I loved making mixtapes when I was a teen. I'd find out how long the tape actually was (it never quite matched what it said on the package) and time each song I wanted to use so I would fill up the most space, and then I'd time how much space to put between the songs... all so there'd only be a little silence at the end of each side before it flipped. I'm not sure how I got this way. But I took a lot of pride in my work.
So it's become a tradition of mine, these days, to put together a Spotify playlist for a couple of friends on Christmases and birthdays, and I love putting just as much effort into their cover images as I do with the song choices. This one, obviously, is a Christmas mix.
Another Christmas mix, less obviously. A little tribute to the old Oregon Trail game, in which we used to delight in making things as hard for our travelers as possible. It also, in this case, seemed a fitting summation of the year most of us had.
I generally use a title that's a reference to something I loved that year but which isn't actually in the mix. I'm not sure if my friends ever google it to see what on earth I'm talking about, but I sort of hope they do, and discover another new thing as a little bonus. In this case, the title is from a novel by Stephen Graham Jones, and was my favorite book of that year. How do you not pick up a book with a title like that?
An unused alternate, but it makes me laugh every time I see it. The photo is of the character Todd from the show "The Last Man on Earth," whose sweet little heart is the furthest thing from a chainsaw imaginable.
Yes, of course the photo (not mine) is doing most of the work here, but I'm quite pleased with how the lettering turned out as well.
In this case I may have used the referenced song, actually—"Paprika" by Japanese Breakfast, a song I'd like to swim in somehow.
(Record scratch) Yep, that's me. And I would kill to have a coat this rad right now.
We're just normal men... We're just innocent men.
We hear the wilderness, and it hears us.