Reviews discussion

Don't we, sometimes, base our decisions about adding or not an artist on the samples that he/the band sends us? How often we base our votes on myspace samples? That's not reviewing or giving numbers, but I feel myself more responsible when I give a vote on progfreak than when I write a review. 

I have already written that I agree with Dean: this shouldn't be a standard, but I don't need to listen to Madonna on an expensive hi-fi system to decide that she's not prog.  Also I don't need to listen to more than three complete tracks, even from youtube to decide that Aube makes very poor and uninteresting music, at least for me. Then if AtomicCrimsonRush has listened to the whole album, even on youtube why don't review it?

Do you know what kind of stereo devices I have at home? Is my mp3 reader better or worse than a pc connected to youtube? Is a mp3 download (legal of course) not good enough for a review? Do I need to have a CD?

There are examples of music which needs to be listened as you say, but this is not a rule.My old scratched vinyls don't sound better than youtube, sometimes.

I don't know how many times Atomic has listened to it. Personally I take at least one week of listens before attempting a review. I'm just commenting about the quality of the source. It helps the reviewer and it's our "duty" deciding whether we have enough elements for a decent review. The risk for us consist in writing something crap and this is bad for both the artists and the possible buyers, but if one feels comfortable enough, why not? How many listens did you need to decide about Close To the Edge? Of course the more you listen the more your review will be accurate, but our reviews are usually a synthesis of the most relevant aspect as we are not writing books. The important to me is being honest and aware of  what we are doing. 

The reviews posted here are taken very seriously by artists. Some are posted on Amazon (amongst other sites), and people most definitely read before deciding whether to buy.

I don't know the band in question, but what if three or four YouTube videos were a pile of garbage, but the album had another two utter gems? I know it's unlikely, but it isn't impossible. It is the reputation of the site which is paramount. When an artist quotes me as a reviewer, he/she/they do it as a collaborator of Prog Archives, and that is vital to us.

An evaluation is totally different. That is a decision on whether to include a band, and you do not always need a whole album to decide this, IMO, although I accept that we should ideally.

As I say, not a criticism, but an observation.

I assume that your post has to do with mine. Well, it's about 50 years that I listen to music and I had my first copy of ELP Trilogy on cassette tape, then I have bought a vinyl "nice price" edition that I have listened for years on a Reader's Digest stereo. Later I have started working and I have bought a decent stereo (nothing special) but my vinyl copy of Trilogy was already scratched. Probably it took 20 years for me to listen to it in a very high fidelity situation. 

Should I have reviewed that album in 1980 after hundreds of listens would mean basing on your post that I would have been not honest. 

And what about the movie soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar? You can listen to it on the best possible hi-fi device, but the recording is so bad that it's the same as listening on the radio. Am I not honest if I review it basing on the music? I can play the whole album and I know every lyric. Have I the right to write my opinions about it?

Last question, I am sure that some of my reviews are not that good, but can you choose one of them about one album that you think I haven't listened carefully enough? 

I don't see why the Madonna (or anybody else's) argument can be insulting. I listen to a lot of ambient and esoteric, I think. Also for this reason I think I can give an opinion (not a review) about Aube's drones. 

We can discuss about the opportunity to write a review or not basing on that kind of samples, and my opinion is that it depends. Try it yourself.

 

Once again you wander away from the central argument here - of course based upon what you have heard on YouTube you can have an opinion on Aube's drones (which is not a wholely correct classification of his music from what I have heard); you can also decide whether or not to buy an ablum by Akifumi Nakajima or Aube based on those samples, but IN MY OPINION you cannot write a review, and more importantly you should not write a review from YouTube samples for this website - and that is my one and only reason for being in this discussion.

 

¹ The key points being a) what you need to listen to is not relevant to this conversation; b) we were not talking about deciding whether Aube is Prog or not; c) The quality and cost of the hi-fi is completely irrelevant and has f*ck-all to do with the quality of YouTube; d) the quality of YouTube audio is the lowest quality and is unacceptable - if you doubt this - look it up, it's not a secret; e) this is a Prog site where the quality, production and mastering of the recorded material is important, especially in a review, not some low-fi Punk/garage jamband site; and f) Madonna is a facile example to pick even for illustrative purposes.