The Post Office has chosen ten album covers as part of a ‘design classics’ series acknowledging the artistic merit of record sleeves that are as culturally significant as the music they were designed to represent.

Cannell, a one-time milkman with no formal artistic training described as an anarchist by Primal Scream singer Bobby Gillepsie, began designing record

sleeves in the early 1990’s for such groups as Flowered Up and Manic Street Preachers, working for both Heavenly records and Creation records who gave him studio space in their offices. His unconventional approach to art, using anything from household undercoat paint to car body filler along with a love of punk and its aesthetics, abstract art and cubism made him the ideal artist to encapsulate the post-rave hedonistic culture of the early 90’s music scene, mixing child-like menace with exuberant colour.

Tragically Cannell took his own life in July 2005, surviving a wife and child, and never received the full recognition from the art establishment for his body of work. As he revealed in an interview “I was at the Royal Academy doing a photo session for a project. Managed to nick an apple pie and cup of coffee from the canteen. I’m quite proud of that, actually…”

Other stamps feature the cover of the Clash’s London Calling album and New Order’s Power Corruption and Lies.

 http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/2010/01/11/royal-mail-honours-anarchist-artist/#more-708