The Sight of Music

“Trying to control sharing through music is like trying to control an affair of the heart,” writes Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore in Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture (bottom left), released last month by Rizzoli. The book resurrects the decade of the personal compilation tape—the not so distant 1980s—back when new records and cassettes were affixed with warning stickers declaring, “Home Taping Is Killing Music.” Edited by Moore, the book was conceived and designed by Andrew Prinz of the Brooklyn-based design studio Simultaneous Workshop.

Prinz and his creative cohort Robert Pietrusko—who formed their design workshop (and their band, Mahogany), in the late 1990s—work on projects ranging from album design, music recording, and production to experimental music interfaces. They’ve engineered a robotic drum and a music-encoding software system. Since 2003, the two have also been designing books for Rizzoli, but the bulk of their work still centers on music, much of it album design. Shown clockwise from top right are a CD for ambient guitar group Auburn Lull; a photo-collaged album jacket for psychedelic folk band Saloon; the cover of Mahogany’s first self-released LP, The Dream of a Modern Day; and an illustration from Little Darla Has a Treat for You, Volume 18.