I just got a copy of Junior Senior’s latest album Hey Hey My My Yo. This is going to be the first time I’ve ever listened to it, and I’m going to blog my unedited first impressions, live, as I listen to it.

Ooh, the files came with album artwork:

Ok, pressing play:

Track 1 - Hello - Same clap sample used on last album. Fun stringy-samples too. Haha, funny dutch accents. Sort of ambient.

Track 2 - Hip Hop a Lula - NICE. Perfect transisition from intro track. No breaking just like a Beatles album. Just broke down into crazy Jackson Five horns and strings. Charlie was right. Rappy lyrics. Going back to the strings. Wow, I don’t think the netherlands ever left the seventies. Going into a call responce thing: “Break it down, Girl sing!” Break down into synthesizer arpeggios, and then back into the strings. Powerful first track so far. Chaotic fade out.

Track 3 - Can I Get Get Get - Sounds like early 80s hip hop. Can I get get get to know ya better baaaAAAaaaby. Again with the Jackson Five harmonies. COWBELL ALERT. Again with the clapping. Guitar/drum solo. The synths come in, sounds like someone flew Stevie Wonder out to Holland. Sappy disco orchestra chords. Ends on a single note.

Track 4 - Take My Time - Drum machine. High vocals combine with strumming acoustic guitars. Sounds like… Damn, can’t figure it out. Those drum samples sound like the sort of reversed snare you get off an 808. Again with the acoustic guitars, maybe like Bowie? Hmm… J/S really likes clapping. “Love’s all we need, for all the world to suceed” girl+junior chanting, like the B5-2’s. Whoah, it’s speeding up, and the pitch rose, like setting vinal to the wrong speed, but not as drastic. Song is actually reverse and played even higher. I’m getting some wall of sound feelings, ends on the girl wailing.

Track 5 - Itch U Can’t Skratch - Begins on synth arpeggios. More early 80’s style hiphop. Junior and Senior take terms repeating lines. Bongos come in. Jackson Five again. God cvharlie was right. “Give me the cash, give me the stash, so I can look cool.” “I said OOOH.” Fun drum-solo loop. “Big Foot. Dance Now. I said.” “U-U-Use your imagination!”

Track 6 - We R the Handclaps - Yea. That’s about right. Senior and girl are chanting the title. Heh, a little voice break bit like a DJ scratching. Disco vocals. I swear to god this calls for some glowing glass-brick floors. “DANCING SLOWWWWW, LET IT SHOWWWWW, TIME TO GOoOooOO.” Junior’s singing falsetto. Back to intro chanting. Ends on some repeated words.

Track 7 - I Like Music - Junior is channeling micheal jackson. 4 to the floor beat. The loud synth-horns just left out, leaving junior and the drums. Just junior and the guitar riff now. Haha, modulated to a higher key. Junior’s lead lyrics are layered over him singing harmony. It’s a cool effect (Beck uses it alot.) I like this song but it’s not quite as energenic as the last few. Song ends with chiming synth arpeggios.

— OK, now I’m going to take a break and get some dessert. —
— Back with a muffin, and hitting play again —

Track 8 - UR a Girl - Uhm. This is a change, sounds a little like 60’s sunny-psychedelia. Oh, here comes the disco beat and a guitars. This song has some piano. A little too close to Elton John for my comfort :( Some cheesy synth-harpsichord just showed up. There was just one of those “sound gets reversed and then comes back with a loud drum hit” things again, but I suppose it was appropriate. Loooong sloooow fade out.

Track 9 - No No No’s - What’s with J/S and repeating monosyllabic words. This sond sounds alot like the beatles cheasier stuff - Paul McCartney. I can feel a little doowap in there too. “I won’t fall in looooove….” I just noticed the tamborine, someone put Stevie Nicks back in her cage. Modulation again (I think). “Some day your a gonna run away… run run run run run run…” GUITAR SOLO. It’s all twangy. Solo over, sappy disco strings strike again. Songs over, I think J/S are running out of lyrics.

Track 10 - Dance Chance Romance - Junior sounds scarily like Columbia from RHPS. (This muffin is really greasy) Hmm. This song is sort of generic, lacks the punch of the previous stuff. The girl singing along is has a cute voice though. Drum beat breaks down, and the bass leaves. Actually, I think this song is growing on me, it’s cute and dumb. “Singing yeeeaaaa yeeeaaaa yeeeaaaa.” Oh no J/S is suffering from the “using yea yeas, na na, and woo woos and replacement for lyrics” disease. Ends with just the vocals, but 5 or 6 layers of them.

Track 11 - Happy Rap - JACKSON FIVE LIVES. The guitar riff is straight from it. “We’re going one step forward, twist it back.” Senior is rapping. Hah, a reference to “move your feet” from their last album. (I hope they have some good videos for this album…) “Hey Hey Woo Woo Yea Yea Woo WOOOOOO.” “If it aint’ broke don’t fix it, and if it fixed don’t break it.” Cool synth sounds. Ends on Junior taslking to himself and pools and a sample of splash.

Hmm. Weird ending for the last track. No hidden track either. Well that’s the end. Was this even mildly entertaining? If it seems a bit rambling, try listening to the album and reading along. Just post what you thought of this, and maybe I’ll do some more in the future.

In previous installments of this newly minted series covering the redesign of my site, I first created a prototype. Finding it a bit lacking, I took a look at the status of contemporary design in the game-console world in order to find my muse. Now, I look back at my past work and start the real work of designing my new theme at the most basic — and tricky — level: Colour.

Colour evokes the quickest and most natural reaction from a reader. The right mix of colour can make the difference between a balanced clean look, a horrible eyesore, a busy impenetrable mass, a boring field of monotony, or an avant-garde masterpiece. Looking back at the Xbox 360 design graph, let’s make our own version and plot some of my old site designs on it to see what we can learn.

The placements can be most easily defined by colour:

• LZLH stands for “LittleZephyr’s Little House”: My first website, created 5 years ago, and like many other personal sites of the time hosted on Geocities. It consisted of huge white boxes with horrible big ugly black border, and a subdued blue for links. LZLH v2 marked the first time I used orange.
• Arcosys came about during the big move to a real host and sported a brand new minimalist and crappy design this time combining orange and dark blue together. The later arcosys v2 update made the jump to a happier, cleaner, brighter look.
• Now I switched to WordPress and its default horrible green theme. Customized that theme a great deal, but then 1.5 came along with it’s new default theme. Seen on lazy blogger’s pages everywhere, Kubrick was very… default looking: heavy on neutral greys and blues. I customized Kubrick a bit, leading us to where we are now.

With these things in mind, I think I can take ArcoLZ in a new direction while retaining some the the positive feeling of my arcosys v2 design. My skills as a designer are good enough that I can move away from the boxy “CSS-Borders” look and into something more classy and pleasing. Thus, moving away from the “mild” and “architectural” to something more “organic” and slightly more “wild”. Knowing what I have done in the past and where I want to go in the future, let’s take a look at the building blocks we can use to get there.

Onward to page two.

In the last installment of this newly minted series, I screwed around with an idea of how to proceed with a redesign of this site. — It was written at midnight and full of crap, and so I seek new veins of inspiration.

Which brings us to this year’s E3: The Electronic Entertainment Expo. The big three videogame companies are all debuting their newest devices, and some the the stuff is quite interesting:

Microsoft has the Xbox 360

Attempting to move away from the massive black and green box of the original Xbox, they’ve made it all white and curvy. More on this later.

Sony has the Playstation 3

I don’t really know what they were thinking. This looks not only boring with it’s chrome finish, but also looks like it was awkwardly slapped together in some CAD program. Let’s hope some things change for the better before it is released in 2006.

Nintendo has the Revolution (and Game Boy Micro)

The new Revolution is big move from the big N. Of course it’s going to come in different colours, but the slick boxy look has a very modern feeling, leagues away from the previous Nintendo consoles. The GB Micro is designed to appeal to the fashion sense with it’s chrome finish and backlit screen.

These devices are for-better-or-for-worse the latest and greatest in consumer design. Let’s take a look about what we can learn from each of these things.

Onward to page two.