Polygon Window – Surfing on Sine Waves / Quoth album art

The Surfing on Sine Waves album (January 1993) and the Quoth EP (March 1993) are two releases by Polygon Window, a pseudonym of Richard D. James, better known as Aphex Twin. Like many of the Aphex Twin albums, they came out on Warp.

The cover designs are rather different from those for releases under the name of Aphex Twin. We find two photos: one of James running down the stairs of a subway station, and one of Chapel Porth beach in Cornwall. Both got a sepia treatment, with a rather similar shade between the light brown and the turquoise blue.

The use of OCR-B is not very different from the Aphex Twin albums. There, we often find simple typography that is not very fancy, and closer to computer typography created for digital use. This choice fits in with James’s vision of music and the world in general. Turned towards the electronic, Aphex Twin often made the choice of a digital designer. The OCR typefaces are often used in the electronic music, in particular by artists related to the Warp labels, see e.g. Hi Scores by Boards of Canada.

The covers are based on photos of Samantha Robinson. They were both designed by The Designers Republic, a studio that often collaborated with Aphex Twin.

From Wikipedia:

The cover of the album features a photograph of Chapel Porth beach in Cornwall, where James spent time with his sisters as a child; James thanks the seaside village in the liner notes. The title Surfing on Sine Waves was chosen by Warp founder Rob Mitchell after James mentioned that “loads of people I knew growing up in Cornwall were poser surfers and I didn’t wanna hang around with them.”