PSB DESIGNING par Alex Camarillo
Alex Camarillo explore en détail la créativité faite autour des albums et singles des Pet Shop Boys au cours de leur longue carrière ,la personnalisation des différents formats et la participation d'artistes très talentueux , photographes, créateurs de costumes et graphistes tels que Mark Farrow ,Eric Watson ,David Fielding et Jeffrey Bryant parmi ceux qui ont contribué au design des Pet Shop Boys comme une icône visuelle de la culture pop.
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Domino Dancing” was released in 1988 as the second single of “Introspective”, the third studio album of the band. The artwork was designed by Mark Farrow using a photo of Neil & Chris on holiday in Miami Beach, USA taken by their friend Peter Andreas, who also inspired the name of the song using the phrase ‘domino dancing’ in a holiday on the Caribbean. The photo is a little bit slant on purpose, so Neil & Chris decided to leave it that way. The cover didn’t show nor the name of the band neither the song title as they did before with “Suburbia” a couple years ago.
The back cover on all formats (cassette, 7”, 12” & CD) showed the information read-out from a mixing desk’s computer over a grey background; the only vacation between the different formats was the color of the computer’s info: purple for the cassette, green for the CD, red for the 7” and blue for the 12”. Both 7” & 12” vinyls had a limited edition double sleeve release where the inner sleeve had more info from the mixing desk computer showing 48 tracks used on the recording of the song. The 7” release included radio versions of “Domino Dancing” and the new B Side “Don Juan” while the other formats included the ‘Disco Mix’ (same version as in “Introspective”) and ‘Alternative Mix’ for “Domino Dancing” and the ‘Disco Mix’ for “Don Juan”.
The world-wide release of “Domino Dancing” didn’t show a lot of changes in the cover artwork, just a few countries added the name of the band and song title in the cover, usually on a sticker and sometimes in a box printed at the top of the cover. However, some promotional vinyls explore different options (probably because of marketing purposes) and started becoming more relevant for fans and collectors like the UK 12” promo, issued in a generic Parlophone-EMI sleeve; in Brasil the 12” Promo was issued in a cut-out red sleeve with a sticker in the top left corner with the coloured bars from “Introspective” and black type with titles and credits; in Philippines a similar 12” was issued with a sticker on the top right corner showing a cropped image of the van at the beach; the Japanese 7” vinyl had the same coloured bars as “Introspective” for the whole front cover with the black box in the middle with the legend “Pet Shop Boys - Domino Dancing / Don Juan”; in Mexico the 7” promo was labeled with the Spanish translation “El Baile del Dominó”; and finally, in the US a promo CD was issued in a jewel box with the same cover just adding the name of the band in the bottom section of the photo and omitting the B Side.
Other comercial releases included a 3” CD for Austria, Germany and Switzerland with the regular cover and a similar layout in the back cover with credits, this CD was part of a series of 3” CDs in the “Introspective” era including “Left to my own devices” and two releases of “It’s alright”; in Japan were also released a 3” CD in a large box, a common format for this country. Finally, a second 12” Remix Single were released in the UK including “Domino Dancing (Base Remix)” and Demo versions for “Domino Dancing” and “Don Juan”. The photo used on the artwork was taken in Miami Beach also with a Polaroid camera showing Neil & Chris outside the famous Carlyle Hotel, part of the Art-Deco architecture of the city that now a days is still in place and it’s a must-do visit for fans travelling here. The same artwork was used for the 6” label on the 3x12” Special Edition of “Introspective” for the “Domino Dancing” side.