December 12, 2003

Is packaging a dying art? Mark Richardson from the lovely Pitchfork Media obviously thinks so. Apparently, ever since the days of vinyl ended, music packaging has gone downhil, with nothing but bland plastic CD case after bland plastic CD case containing little more than the credits and some meaningless scrawl on the front. Well, not so, say I! I'm a sucker for an inventive CD package (does double if it doesn't fit in my CD rack) and there have been released recently some truly inventive, gorgeous works of art.

Consider some of the creations of Constellation Records, who make each case into a labour of love. Some of their best (mass-produced) work has been made for The Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra And Tra-La-La Band. Their latest release ("This Is Our Punk-Rock," Thee Rusted Satellites Gather + Sing) comes in a gorgeous cardboard gatefold, complete with a booklet inside full of crazy scrawlings. Consider also Sigur Rós' ( ), containing a 16-page booklet full of abstract images, upon which you are invited to draw your own interpretations of the lyrics. Or Radiohead's special edition of Hail To The Thief, complete with poster-sized map of... Something. Thom Yorke's neuroses, maybe. Have you monkeys got any particular favourite music cases that you'd like to share?

posted by Blaise Bailey Finnegan 20 years ago
  • [oh, and if anyone has a copy of either of the CDs mentioned in the "labour of love" links that they're willing to sell, then, uh... Get in touch, yeah?]
  • Honestly, the Aqua cover from the Aquarium album. Sweet sweet, upbeat euro techno pop, is there any problem you can't solve? People asking you for rides constantly? Play them the joyous Candyman, see how long they keep asking.
  • Lost in Space -- the last Aimee Mann album with artwork by Seth Us, Up -- Peter Gabriel
  • Mr. Finnegan, I detect a genre to which you are conforming. Now I am going to sound like everything I fancy myself not to be: The plastic uniformity of CD cases is like everything else CD versus vinyl, more about preservation. Each time you play a record, the hideous forces of entropy are steadily at work. On a compact disc, the act of playing it does not appreciably accelerate the loss of sound quality. The same goes for the "clever" packaging. That Radiohead Special Ed. package lasted all of two months before a rainstorm and lazy placement fattened and wrinkled it. I would appreciate some "clever, but not cardboard" cases myself- more like the Sigur Ros CD, mine of which has been weathered and tormented while still looking good. My point: slobs like me would just wreck creative packaging anyway.
  • I love beautiful packaging, but when I buy a cd I take it out, rip it, put it into a cd wallet, (and recently) load the tracks on to my Dell Jukebox, and never look at the packaging again.
  • I liked the Pearl Jam 'bootlegs' from their recent tours. They have a nice cardboard feel, nice design but still fit unobnoxiously on the shelf. The coolest presentation of an album of all time though (well, at least all CD time) has to be the special promo edition of Spiritualized's "Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in Space" which came in a massive box that looked like a perscription drug box and contained one CD for each track packed onto one of those silvery pill boards that come inside the pill box. So like a huge box of decongestant, except will individually sealed CD's rather than pills. Sorry, I am incoherent this morning.
  • Andrew Deutsch - "Electronic Garden" "The cover images for this cd were inspired by the notebooks and 'field drawings' of book artist John Wood. Each cd of this edition contains a hand made watercolor accented with gold leaf and is hand signed along with a photographic fragment verso." Illusion of Safety - "In Opposition to Our Acceleration" "Released in an oversize folio including 6 double sided postcards featuring the abstract, unmanipulated photography of IOS founding member Dan Burke." Anything designed by Jon Wozencroft (Touch)
  • I agree, Kimberly. I appreciate cool packaging, but just want the damned thing to fit in my cd wallet.
  • Not to derail the thread, but here is an interesting editorial on product packaging. (Not to start an Apple/PC flame war either!)
  • The Buena Vista Social Club CDs came with a fairly thick book (think like the Sgt Pepper CD) within a cardboard binding. It doesn't fit in my CD rack, though. Space's Tin Planet came in a tin cigar-style box (my personal favourite). Sigur Rós's Ágætis Byrjun has a quite pretty case. Threefold cardboard with bizarre foetal-type abstract images. Like Kimberly, I stick them in a wallet and copy them to iTunes, so the packaging doesn't matter unless it really stands out. All the above cases have withstood baby chewing and drooling, also, so I can vouch for resilience as well as prettiness.
  • Ken Layne wrote a whole entry on the subject. I agree with him about the cover of the Replacements album Tim. It is butt ugly. I am saying that as a huge Mats fan.
  • Frank Black's Cult of Ray is the ugliest ever. and there is always plenty of bad artwork to accompany pere ubu albums from a certain period. Though I feel that was sometimes a point of pride.
  • Good post
  • The teeth, the teeeeeeth!
  • Sorry to come the old fuck, kideez, but compact disc packaging versus LP packaging is not even a fight. The CD has all the practical advantages, the LP all the packaging aesthetic ones. More bigger artwork, liner notes you can read. Walk out of the record shop with a new LP tucked under your arm and you'll know what i mean.
  • And if you think there's a weak logical link in the last post, you're right.
  • I remember flipping through my oldest brother's record collection, after he had amassed all of the Beatles, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and other (now deemed) classic rock staples and wow, the worlds that seemed to be yours for the taking looking at those comparably huge resplendent album covers. I don't think the artistry has necessarily suffered with albums now on CD, but compare the too, and it's hard not to look at a CD and view it as looking at the album from afar. That said, when it comes to moving, storage, and preserving the music, I am happy to keep it on CD.
  • I remember when I was a kid (with some effort) in the last days of vinyl, we always listened to cassettes, because they were just more practical. HOWEVER, those cassettes were dubbed from the vinyl. You always bought the vinyl, bacause the cover art, liner notes, etc. were just that much better. We only ever played the actual record on special occasions, or to dub more cassettes.