Radiohead's The King Of Limbs was the best selling vinyl album of the year, and even though a lot of fans weren't blown away by the music on the record, the special "newspaper" edition and packaging for the release was truly something to behold. Mojo magazine named The King Of Limbs their favorite "music package" of the year, and they've done a pretty fantastic feature on the release in their Best Of 2011 edition. Radiohead's Colin Greenwood and Stanley Donwood (the art director of the package) were interviewed for Mojo's year end issue and revealed a ton of details regarding the release, production, and design of the album packaging. You'll have to purchase the magazine to read the entire interview, however since Donwood had SO much to say in the interview, Mojo decided to publish the "director's cut" of the interview here. I posted one excerpt from the piece below--Donwood's comments on the good ol' compact disc:
"They are atrocious. Human invention has made some serious errors, the private motor vehicle being chief among them. Compact discs are not in that league, but they are still extremely annoying: and in a few years they'll all be landfill. No-one has any serious love for them; they look cheap, and promise much that they cannot deliver. They merely allowed the bloated 'music industry' to continue for a few more stolen years whilst millions of people bought music they already owned in this new, hideous format. And those jewel cases! What a waste of our hydrocarbon resources. I will not mourn them."