Design of the Week: Alvarius B.

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More About

• Busby Berkeley
• Martin Denny
• James Bond
• Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Science and Technology

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Let's get the cover out of the way: the most artful use of the female nude in ages, beautiful, respectful and way more interesting than that famous non-Hendrix-approved cover of Electric Ladyland — a Busby Berkeley arrangement for a far less prudish era. What's inside? The CD reissue of the super-rare album Baroque Primitiva, released on vinyl in February by the appropriately named label Poon Village (which also could be a brilliant long-lost name for a Martin Denny exotica LP). The music within (credited to the barely pseudonymous Alvarius B.) is the first solo record in six years by Alan Bishop, he of revered underground institution Sun City Girls. Multilingual, sublimely worldly music (Bishop also runs influential global anthropologist label Sublime Frequencies), incorporating acoustic bliss, subversive humor, a lo-fi take on the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows," and one of the best James Bond cover versions you're likely to hear. The perfect soundtrack to that perfect cover.