Rent Squaring the Circle (2022)

Enjoyable appreciation of the golden age of album art - Squaring the Circle review by PD

For those who grew up in the era of 'prog rock', this is an enjoyable trip down memory lane. Introduced to us are the two main creatives of album-cover designers 'Hipgnosis' - the late Storm Thorgerson, the eternally prickly visionary of the two, and, still around, and the key interviewee of the film, Aubrey “Po” Powell, Strom's long-suffering partner, who accomplished or oversaw the actual execution of Thorgerson’s often insane ideas, invariably on location. We get brief glimpses into the Cambridge art scene alongside the young members of Pink Floyd and their first design for the band’s second album, “Saucerful of Secrets,” an uncharacteristically psychedelic cover that soon gave way to much more interesting pieces. If you’re a Floyd fan, you may have spent much more time contemplating the “Atom Heart” cover and its meaning than the band ever did, or Powell himself, who, he claims, just hopped over a fence after he spotted a cow by the side of the road. There may not have been much more to it than that (although I recall a story about a farmer saying that they'd just been milked and were therefore in a good mood - suggesting more planning than Powell lets on here) but, whatever the truth of it, a template of marrying blue skies with natural objects or beings that took on near-mystical value was born. The three surviving members of Floyd all give fresh interviews (which is probably about as close as Waters and Gilmour will ever be to one another again, sadly). Throughout, there is more personal affection for Thorgerson’s brilliant imagination than for his apparent lifelong rudeness and brusqueness, so it’s somewhat ironic that Thorgerson’s character and personality is praised highly by Waters despite their friendship ending after Thorgerson doing the one thing Waters couldn’t forgive, which was to take credit for the concept of the flying pig. Plus ca change ...

The film is nothing if not a testament to absurdly high record company budgets in the ’70s, and the amazing lengths Hypgnosis would go to get the 'perfect' album cover (one would have liked to see some of the 'rejects', but hey-ho). There's the familiar-to-many stories of the creation of the prism on 'Dark Side', the burning man on 'Wish You Were here' and, of course, the inflatable pig on 'Animals', plus a very interesting tale of Led Zepplin's 'Presence' cover, and other nice contributions from the likes of Peter Gabriel and Beatle Paul (there's a nice brief moment when, after Storm's gone off in a sulk after some disagreement over Wings' 'Venus & Mars' cover, Paul simply says - 'that's ok man, Po can do it himself - he's the photographer anyway, right?'). Then there’s the great, if painful, tale about the shoot for a 10cc cover that involved finding a sheep and a psychiatrist’s couch and putting one atop the other in the shallows of a lake in Hawaii (because of course). Powell remains aghast that he went to all that work and then the image was perversely reduced by Thorgerson nearly to postage stamp size on the finished mockup.

The tale of how the era of Hipgnosis is portrayed as coming to an end, how the primary murder suspect is MTV and its frothy synth-pop acts of the early ’80s — illustrated on screen by Depeche Mode - is over and done with very quickly and, though obviously deliberate, probably deserved more serious treatment and is clearly a story in itself. And one is left truly baffled by the tragic ending of financial ruin and Powell having to go to David Gilmour with a begging bowl. The director doesn’t tarry or wonder aloud about what transpired after the point at when this film abruptly ends, amid changing tastes, and there’s also no discussion of how music mogul Merck Mercuriadis, (who appears in and exec-produced the film) ended up with Hipgnosis as the name of his massive song publishing rights company. However, as an appreciation of the golden age of 'album art', this is a hugely enjoyable piece.

First Class Documentary - Squaring the Circle review by GI

As Noel Gallagher says in this wonderful documentary record covers are the art collections of the working class. This is the story if the duo who formed Hipgnosis in Cambridge in the 1960s and went onto design some of the most iconic album covers in music history from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The moon to Led Zeppelin's Houses Of The Holy. Working with many bands over the years including Wings and 10cc this is director Anton Corbijn's first documentary feature where he cleverly shoots the film in black & white except the actual artworks highlighting their sheer brilliance. It's a story of two personalities 'Po' Powell and Storm Thorgeson and their relative eccentric personalities shine through all the turmoil of their creative work lives. Interviews with various musicians including David Gilmour and Paul McCartney abound and the entire film is so interesting and creates a nostalgia for the heady days of the 70s when records were so important and the artwork an inspiration to so many people. This is a wonderful documentary and shows the lengths these two artists went to get their dream designs into reality from days spent in remote deserts or up snow topped mountains to actually setting someone on fire. If this is your era of music then this film is simply great.

Remembering the best of times for artists and fans of music - Squaring the Circle review by KB

A fascinating and absorbing history of Hypgnosis, the two men behind it, and the projects they undertook. For me the standout piece of this visually beautiful documentary, which is largely shot in black and white, is close to the end when musician Noel Gallagher describes his daughter's ignorance of what album cover art was like 'back in the day' (which really was only the blink of an eye ago). It brought it home to me that in a generation we have largely lost the beauty of art on album covers, and with it the loss of those wonderfully skilled and imaginative artists who have largely been replaced by people using computer programs. Like Noel, I would buy a new 12 inch vinyl album - the only way back in the day - and scrutinise the sleeve (gatefold if we were lucky) reading the lyrics, looking at who the music and production personnel were, who created the album art, etc. Now, as Noel says, it's a case of download it and you get a one inch photo of a picture. That's just so soul-less; there's nothing tangible or tactile about new albums now unless like me you buy the CD, itself a watered down experience where the artwork is so small and usually badly reproduced. The days of beautiful album art seem to be over. I wonder if we'll ever again see the beauty of true art, such as that created by Nick Price for Kate Bush's 1980 album Never For Ever, or the clever 'novelty' sleeves such as Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti. As with most things, art seems now to be a consumable rather than a mystical experience.