rants and raves

cover

this is probably my favorite cd cover so far. the eye is from an escher — it originally had a skull in it, but i replaced it with the orange flame. i’m not sure what fire has to do with rants and raves, but i really like how it turned out. i found a graffiti-looking font and used transparency to get it to almost look like it’s tattooed on (though that didn’t translate quite right from paint shop pro into the gimp). the back uses the entire picture i found for the flame on the front — it’s pretty dark and has a guy lit up by a red glow who appears to be working with metal. i had fun with the track list text, which is white in the middle and fades through yellow to red at the edges.

to go along with my favorite cd cover is my favorite compilation of music so far. the idea here was to combine rants (music which sounded angry) and raves (rave / house / etc. music) in order to use the title “rants and raves.” i wanted to pick rants that sounded good next to raves, and vice versa, and i think i did alright with that. it took me a while to make this disc, and i came up with more raves toward the end, which means the aphex twin and professor television (being so late in the disc) may come as somewhat of a surprise. for me though it’s a nice surprise.

this disc is also the first to feature one of my sort-of mixed tracks. massivivid’s “a hand brushed by tired eyes” is actually a sort-of-mix i put together from pieces of the brightblur version and the vivid demo version, and then added some distortion effects on top of that. most of it is smooth enough that you couldn’t tell i did anything to it if you weren’t familiar with the originals. i also had some fun fading some of ap2’s vocals between channels.

1. ap2 — “resurrection of the ravens”
2. p.o.d. — “freestyle”
3. moby — “heavy flow”
4. the chemical brothers — “setting sun”
5. nine inch nails — “the perfect drug”
6. limp bizkit — “take a look around”
7. deitiphobia — “retrofit”
8. orbital — “speed freak”
9. cult of jester — “sephiroth”
10. fell venus — “shaped by fear”
11. circle of dust — “refractor”
12. fatboy slim — “ya mama”
13. new order — “confusion”
14. massivivid — “a hand brushed by tired eyes”
15. garbage — “hammering in my head”
16. aphex twin — “entrance to exit”
17. sheltershed — “dj culture 3.0”
18. professor television — “iama”
19. the prodigy — “death of the prodigy dancers”

how do you like it?