Album of the Year Thread - 2022 - Winner - For the Sake of Bethel Woods - Midlake

RobMCFC said:
Album of the Year Thread - 2022

Most of the great music discussion on the Blue Moon Forums is focused on the past.

Like others, I spend many hours listening to my all-time favourites, but I still love listening to new albums and discovering new artists. When I look back, I want to be able to remember the year partly based on the NEW music I was listening to in that year. I also enjoy a good end-of-year list, but the problem with most end-of-year lists is that a load of albums appear, and you end up saying: Who? What? Never heard of it!

It's with these thoughts in mind that I decided to create the Album of the Year thread. Whether it’s successful or whether it dies a quick death depends on the participation of others. The way it will run is open for debate but however we get there, I’m looking to have a list of albums that we can vote on in December – and more to the point, a selection of albums that most of us are familiar with – with the aim of crowning the Blue Moon Forums Album of the Year.

I think it will be more organic if we discover albums throughout the year and listen to them as the months roll by so that we are not listening for the first time when the end-of-year vote comes around.

Here’s some ideas/questions, but like I said, I’m happy to listen to what others have to say.

1. Should there be a limit on the number of albums a single member nominates? I’m thinking that if loads of people join in and start tossing names into the ring, we could be overwhelmed and not get time to consider everything properly.
2. Should there be a regular vote/process where albums are forwarded to the “next stage” or “eliminated from the vote” as the year progresses? I’m not looking to make it a competition between members, but I want an entertaining way of coming up with a list of finalists (maybe even semi-finalists etc.).
3. We need to make sure that any voting/elimination system accounts for the fact that a lot of albums are released in the Autumn. Last-minute December discoveries should not be ruled out.
4. One concern is that not everybody will want to spend hours listening to music from all genres. Maybe we could all declare our specialist areas of listening so that each member can concentrate on their preferred genres with the aim of producing an eclectic list? What I’m thinking here is that if somebody nominates a rap album, many of us (including me!) might not give it a chance. But if the “rap” section is curated by people who are more knowledgeable, I’d be more inclined to give the two best in this genre a few listens throughout the year. Basically, filtering of a large list down to a more manageable list by those who are interested.
5. In amongst any nominating and voting, this thread can also be used for the discussion for any new music released this year, but no live albums, no compilations and no re-issues: it’s for NEW music only.

Over to you, I’m all ears. Who’s interested and what ideas do you have?
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A few questions…

“Album” was originally an American term where we in Britain had LPs and EPs. Some bands release EPs in the same way they do LPs or albums. There are a few bands/artists around now who only really release EPs (some bands/artists have gone back to very early popular music ways of recording and only release singles these days as streaming isn’t particularly an album listening experience, and never release albums). So can EPs count in this?

Can we also have a singles section/thread? (Like I said above, many modern bands/artists don’t release albums anymore)…

Can mix albums count? (ie where a DJ mixes songs of a particular genre together as an album studio DJ set?
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
A few questions…

“Album” was originally an American term where we in Britain had LPs and EPs. Some bands release EPs in the same way they do LPs or albums. There are a few bands/artists around now who only really release EPs (some bands/artists have gone back to very early popular music ways of recording and only release singles these days as streaming isn’t particularly an album listening experience, and never release albums). So can EPs count in this?

Can we also have a singles section/thread? (Like I said above, many modern bands/artists don’t release albums anymore)…

Can mix albums count? (ie where a DJ mixes songs of a particular genre together as an album studio DJ set?
Click to expand...
I think you are correct about EPs - I'm definitely seeing that more these days. Especially less well-known artists who did smaller releases during the pandemic to keep the money trickling in.

I'd say we could have EPs as part of any review/votes process - at the end of the day, people will either see an EP as worthy of being up with the best of the year or they won't.

Singles? I don't see why we couldn't disscuss new singles released. It is new music after all. Maybe we could have a "song of the year" vote at some point.

I'll probably upset some people here, but I've never seen a DJ performing a "set" as something artistic. Like many things in life (building a drystone wall, putting together a piece of Ikea furniture, splitting the atom), I'm sure it takes a lot of technical skill, but I don't consider creating a mix of other people's music as being very artistic. I'd lump this under the compilation bracket, which I'd want to exclude.

As ever, I'm happy to see what others say about all of the above.
 
RobMCFC said:
Album of the Year Thread - 2022

Most of the great music discussion on the Blue Moon Forums is focused on the past.

Like others, I spend many hours listening to my all-time favourites, but I still love listening to new albums and discovering new artists. When I look back, I want to be able to remember the year partly based on the NEW music I was listening to in that year. I also enjoy a good end-of-year list, but the problem with most end-of-year lists is that a load of albums appear, and you end up saying: Who? What? Never heard of it!

It's with these thoughts in mind that I decided to create the Album of the Year thread. Whether it’s successful or whether it dies a quick death depends on the participation of others. The way it will run is open for debate but however we get there, I’m looking to have a list of albums that we can vote on in December – and more to the point, a selection of albums that most of us are familiar with – with the aim of crowning the Blue Moon Forums Album of the Year.

I think it will be more organic if we discover albums throughout the year and listen to them as the months roll by so that we are not listening for the first time when the end-of-year vote comes around.

Here’s some ideas/questions, but like I said, I’m happy to listen to what others have to say.

1. Should there be a limit on the number of albums a single member nominates? I’m thinking that if loads of people join in and start tossing names into the ring, we could be overwhelmed and not get time to consider everything properly.
2. Should there be a regular vote/process where albums are forwarded to the “next stage” or “eliminated from the vote” as the year progresses? I’m not looking to make it a competition between members, but I want an entertaining way of coming up with a list of finalists (maybe even semi-finalists etc.).
3. We need to make sure that any voting/elimination system accounts for the fact that a lot of albums are released in the Autumn. Last-minute December discoveries should not be ruled out.
4. One concern is that not everybody will want to spend hours listening to music from all genres. Maybe we could all declare our specialist areas of listening so that each member can concentrate on their preferred genres with the aim of producing an eclectic list? What I’m thinking here is that if somebody nominates a rap album, many of us (including me!) might not give it a chance. But if the “rap” section is curated by people who are more knowledgeable, I’d be more inclined to give the two best in this genre a few listens throughout the year. Basically, filtering of a large list down to a more manageable list by those who are interested.
5. In amongst any nominating and voting, this thread can also be used for the discussion for any new music released this year, but no live albums, no compilations and no re-issues: it’s for NEW music only.

Over to you, I’m all ears. Who’s interested and what ideas do you have?
Click to expand...
I think it’s another great idea Rob, I don’t know how you find the time.
I don’t think there should be a limit after all there’s not that many new releases
that will be worthy of a nomination.However ,I like the idea of splitting into genres
as I think this will help with the scoring process at the end of the year.We all tend to listen to the type of music we like and we’re already being taken out of our comfort zones in the other thread, so if there’s a number of albums put forward that are not on our musical tastes it’s unlikely they would get listened to by everone.It would be good to have our ‘ experts’ in each particular genre rate the albums so everyone else can be selective in their listening and not dismiss something because its not something they normally listen too,after all there’s only
so much music you can listen to.
 
RobMCFC said:
Funnily enough, two of my all-time top 6 artists have already released albums this year, and they're both the best thing they've done in years.

There are also some more releases upcoming I'm looking forward to.

Thanks for the comments so far.

So, there seems to be a debate about scoring/not scoring at the moment. We'll see how that plays out.

Four nominations a month each! Blimey, we could be overwhelmed soon, but I'm not ruling out so many.

Bear in mind that this is a living, evolving thread, so the idea of a monthly vote might be difficult. Maybe we don't have hard deadlines and just keep track of albums that people are listening to and whether they like it. I could monitor the thread and then have a list on page #1 that I update a couple of times a week.

This is the core objective of the thread, obviously with some fun and banter along the way, as well as keeping people informed and highlighting what's new. We have enough threads concentrating on the past, so I want this to be different.
Click to expand...
I bet I can guess one of those releases , I’ve already got one ready to put forward too.
 
Mancitydoogle said:
I think it’s another great idea Rob, I don’t know how you find the time.
I don’t think there should be a limit after all there’s not that many new releases
that will be worthy of a nomination.However ,I like the idea of splitting into genres
as I think this will help with the scoring process at the end of the year.We all tend to listen to the type of music we like and we’re already being taken out of our comfort zones in the other thread, so if there’s a number of albums put forward that are not on our musical tastes it’s unlikely they would get listened to by everone.It would be good to have our ‘ experts’ in each particular genre rate the albums so everyone else can be selective in their listening and not dismiss something because its not something they normally listen too,after all there’s only
so much music you can listen to.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's what I was thinking of with my "genres" comment. The feedback on this aspect seems 50/50 so far, so we'll see how this develops.

Mancitydoogle said:
I bet I can guess one of those releases , I’ve already got one ready to put forward too.
Click to expand...
Good stuff. Hang onto it for now - I'd like to run for a week or so gathering comments and suggestions before getting the ball rolling. Given that it's a long-term thread, I don't think we're under time pressure!

In the meantime, everybody keep an ear out for new releases and have a think about how we might best run this thing.
 
Could be right up my street this.
Not that I'm going to nominate any music but hopefully I can get new music or a new group to love.
Cannot think of anything in the last 10 years that I got excited about.
 
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