Great album art sits between communication and the conceptual, it needs to deliver a commercial need but what great illustrated sleeve art also does is deliver to the fan the visual tools to understand the music.

For Varoom magazine’s Hermenauts issue, we asked illustrators Ellen Weinstein, Ian Wright and Olimpia Zagnoli, designers Mario Hugo and Silvia Sfligiotti and journalist and editor Mark Richardson to reflect on the interpretive power of great sleeve art. And from Eno and FKA Twigs through to Led Zeppelin and Beck, they did.

Go here for great insight into creativity, dreamy drifting on precious moments in time, and most of all a celebration of the power the image-maker and musician has to transport us emotionally to very a different place.