who's listening now ...

here are some 78 sleeves by the nipponophone company, with a strange riff on rca victor's logo and catch phrase: his master's voice.

with victor, the original idea behind the dog with his head cocked to the side standing over the victrola; was that the reproduction of sound was so clear that the dog is thinking that the victrola is his dead master (hence he's hearing "his master's voice"). nipponophone has gone a step further with these - where buddha is the one who is listening.

the uppermost sleeve is my favorite because it seems buddha is meditating, while his spirit is somehow distracted by music to leave his physical body to become one with the sound he is listening to. i'm guessing the voice buddha is hearing is quite possibly his own, creating a kind of vocal auroboros vortex that i won't begin to impose any kind of definitional logic upon.

the graphics on both of these are just stellar, and the lower one is such a great example of the influence of western victorian and art nouveau aesthetics on japanese design. at some point i hope to get a few of the 100 or so japanese 78's that these images are from up on the blog so you can hear some of what is on these things; but the images were haunting me, so here they are in all their silent glory...