Collecting David Shrigley’s record cover art has proved much easier than I had thought it would be. My main research engines have been Ebay and Discogs plus some targeted Internet searches. In my last post on Shrigley’s record cover art I said I had identified twenty-one records. CDs and cassettes with his art. I have been working hard since then and my tally is now up to forty-two records, tapes and CDs/CDrs plus three items that are not strictly records/record covers. These last include David Shrigley’s limited edition I Am Deep in Thought print included with David Grubbs 2003 Cosmic Structure LP, Shrigley’s 2005 book Worried Noodles: The Empty Cover and his I Collect Records Records Frisbee. The frisbee was created in 2014 after David Shrigley’s Life and Life Drawing exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. Despite these not being true record covers I decided to include them in my Shrigley collection.

Many, if not the majority, of David Shrigley’s record, CD and cassette covers are limited editions. These are often produced by museums or art galleries in conjunction with exhibitions of Shrigley’s art. However, the first three releases that I have been able to identify (from 2002-3) are two CDs by the Scottish band Ballboy — A Guide for the Daylight Hours and The Sash My Father Wore And Other Stories and the cover for Blur’s Good Song DVD (the only release from Blur’s Think Tank album that had cover art by someone other than Banksy.
In 2005 Shrigley allowed the group The Singing Adams to use his Untitled (Wild Animal) print design on the cover of their 2004 CD Problems.
Shrigley’s next release was a limited edition LP (500 copies) entitled Forced to Speak With Others which was also released on CD.
And this was followed by a very limited seven-inch single called Ding Dong released in connection with David Shrigley’s exhibition at the Dundee Contemporary Art museum in 2006. Side one has the “ding” sound of a doorbell and side two the “dong” sound.
Two other seven-inch singles appeared in 2006; A split single with Belle & Sebastian’s Casaco Marron (Latenitetales) coupled with David Shrigley’s When I was a Little Girl, and a picture disc The Perfect Me by the American band Deerhoof. Designer and record cover artist Jan Lankisch who was working at Tomlab records introduced David to Deerhoof and he designed this single and agreed to make the cover for Deerhoof’s forthcoming Friend Opportunity album as well as a further picture disc single Matchbook Seeks Maniac (Dedication Mix) / MaKko Shobu.
The Friend Opportunity album contained twelve alternative cover designs produced by David Shrigley.
There would be three more releases in 2007. Malcolm Middleton, a member of Arab Strap (among other constellations) recorded his A Brighter Beat album released on both LP and CD. The CD came in a standard issue and a limited edition. All three had cover art by Shrigley.
The final release of 2007 was by R. Stevie Moore a prolific American musician/guitarist who put music to poems from Shrigley’s Worried Noodles book and released a cassette and CDr of these tracks called Shrigley Field. The CD was released in a limited edition of 20 numbered copies signed by David Shrigley.
I suspect that this cover is R. Stevie Moore’s rendition of David Shrigley’s portrait of Moore that appeared in BOMB magazine (No 101, July 13, 2010).
I shall continue the story of David Shrigley’s record cover art in the next post.