While studying up on art theory (semiotics and simulacra), I stumbled across this Fake Album Cover meme. Seems like my kind of thing, so how did I miss it?
Fake Album Cover from Know Your Meme:
How to Make Your Own Album Cover
1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 – Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.
I’ve been listening to Ivana XL’s EP and album (both of which seem to be called Ivana XL, but whatever). If you like creaky, quirky, semi-folksy stuff like Mazzy Star (from the 90’s), you’ll probably like this.
After hearing about them for a while, I finally started listening to Glasvegas this week. One part melodrama, one part grit, I love their music entirely.
I’m playtesting my iPhone game a lot right now, near the end of the project. (This is, more or less, a regenerative side project I’m doing with a handful of other people, while working on longer-term first-person RPG-style stuff with Arkane Studios.) Out of many, many great qualities, one of the best things about the iPhone/iPod is that you can general pop on headphones, turn off the game’s music, and play to your own soundtrack. Not completely novel, but better supported than on any prior platform.
My favorite music while playing my iPhone game: Dan Deacon, Cut Copy and–more specifically–the Teenagers’ remake of a song by Vampire Weekend. Glasvegas works well too, it turns out.
Saw Stereolab last night at La Zona Rosa, with Leah, Starr and Eugenie. I’m not a huge fan, but the show was fun.
For some reason, the god/goddess of media decided that a number of things would arrive today. I got three books in addition to a History Channel 360 game (which is probably not great, but I want to try when I’m not playing Bully: Scholarship Edition or Burnout Paradise) and an old Bauhaus album I finally replaced (…one I owned originally on cassette).
The books:
1) A collection of short plays by Samuel Beckett: I never read Krapp’s Last Tape and recently–during a conversation about the Graveyard–someone mentioned that it was moving.
2) Game Design Workshop, by Tracy Fullerton, comes highly recommend. I’m working on two projects with Arkane: One with a very short development cycle, and one that’ll be much longer term. For the short-term project, I just hit a milestone that will make the Fullerton book very useful in terms of iterating. (Being at an independent, passion-driven company again is fantastic…Arkane is very agile, social and fun.)
3) Universal Principles of Design, also highly recommended, is a great book that the title describes perfectly.
A couple of years back, as part of my minimalist trend, I got rid of (I’d say) 4/5ths of my books. I like having some on the shelf, but I’d be happier if I could get them all in digi format, on a multi-use device that wasn’t just for reading (like the iTouch).
Saw the Hold Steady last night with Leah, David K., Nathan Black and Aaron, a friend of David’s. It was chilly by our standards, but I had some coffee at Jo’s on 2nd before the show and the band rocked hard enough to keep us warm. After the show, I went home and listened to Thunder Road as a kind of tribute to the Hold Steady.
