Description
This framed sleeve for Devo’s Oh, No! It’s Devo! (1982) captures a moment when American music’s machinery—fueled by Midwestern grit and corporate polish—bent new wave into something sharper, more synthetic. The design, a 6×4 grid of black silhouettes caught mid-leap, mid-twist, mid-flail, isn’t mere decoration; it’s a frozen taxonomy of absurdity, echoing the band’s de-evolution creed: humanity as repetitive, potato-like forms in suits, bouncing against invisible walls. Crafted under the eye of visual architect Michael Holoberdin (Devo’s long-time collaborator), the artwork draws from Bauhaus precision and Akron’s assembly-line heritage, turning the 12×12 canvas into a wry diptych of conformity’s dance. Against the era’s economic squeeze and cultural thaw—disco’s ashes birthing MTV’s glow—these figures embody the tension: individual motion subsumed by pattern, a nod to how labels like Warner Bros. packaged rebellion for the masses.
Ready for a studio wall where it prompts questions, or an office shelf as quiet provocation. Early pressings in clean condition are increasingly scarce; this example carries provenance from Allied’s LA plant, etched runouts like faint battle scars.
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