph review of Night Thoughts and how the film and album together form a the concept of a narrative:

Playing behind a huge screen, Suede projected a film directed by Roger Sargent and written by Stephanie de Giorgio, with each narrative element operating as an enclosed promo to a particular song, whilst the whole built up to a dark and dramatic tale of love and despair.Perhaps because of its origins in the psychedelic pomp of the Sixties, the very concept of a concept albums tends to suggest florid excesses but Suede’s Night Thoughts essayed a grungy, trashy, kitchen-sink tone in keeping with their own origins as council estate aesthetes. Let’s put it this way, I don’t think I have ever seen so much vomiting in a music promo. It is probably not for everyone, involving psychological breakdown, murder and suicide, shot with a kind of Nan Goldin style low-life veracity. But songs and images worked in powerful conjunction, so each threw inner light on the other.

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