Best Album Packaging No.2

"Year Zero" 

 Nine Inch Nails - 2007

The album features a thermo-chrome heat-sensitive CD face which appears black when first opened, but reveals a black binary code on a white background when heat is generated from the album being played.

The binary sequence translates to "exterminal.net", the address of a website involved in an alternate reality game also set up by the band to tie in with the concept of the album. Included with the album is a small insert that is a warning from the fictional United States Bureau of Morality, with a phone number to report people who have "engaged in subversive acts". When the number is called, a recording from the USBM is played, claiming "By calling this number, you and your family are implicitly pleading guilty to the consumption of anti-American media and have been flagged as potential militants." 

    


                  

In 2010, The Black Keys album "Brothers" also featured  a thermo-chrome CD which, along with some very clever cover design, went on to win the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Album Package.

Best Album Packaging No.1

"Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space"

Spiritualized - 1997

A special edition of the album was packaged in a box designed to resemble prescription medicine, complete with "dosage advice" and a foil blister pack containing the CD. The liner notes take the form of lengthy instructions and technical specs for the medicine-- how the pills were made, who made them, and how they should be taken. "What is Spiritualized used for?" asks the silver metallic ink. "Spiritualized is used to treat the heart and soul."

More recently, the American band Marrow released an album called "Sunshine Enema" with a similar design concept. Their album however is on a USB drive which is in the form of a pill stored in its own pill bottle.