Shouldn't be random at all. We put a lot of thought into the track order of our last CD, and I have several early rough mixes that are in a different order and sound quite strange now.

The steps are:
- Choose a good opening and finishing track
- fill in the gaps between with as much variety as possible.
- Mix slow and fast, long and short, vocal and instrumental, serious and frivolous...
- consider carefully position of weakest and strongest tracks
- Liten and reshuffle. Repeat till satisfied.
- sometimes the key changes between tracks make a difference.
- eventually you settle on something you don't want to change any more.

"Shuffle" features are irrelevant. Most people don't listen that way, and there's nothing to be done for them, so you might as well decide the best sequence you can for the benefit of those who will listen to all of it.

Another thing to consider is how long the whole thing should be. Standard CDs have 74 minutes capacity but that's usually too long for most people to want to listen to all of it in one go. 50-60 minutes is enough!

Anahata