Release Polls: Rank & Tier your Favorite Artists!

^ This (my post, not yours) is very, very badly expressed, and could be a lot more sensible. I don't like the terms for one thing, although that shouldn't matter if it's clear what it means/ represents. The exercise does not resonate with me. A simple number would be preferable, like 1 to 20. But maybe because I don't have the "soul" (so to speak) of a mathematician or statistician, or whatever, the numbers don't sing to me. I like to list more than rate. I'd keep the question marks, personally, but then I like Doctor Who.

They are almost all great to me (or one might say awesome for them), that's a problem, and what is supreme amongst them often depends on what I am listening to at the time. The terminology does not work well with my personality either. Honestly, I don't like the terms, maybe they are a little too informal and young for me (I'm pretty old school), lacking nuance, too much like synonyms... "Da shizz" I like for some reason, and "Yowza" and "Wha' tha?" so, hmm. Don't know, my weird sense of fun and humour, I guess. I don't like the ratings descriptions at PA either.

While I rank and rate things, it's not something I'm very comfortable doing. I would rather try to review if I was better at it. I'd like to present lists that show music I am into and hopefully connect with others who share the tastes.

I actually do find charts useful, so I am hardly against rating and ranking albums. But I'm more like I love lots in their own way. Or I find it mediocre, or bad for my tastes. But I usually listen to and like to talk about that which I love.

And on a sidenote, I most like lists when they are interactive, people commenting on each others lists and sharing what they like and don't like from each other's likes... I do like looking at the combined results from your polls, like with albums of the year and being a contributor to that. I value your site for making lists and seeing others lists and seeing combined rankings...

Different strokes for different folks. Lots I do like to use at your site. I feel like a rating and ranking and such descriptions just does not do justice to how an album affects me commonly. The numbers and descriptions don't represent the beauty enough to me, or how it resonates emotionally, or I should say I feel it's lacking in its descriptiveness of beauty to me as it is a subjective evaluation. Sadly, no review or rating can truly share how music or other art and things make me truly feel. Empathy, vocabulary, and signs and signifiers can give some insight.

Rating is not something I tend to enjoy, or assigning levels of status to something with descriptions like awesome or masterpiece. Ranking is already a less than desirable task for me despite finding utility in ratings and rankings. Maybe I'm being selfish... When I was in my 20s I wrote film reviews and I hated the expectation of rating the album and was less comfortable with others rating art. I've become more okay with it because I realise that that can help me to discover things that I will love, but to also be wary of ratings still. What is super-duper stupendously great to me might be super-duper bad to the ears of another of course. But I digress and kind of lost my way as I was dealing with a call.

One thing I often don't like to say or even imply is that one album is better than another. Others are much more comfortable with declarations of quality than I am and will bandy about terms such as good, great and bad much more, and more stridently and definitively than I would like. Even if one is not speaking in objective terms, but explicitly subjectively, very often I don't think of an album as being better than an other for me as I value each on its own merits and in its own way. And as said, often the one I like best is what I am listening to at the time. It doesn't mean I don't have preferences, of course I do, but ranking and rating can feel like a very shallow and even disingenuous exercise to me. I can say with, say, quite a few of those Swans and Stevens albums that I ultimately value them both equally and differently in their own ways. I can also say that some of theirs I do not value as much as others. I like to focus the most on those that I appreciate very much.

EDIT: In terms of tiers descriptions, I do quite like something of this sort in part (off the top of my head, and rather hyperbolic):

- Friggin' Adore!!
- Love!
- Really Like
- Like
- So-so (meh)
- Dislike (as a negative experience))
- Really dislike (yuck)
- Hate (this album should die!)
- Abhor with a hatred that burns intensely (this album and, well I won't go there)
- Detest with a rage so strong that you would rather see the world burn than contemplate a world in which this album exists
- Detest with a rage and hatred so strong that you would rather see the universe burn than contemplate a universe where such a horrendously horrible and infinitely hateful album could ever exist or have existed in all of space-time. Even just the idea of it would make a universe that could conceive of such a thing utterly deplorable and worthy of absolute annihilation

Edited by Logan - 21 hours 45 minutes ago at 17:45

King Crimson:

1. (S) Red (1974) [SPO]
2. (S) The Power To Believe (2003) [SPO]
3. (A) Starless and Bible Black (1974) [SPO]
4. (A) Lizard (1970) [SPO]
5. (A) In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) [SPO]
6. (B) In The Wake Of Poseidon (1970) [SPO]
7. (B) Islands (1971) [SPO]
8. (B) Larks' Tongues in Aspic (1973) [SPO]
9. (B) THRAK (1995) [SPO]
10. (D) Discipline (1981) [SPO]

Deep Purple:

1. (S) In Rock (1970) [SPO]
2. (S) Whoosh! (2020) [SPO]
3. (A) Machine Head (1972) [SPO]
4. (A) Fireball (1971) [SPO]
5. (A) Stormbringer (1974) [SPO]
6. (A) Burn (1974) [SPO]
7. (B) =1 (2024) [SPO]

MikeEnRegalia wrote: richardh wrote: King Crimson: 1. (S) Red (1974) [SPO] 2. (S) The Power To Believe (2003) [SPO] 3. (A) Starless and Bible Black (1974) [SPO] 4. (A) Lizard (1970) [SPO] 5. (A) In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) [SPO] 6. (B) In The Wake Of Poseidon (1970) [SPO] 7. (B) Islands (1971) [SPO] 8. (B) Larks' Tongues in Aspic (1973) [SPO] 9. (B) THRAK (1995) [SPO] 10. (D) Discipline (1981) [SPO] Interesting! I really agree with the high placement of Power To Believe, but I strongly disagree with Discipline in the D tier.

at least it's in my top ten by them

^ Whoosh! was a pleasant suprise, I like Don Airey a lot though as he channels a lot of Keith Emerson in his style perhaps more than Jon Lord. =1 is also great and Simon McBride is a guitar genius. I could rate it a bit higher maybe.

Modified the export to skip tier display unless at least one release is tiered, and added familiarity to provide more context for those of you who absolutely will not tier releases (since one of the core philosophies of AP is that most of its features are and will forever be completely optional).

Pink Floyd:

1. (S) The Dark Side of the Moon (1973, listened extensively) [SPO]
2. (S) Wish You Were Here (1975, listened extensively) [SPO]
3. (S) The Wall (1979, listened extensively) [SPO]
4. (S) Animals (1977, listened often) [SPO]
5. (S) The Final Cut (1983, listened extensively) [SPO]
6. (A) Meddle (1971, first listen) [SPO]
7. (A) A Saucerful of Secrets (1968, first listen) [SPO]
8. (B) A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987, listened extensively) [SPO]
9. (B) Atom Heart Mother (1970, several listens) [SPO]
10. (B) The Division Bell (1994, first listen) [SPO]
11. (B) Ummagumma (1969, first listen) [SPO]
12. (B) More (Soundtrack, 1969, first listen) [SPO]
13. (C) Obscured By Clouds (Soundtrack, 1972, first listen) [SPO]

^ Thanks for the thoughtful response, Mike.

I, like others, certainly have favourites, and with some acts with many releases my favourites are much clearer than with others. With other acts I have many favourites, some not so liked, and what is my favourite often will depend on what I am listening to at the moment. And I have acts where I have listened to various albums a huge many times, sometimes even putting an album on repeat. With some it is way easier choosing clear favourites than others, for a great many bands ranking would be an easy task for me. With some it really is like, this is the best album ever when listening to it, and then I listen to another, and at that times I feel that is the best, and so on, and I realise they might have many albums that can rank supreme in their own ways and so none of those are ultimately better to me. And my favourites often depend on the mood I am in at the time, what other stuff I am particularly into at any given time...

The thing about judging quality is something of an aside as I have often had people, for instance, insist to me that an album I love is bad or mediocre rather than saying it's not to their taste, and when I would try to explore that idea they would double-down and insist without justifying the claim. Of course people are entitled to their own tastes, people have preferences, but I do wish people would be more careful when phrasing such claims as if they were objective truth, and in some cases more rational in recognising that it is a subjective appraisal. Making such claims can be a bit of trigger for me and brings back unhappy memories in my interactions with friends and family. I can appreciate someone's tastes and appreciate an album without liking it...

I would rather rate an album right after listening to an album several times in a row (that's how I like to review bad as my reviews are), as that might better capture my feelings, but I said I would try to rate if feeling encouraged, and I am. Like ranking quite often, the ratings do feel arbitrary. I gave Music Has the Right to Children one hundred as to me it has been a perfect listening experience in its way. Several of these would get five stars from me if in PA.

This band is not in PA, but I don't like to try draw lines between Prog and not Prog often, and commonly there are not clear boundaries...

Boards of Canada:

1. (S) Music Has the Right to Children (1998, listened extensively) [AP Non-Prog] [BC, SPO]
2. (S) Geogaddi (2002, listened extensively) [AP Prog] [BC, SPO]
3. (S) The Campfire Headphase (2005, listened extensively) [AP Non-Prog] [BC, SPO]
4. (A) Tomorrow's Harvest (2013, listened often) [AP Prog] [BC, SPO]
5. (A) In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country (EP, 2000, several listens) [AP Non-Prog] [BC, SPO]
6. (B) Boc Maxima (1996, several listens) [AP]

And here's one more before I call it a day for a band I tried my hand at a few reviews for after adding it it to the 'chives (too many cooked up lists spoil the broth). I am getting more comfortable rating and it need not be definitive or taken terribly seriously. It's a rough guide to what does what for me.

Fishmans:

1. (S) 98.12.28 男達の別れ (98.12.28 Otokotachi No Wakare) (Live, 1999, listened extensively) [SPO]
2. (S) Long Season (1996, listened extensively) [SPO]
3. (A) Long Season '96-7 - 96.12.26 Akasaka Blitz赤坂 (Live, 2016, several listens)
4. (A) 宇宙 日本 世田谷 (1997, listened often) [SPO]
5. (B) 空中キャンプ (Something in the Air) (1996, listened often) [SPO]
6. (C) Orange (オレンジ) (1994, several listens)

^ That C is more like a C plus. It has music I love, and I could have gone with a B. Maybe when I next listen to it I will think of it more highly. With Fishmans I often do find albums take a few spins for me to really appreciate even if I like music off the albums immediately.

As for Long Season, this live version, off my top rated Fishmans album, Otokotachi No Wakare, is what I would recommend trying. Don't know if it would be your thing.



or without the concert video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tz4xEyx0R0

I'm big on groove and atmosphere, and love the groove of it. The vocals would be turn off to some. Sadly the lead singer/guitarist/songwriter did die a few months after the concert which can make it rather chilling. I did not know that when I first got to know it. And when I did find out I could not listen to it or watch it for a while. While I did not know Fishmans while working in Japan, it also resonates with me because I lived there in the 90s while working as an English teacher (was in Japan when Long Season was released, how time flies, and I met my wife there).

Edited by Logan - 7 hours 16 minutes ago at 08:14

Added ratings

Univers Zéro:

1. (S) Ceux Du Dehors (1981, listened often) [BC, SPO]
2. (S) Heresie (1979, listened extensively) [BC, SPO]
3. (S) Uzed (1984, listened extensively) [SPO]
4. (A) Univers Zero (1313) (1977, several listens) [BC, SPO]
5. (A) Heatwave (1986, listened extensively)
6. (A) Clivages (2010, listened extensively)
7. (B) Phosphorescent Dreams (2014, listened often) [BC, SPO]
8. (B) Lueur (2023, listened often) [BC, SPO]
9. (C) The Hard Quest (1999, listened often)
10. (C) Implosion (2004, listened often)
11. (C) Rhythmix (2002, listened often)