PA Album of the Year Discussion thread

@Lewian: I deleted the duplicate entry for the Torabi/Wileman release, thanks for letting me know!

Edited by MikeEnRegalia - January 26 2024 at 15:46

^ Okay, I had used Rate Your Music which said December, 2022. Discogs confirms 2023. Anyway, the band is not included in Prog Archives which could be a problem for the Album of the Year event. It was not accepted before, but I think that was before this album came out. Anyway, it is at awesomeprog for 2023, so you can still vote for it in the album list at awesomeprog even if it is not eligible for the PA proper contest,. Hope you create a list there and share it here (see instructions above) if you haven't already.

EDIT: I moved various posts here from the official Album of the Year lists topic to this discussion topic in case people miss seeing the lists in the other topic (just worried some might not so easily see how it works / the process of the other topic otherwise).

Edited by Logan - January 24 2024 at 19:10

^ I looked that album up, and it says it's from 2022 (not in PA that I see).

By the way, since the deadline is fast approaching and we would hope that we still get more participants, here again is how one participates.

MikeEnRegalia wrote: Here's how this works: Go to https://awesomeprog.com/aoty-poll. You do not need to register at AP in order to participate. Select your favorite releases there. The AP database contains almost all PA releases. If any release is missing, please let me know either via PM or at AP, or in the feedback thread, and we will make it available. If you have an account at AP, you can also create and link it to PA yourself. You can select any release you want, but it should be awesome. Please do not fill the list with less-than-awesome releases just to hit the maximum number. You can stick with only PA releases, but you should also include non-pa releases if they are awesome, and even if they are non-prog. The system will make sure that only PA releases will end up in the PA result. This poll uses a maximum of 20 releases per list. Shorter lists are welcome! The first release will yield 20 points, the second 19, and so on. You can also configure your list to be unranked, in that case each release will get an equal number of points (matching the sum of points your list would have yielded had it been ranked). Since you can submit any release, regardless of whether it is listed at PA or not, your list can be much longer than 20 releases. As a general rule, you should list ALL awesome releases you can think of. Sort it if you can, submit it, and let the system figure out the score. So any list length is fine, if it represents all the awesome releases you know. And regardless of the resulting combined and official chart, users will be able to see your entire list. Once your list looks good, you need to copy the generated code and paste it into a new reply in this thread. This is how we make sure that only legitimate PA forum users can vote, and that everyone can only submit one list.  I am periodically scanning this thread and when I do, submitted lists will be registered and will show up on the tool page. If you want to update your list, feel free to do so as often as you like. You update your list by posting a new one in this thread. Your previous list should still be available in the tool (it persists the lists in your browser), but if you have lost it there is a textarea where you can paste any list (just copy it from a post) to import your list. When the poll is closed (currently we envision January 31 as the last day of voting) I will export the final result in another thread. If you absolutely refuse to use the tool, you can also post your list here, and I will import it into the tool for you when I have some spare time.

^ And even posting a list! That's more than many others who have entered here 

Edited by MikeEnRegalia - January 24 2024 at 15:49

^ I corrected the entry for Mendoza Hoff Revels. As for the status of the other release, you can tag it as non-prog to make sure. Currently it's only auto-tagged from rym, where it is also non-prog (but avant-garde). EDIT: Hadn't seen that you've done just that 

Edited by MikeEnRegalia - January 22 2024 at 14:52

Improvements! Don't worry, none of the voting functionality has changed. But in the combined charts you can now filter by genre (either PA genre on the PA only chart, or AP genre on the others), and there's also pagination for the poll, which improves performance.

I like that idea as well 

The mention of past years raises a question from me. Would you (MikeEnRegalia) consider running best of year polls for different years throughout the year? I think it would have to be one year at a time, and I don't think it would have to go back year by year in order. It would be interesting to say pick a year, such as 2016 that Greg mentioned, and see how that might compare to the collaborator poll taken then. It also gives some people an opportunity to rate based on an extended history. I personally use time as a test on how I rank an album. I may of liked an album a lot when it first came out but after a few years may not hold regular listening. While the albums that end up being my favorites get repeated listens years later. 

The ratings at RYM are 3.31 / 5.0 from 3,752 ratings. Ranked #685 for 2023. The reviews are mostly very positive, but they also are over the map. Xiu Xiu has been around for a long time, and I think it also depends on which sides of Xiu Xiu you are into. It has soundtrack qualities, like early horror movies, and I like atmospheric and cinematic music. Some of it could work well as background music, depending on the individual. I totally would get why some people would find this album pretentious and boring on the whole, and I would not imagine many into melodic rock / AOR really liking it. I like kinds of industrial music, drone and music with spoken word.

It's still not up there with their Twin Peaks take, which is one of my favourite albums from 2016, and 2016 is one of my very favourite years in music.

This is a favourite of mine off the album and more invigorating than most on it:

Taken from the AOTY topic:

Mirakaze wrote: 13. Xiu Xiu - Ignore Grief [AP Non-Prog] [Bandcamp] [Spotify] {ap:65578}

It's great to see another with that album on their list. I think I have it in the same ranking. Having become a huge Twin Peaks fan after the revival (The Return) came out in 2017, I listened to Xiu Xiu's Play the Music of Twin Peaks album that came out in 2016 and love their takes on the scores. I was pleased to appreciate Xiu Xiu's Ignore Grief as much as I do, especially as it has a decent but far from stellar rating at RYM.