Customer Reviews

From a Basement in Seattle: The Poster Art of Brad Klausen

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I purchased this book for two teenaged friends of mine for Christmas. Both loved this book, which has wonderful poster art and background information about various Seattle rock bands. Highly recommended for the rock music lover.

I bought two copies of this book. One for my husband and one for my dad. They love it!!!

After waiting for months for Brad's book to make it out I was able to pick it up last week. It takes only a few minutes of flipping through the pages to understand that this book is a little different than other rock poster art books. Brad takes the time to explain in detail many of the posters that he has created and has included pencil sketches of early ideas. You also get to learn alot about Brad as a person and why he has gravitated towards certain themes in his posters. The quality of the book is A+ and with many of his prints sold out and pricey this is a good alternative to the full size posters. I own other rock art books such as Pearl Jam vs. Ames Bros, Emek's book of arrght and the art of rock books. Brad Klausen's "From a Basement in Seattle" is right up there with all!! Keep up the good work!!

"From a Basement in Seattle" is a very nice book of Brad Klausen's poster art. Klausen now runs Artillery Design, which is his own enterprise that produces unique high-quality concert posters, but for many years, he worked for Pearl Jam's organization, doing posters, merch designs and the like (Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament wrote short forwards for this book). If you're a fan of Pearl Jam, you know that they make unique posters for pretty much every show they play, and these posters have become quite collectable. Klausen and Ames Bros. are probably the two best-known Pearl Jam poster creators; there was a previous book of Ames Bros. that was available ("Pearl Jam VS. Ames Bros.), and now we have this volume of selected Klausens, which is handy as some of the originals have become quite expensive on the collectors' market, so it's nice to have selected posters in high-quality book form. There are many designs here I had not seen (though you can also see images of his work, on his site).

The book is very nicely presented, in an oversize softcover on very nice paper. Typically, the left page of each two-page spread will contain rough sketches of the poster concept, and elements of a poster's design (since Klausen seems to piece them together; some elements are quite detailed, so he appears to work on sections separately and then combines them into the final image), with Klausen's comments on what inspired the design, how he created the image, etc. The right side of the 2 page-spread is the final poster. Many of these are quite visually striking, with ornate patterns, cool symmetrical effects, band names that aren't immediately apparent but are part of the image, etc. Pearl Jam is featured prominently (most of what's here is Pearl Jam, so if you have the Ames Bros book, this will make a very nice companion), though there are posters of bands such as Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Black Keys, Queens of the Stone Age, and several others.

Overall, a very nice volume that is a quality addition to my collection of rock-poster books, along with the two "Art of Rock" books, the Ames Bros. book, and the various Swag editions, among others.