Legendary band Crass re-released their classic album "Christ-The Album" in August 2019, some 37 years after it was first unleashed. Rotator was lucky enough to win the business to re create this visual masterpiece which consisted of a double album with accompanying poster and 28 page booklet housed in a box, and also as an identical CD version for the first time
I recall, in 1982, being in a record shop in Sunderland, the day before we were heading home to Dublin. A delivery truck arrived with the new Crass album due to be released the following day... I begged the man behind the counter to sell me one, and as such I was one of the first people to get my hands on this package, one that would shift almost 100,000 copies in its first week and hit the national charts... and one that would sell even more the following week, but would magically disappear from the charts amid a flurry of conspiracy theories that the people behind the charts were actively trying to keep artists like Crass out of the mainstream because they highlighted that expensive advertising campaigns and press coverage were not needed in the extreme DIY world of independent music. Bear in mind, Crass were outselling AC/DC at the time from a farmhouse in Epping and with zero advertising budgets and independent distribution networks.
So you can imagine my delight to be asked by One Little Indian Records to reproduce this masterpiece as faithfully as possible. Having spent a lot of time and energy in Abbey Road Studios to restore the master tapes and re cut the album to sound as near as possible to the original, the task to recreate the packaging was deemed equally as important. To that end we created the bespoke box in imperial sizes, so the spine was the perfect depth to match the original. The images on the front and spine were applied using white foil, as was the original, to leave a tangible and indented finish. In order to match the 30 page book and poster, we used partially unbleached recycled stock... partly because its better for the environment, but also because the slight off white shade was closer to the 1982 printed pieces. The poster was recreated using the same, but heavier, material and the overall result was spectacular.
We were then tasked with altering the artwork to create, for the first time, a matching double CD version. Using the original artwork for the record labels as the CD labels, we shrunk the artwork for the box and poster and then chopped up the pdf of the booklet to bring the size down from 30 pages 290mm square to 64 pages 125mm square whilst maintaining readability and a nice two column image. The overall result is a fabulous companion to the vinyl edition.
This ranks as one of our prouder projects, partly because of the personal interest I have in it, but more so because we had the chance to influence the production specifications and use our full service offering and knowledge base to create the final product