Best Album Packaging No.3

"The Return of the Durutti Column"
The Durutti Column - 1980

The Situationist International movement had long been an influence on The Durutti Column's manager and label boss, Tony Wilson and had even given him the name for Factory Records' legendary niteclub, The Hacienda. The Durutti Column got the idea for the packaging of their first album from the situationist art book Mémoires by Guy Debord. The book is most famous for its cover, a dust jacket made of heavy-grade sandpaper which was designed to leave its mark when taken off a bookshelf or coffee table. The sleeve notes even thanks Debord "for the marketing concept". The Durutti Column liked the idea that the very action of taking the record off the shelf and putting it back on will gradually ruin all the other records next to it. The idea did backfire however as the sand kept flaking off and doing much more damage to the record inside than to any of the others.

2000 of the original sandpaper LP sleeves were released, all of which were assembled by members of Joy Division who, like The Durutti Column, were also signed to Factory Records. The story goes that it was Ian Curtis who did most of the sleeves by himself because while the rest of the band gave up and started watching TV, he continued because he needed the money for fags!

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.