Custom box set: The Smashing Pumpkins Machina II

...the friends and enemies of custom box sets.

Ok, let’s get the posts rolling.

First, a little context. The Smashing Pumpkins is one of my all-time favorite bands. They released Machina II/The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music in 2000 as a last hurrah (or a middle finger to their record label, according to some articles). The original release was a five-record set of three EPs and a double-LP. Only a mere 25 copies were pressed. Legend has it that these were distributed to industry people and those in the tape-trading circuit to be bootlegged. A few of the tracks were officially released in the Greatest Hits CD released in 2001, but the only way to get the entire thing was through bootlegs.

Over the years, I was — for the lack of a better word — fixated on the album. Not because the songs were great (though I count several tracks among my top favorites), but because it spurred my interest in custom packaging. A lot of bootleggers at the time designed covers meant for jewel cases but, well, they looked like bootlegs. I wanted something more authentic.

In 2011, I became a proud owner of The Beatles in Mono box set, which contains “mini LPs” which, for the unfamiliar, are CDs with packaging that replicated the original vinyl release. It quickly became my favorite type of CD packaging and, after learning quite a few things about crafting custom boxes, I figured I’d apply the same design principles to Machina II, hence…

(more photos and an “unboxing” video at my Instagram)

The box has a lift-up lid that I patterned from the Smashing Pumpkins deluxe editions that were released some time ago. The original vinyl packaging consisted of plain paper sleeves that were wrapped with custom packing tape (hence the repeating patterns) and I originally intended to reproduce the same, but the damn things were just too expensive to produce. So I went with the next best thing: printed card wallets.

Another thing about the originals is they didn’t come with an official track listing or information card. In fact, the only text in the packaging was the fifth chapter of what I assume is the Machina story, as started in the album Machina/The Machines of God.

I’ve created two “postcards” that lists the track titles on one and album credits on the other. I derived the track titles from the official website’s download page, so some of the tracks may not reflect the actual titles, i.e. “Try, Try, Try” is just “Try,” “Saturnine” is “Satur9,” “Glass’s Theme” is simply “Glass,” et cetera. The credits took a bit of research, particularly the publisher credits. I am not 100% sure if they’re accurate (Billy Corgan’s publishing at the time was Faust’s Haus but it’s probably different now) but I kept it as-is to maintain some authenticity. The text is ordered to somewhat match the order of the credits page on the Machina CD.

Building the entire package took a lot of work but it turned out better than expected. Will I do something similar in the future? Maybe. But not today — I have several in my pipeline. You’ll read all about it soon. There’s a subscribe button thing below if you wish to receive these little stories straight to your inbox free of charge.