Welcome to my fourth roulette, which is also my first album roulette! I'm a bit surprised I'm already at my fourth roulette (fifth if you count the championship I judged in a few years ago), but I guess I just can't get enough of hearing what music DTF has to offer!
I'll get right to the details:
Rules:The ruleset for this roulette was born out of two revelations.
One, I have been sent a lot of artists in roulette whose songs I’ve liked, but whose albums I’ve never really gotten into. Sometimes it’s because I tried an album once or twice and it didn’t immediately click with me and I forgot about it. Sometimes it’s because I get the impression that they’re more a singles artist and I won’t be into their albums. Sometimes it’s because I just haven’t gotten around to them yet.
Two, the thing I find hardest about running a roulette is translating the way I feel about a song into a specific numerical score. I think it’s a known thing among people who’ve played in my roulettes before that I’m too nice with my scoring. Some of that is born out of just not knowing what to do and erring on the side of a high score. Anyway, I am bad at numerical scores and trying to come up with them is my least favorite part of a roulette, and the part that makes them so time-consuming for me to run.
Thus, the rules.
First, this is a head-to-head album roulette. There will be four rounds. There will be an even number* of competitors. Each round, the competitors will be paired into one-on-one matchups. The matchups will be randomized and posted in advance, with the sole provision being that two people will not be matched up against each other twice. So you’ll face four different people, no matter what.
I think, for the sake of time, the total number of competitors will need to be capped at 12. That's already a lot of albums to work with, and I don't think it would be fair to try to do any more than that.
Each person will send an album. I will listen to the albums several times. I will decide which album I like better, and the person who sent that album will be the winner of that matchup. I’ll make a post with writeups describing my thoughts on both albums, and I’ll name the winner.
After four rounds, there will be a playoff with an as-yet-unspecific number of competitors (I’m sort of thinking four, but it depends on how many people play and how the win-loss records sort out). The competitors will be chosen by win-loss record. The playoff will then lead to a champion being crowned.
What about the albums? Here are the rules for those. First, you can always send an album that is <80 minutes—I consider this to be the maximum length for a “single” album. Even if it’s a <80 minute album that is for some reason split across two discs, you can send it. You can send a studio album or a live album. Once in the entire competition, you can send a double album. That’s an album in the 80-160 minute range. But, if you send a double album, your opponent will be told, and they will have an opportunity to change their submission if they want. You may not send an album longer than 160 minutes at any time.
Second, and this is where my backlog of artists from whom I’ve never checked out a full album comes in: In the second post, below the banned list, there is a long list of artists I’ve received in roulette before. Two out of your four submissions have to come from artists on this list. The list is long and generous, and includes some artists who aren’t mainline prog or metal, along with plenty who are. I realize that some people may not like this restriction or be able to accommodate it, but this is the sort of roulette I want to run this time, so while I understand if you don’t want to play, that’s the way it is. (You do not have to send any artists from this list in the playoff.)
I have divided the list into two sections, and the division is just a way for me to indicate which ones I think are likely to do pretty well and which ones are riskier. Feel free to ask me why any of the riskier ones are risky. Also, I indicate which previous roulette I received each artist in (RC = Roulette Championship), so you can go back and look what I said about whatever song(s) I have already heard.
All winning artists will be banned after being sent, while some losing artists will be at my sole discretion, depending on whether I liked them well enough to think sending another album from them would be more of a safe choice than a risky one.
As for format: I strongly prefer Spotify, so if your album is on there, please send that. If it’s not on Spotify, Amazon Music works, too. If neither of those work, then YouTube is acceptable.
*If we end up with an odd number, I’ll try to seek out one more person to join or ask if there’s someone who’s on the fence about staying in. I don’t want to have to exclude anybody, but we need to have an even number for this to work well. If we have to go to a last resort I’ll have everyone send one track off their first submission, and worst song will be out.
TL;DR on the rules, because I know many of you don't want to read that mammoth section:- Four rounds
- Randomly selected head-to-head matchups
- I choose which one I like better, that person wins
- Playoff at the end featuring the best win-loss records
- Send albums <80 minutes
- Send an album 80-160 minutes once, but opponent will be told
- Two of four albums must come from the required bands list below
- Winning artists are banned. Some losing artists are banned, at my discretion.
- Spotify preferred, Amazon Music good, YouTube if necessary
Tastes:Even if you’ve played in my roulettes before, I recommend reading at least the last part of this, because I’ll say some things about my attitude toward albums that might be new information for you.
First, just the big-picture taste stuff. If I haven’t made it clear enough, I’m a prog person through-and-through, and I’ve been in an especially prog-heavy phase the last couple of years. That’s not to say non-prog can’t work. Pop, indie-type rock (so long as the granola vibe isn’t too heavy), certainly some types of non-prog metal, all have the potential to succeed here. But I do expect most of my favorite submissions will likely be prog. Either rock or metal.
Mood can be a factor for how well I like music. First, I don’t really like music that is, at its core, unserious. There are some artists out there, including in prog, who have some sort of comedy element. That’s fine. I don’t really like that. If you send me something that is trying in some way to be humorous, it’s probably going to lose. That also goes for albums where the lyrics are all obviously tongue-in-cheek or about rather frivolous topics. The sort of “hey isn’t partying fun” or “wow I like having random sex” lyrical themes are just… they’re going to turn me off. Don’t do it. Besides not liking unserious moods, I can offer only some general guidance. Depressing music is very hit-or-miss with me. If you send me a very sad album, especially if it’s the bleak kind of sad, there’s some chance that I just won’t like it very well. That’s not to say I don’t like any sad albums or even any bleak albums, I do, but I favor music that isn’t so relentlessly sad, or at least where there’s a little bit of hope.
Anything that makes significant use of dissonance is a massive, massive risk. I almost certainly won’t like it. For example, I think the end of Dream Theater’s Misunderstood nearly ruins the whole song.
The growl thing. I really don’t know what to say here at this stage. I’ll just put it this way: Sending any album where growls are more than an occasional accent is taking a risk. Maybe I’ll think the growls work and it’ll pay off, maybe I’ll hate them and it’ll bomb. It’s a risk. And it’s probably a bigger risk in an album roulette than in a song roulette, because I’ll get more annoyed at having to listen to bad growls for an hour than I would listening to them for 5-10 minutes. If I was playing strictly to win, I would send only cleans. But I know some people have other motivations, which is perfectly fine!
Here’s the album-specific part: Album flow, which I recognize can be something of a subjective thing, is important to me. If there’s a sense of sequence, I like that better than if it feels like just a collection of songs. Also, consistency in quality is really important to me. Other things being equal, I will rank an album where every song is a 7 or 8 higher than an album that has a 10 and a 9, but also a 3 and two 5s. This is especially an issue, I think, on older albums. It seems like many albums from the 70s and 80s include one or two lame tracks that are just there to fill up the album that the band sort of mailed in. I’m going to be harsher than most people on the album for having that mailed-in track. Even if the other songs are good. I want the whole thing to be good and there not to be some nonsense in the #6 slot, and I will resent that nonsense and resent it hard. You’ve been warned.
Album length is not a huge factor for me, so long as it’s good. But the sweet spot is probably around 50-65 minutes. If it’s a long one, it should be good and consistent. If it’s a short one, it should feel like it packs a lot in that shorter time. But length will never be an absolute deal-breaker. I love plenty of albums well outside that range.
As always, happy to answer any tastes questions you may still have.
Participants:1. Evermind
2. Cyril
3. Puppies_On_Acid
4. MoraWintersoul
5. HOF
6. romdrums
7. Sacul
8. Buddyhunter1
9. Elite
10. twosuitsluke
11. The Walrus
12. TAC
Matchups:Round 1:twosuitsluke vs. MoraWintersoul
Evermind vs. TAC
Sacul vs. Puppies_On_Acid
romdrums vs. HOF
Elite vs. Cyril
Buddyhunter1 vs. The Walrus
Round 2:Puppies_On_Acid vs. TAC
romdrums vs. Evermind
twosuitsluke vs. Elite
The Walrus vs. Sacul
Cyril vs. HOF
Buddyhunter1 vs. MoraWintersoul
Round 3:Cyril vs. romdrums
The Walrus vs. Puppies_On_Acid
Buddyhunter1 vs. TAC
Evermind vs. Elite
twosuitsluke vs. Sacul
MoraWintersoul vs. HOF
Round 4:twosuitsluke vs. Cyril
Evermind vs. HOF
TAC vs. Elite
Sacul vs. Buddyhunter1
romdrums vs. The Walrus
Puppies_On_Acid vs. MoraWintersoul
Helpful Links:v1 RouletteRoulette Championshipv2 Roulettev3 Roulette
Topic: 425's Roulette v4: Hiatus (Read 18432 times)
