Here are the nominees for the 57th Grammy Awards for best Special Edition music package.
Tell us which CD packaging you like best because it’s pretty hard to pick a favorite! They’re all worthy of an award.
Table of Contents
CITIES OF DARKSCORCH
Leland Meiners & Ken Shipley, art directors (Various Artists)
Label: The Numero Group
Cities of Darkscorch is a dice-rolling, card-driven, heavy rock band van ride through a fantasy landscape.
It requires newly commissioned card art and band logos to summon up a gravely themed mythical land of desolate outposts, warring bands, and the familiar ills that befall them.
The Cities of Darkscorch includes the following elements:
• 25×25 full color Cities of Darkscorch Gameboard
• 16 Wooden Player Tokens/45 Adapters
• 6 Banner Boards
• 100 Fate Cards
• 100 Foe Cards
• 1 20-Sided Combat Die
• 1 6-Sided Movement Die
• 1 4-Sided Performer Die
• The Numero Group’s Warfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles 2LP and slipcase CD with alternate cover art by Robert Soden.
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A LETTER HOME (Vinyl Box Set)
Gary Burden & Jenice Heo, art directors (Neil Young)
Label: Third Man Records
A Letter Home comes in a box that made to look battered. Inside there are 2 vinyl LPs. These are pressed on heavy vinyl.
One of them as the direct feed from the Voice-A-Graph the other has a ‘cleaned-up’ version. There is a CD and a DVD. The DVD has a video of each song as Young recorded it stuffed into the booth with his guitar and harmonica.
The CD contains all the songs, directly off the machine. Very lo-fi and full of hiss and noise from the turntable motor.
The box also came with a offer of a digital download of the ‘cleaned-up” versions. And finally, seven, clear vinyl double-sided discs containing the 14 tracks.
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THE RISE & FALL OF PARAMOUNT RECORDS, VOLUME ONE (1917-27)
Susan Archie, Dean Blackwood & Jack White, art directors (Various Artists)
Label: Third Man Records/ Revenant Records
The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records is an epic, two-volume omnibus of art, words and music housed in a limited-edition, hand-sculpted cabinet-of-wonder.
The ‘Rise and Fall’ wonder-cabinet gives equal status to page-turning narrative and new scholarship; original and newly created graphic art; industrial design; and compelling analog and digital music experiences.
‘Volume One’ contains the following:
* 800 newly-remastered digital tracks, representing 172 artists
It has 200+ fully-restored original 1920s ads and images
* It has 6x 180g vinyl LPs pressed on burled chestnut colored vinyl w/ hand-engraved, blind-embossed gold-leaf labels, housed in a laser-etched white birch LP folio
* A 250 page deluxe large-format clothbound hardcover art book
* And 360 page encyclopedia-style softcover field guide containing artist portraits and full Paramount discography
* Handcrafted quarter-sawn oak cabinet with lush sage velvet upholstery and custom-forged metal hardware
* First-of-its-kind music and image player app, allowing user mgmt of all tracks and ads, housed on custom-designed USB drive
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SPARKS (Deluxe Album Box Set)
Andy Carne, art director (Imogen Heap)
Label: RCA Records/ Megaphonic Records
Imogen Heap’s Sparks comes with 12 individual data discs, 14 HD music videos.
Plus videos documenting the making of each song and the entire album, a double 10” vinyl album, a special deck of playing cards which unlock exclusive web content and a 120 page coffee-table-style book telling the story of Sparks along with the special ticket of blended items that allows access to sound-checks on the next tour.
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SPRING 1990 (The Other One)
Jessica Dessner, Lisa Glines, Doran Tyson & Steve Vance, art directors (Grateful Dead)
Label: Rhino
The set, limited to 9,000 copies and costing $199.98, features six complete concerts, one from each venue on that tour, with deluxe packaging and a 60-page hardcover book.
If you need of DVD or CD packaging, use these awesome examples to make some truly unique boxed sets!
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James Hill is a veteran of the music industry. He first worked at Warner Reprise Records then later joined Interscope/ Geffen Records where he managed producers and songwriters and got his first platinum record for Keyshia Cole’s The Way It Is. He is now helping indie artists with branding and manufacturing through his company Unified Manufacturing, a CD/DVD, custom vinyl records and merch company in LA.
