Desert Island Album Game II: Quarter Final 4

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Which tracklist do you prefer?

  • XHendrix24's tracklist

    Votes: 19 48.7%
  • Axver's tracklist

    Votes: 20 51.3%

  • Total voters
    39
  • Poll closed .
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Axver

Vocal parasite
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Please vote for the tracklisting you LIKE THE MOST.

If you are not familiar with the songs, most contestants have uploaded them! Leave your e-mail address and we will help you hear the songs so that you can vote for the tracklist as a whole!

Welcome to the fourth and last quarter final of the Interference Desert Island Game II! The premise of this game is that all of the Interferencers have been stranded on a desert island and we can only take up to 160 minutes of music with us (either as a continuous iPod playlist or two 80 minute CDs or any other format of our choosing). The object is to see which forum member can fit the most musical goodness into these 160 minutes.

In the third quarter final, U2VertigoFly defeated Screwtape2 16-7. U2VF now proceeds to the second semi-final and will meet the victor of this round.

This round features tracklists by XHendrix24 and Axver. Below, you will find their tracklistings. If you are unfamiliar with the songs included, we can help you hear them! Just leave your e-mail address.

THE TRACKLISTINGS!

Forum name: XHendrix24

1. New Radicals - "Mother We Just Can't Get Enough" - Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too (5:45)
2. Sufjan Stevens - "Chicago" - Illinoise (6:04)
3. The New Pornographers - "Use It" - Twin Cinema (3:26)
4. Nada Surf - "Treading Water" - Let Go (4:23)
5. Broken Social Scene - "It's All Gonna Break" - Broken Social Scene (9:55)
6. Interpol - "Slow Hands" - Antics (3:04)
7. The Divine Comedy - "Tonight We Fly" - Promenade (3:01)
8. Radiohead - "Cuttooth" - Knives Out Single (5:22)
9. Pulp - "Common People" - Different Class (5:51)
10. Mew - "Am I Wry? No" - Frengers (4:52)
11. My Morning Jacket - "Anytime" - Z (3:56)
12. XTC - "Senses Working Overtime" - English Settlement (4:51)
13. Talking Heads - "Once In A Lifetime" - Remain In Light (4:22)
14. Voxtrot - "Wrecking Force" - Raised By Wolves EP (4:48)
15. Elliott Smith - "Miss Misery" - Good Will Hunting Soundtrack (3:12)
16. Frank Black - "Speedy Marie" - Teenager Of The Year (3:34)
17. The Clash - "Train in Vain (Stand by Me)" - London Calling (3:12)
18. David Bowie - "Heroes" - Heroes (6:10)
19. Animal Collective - "Grass" - Feels (2:59)
20. Arcade Fire - "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) - Funeral (5:13)
21. The Olivia Tremor Control - "The Opera House" - Dusk At Cubist Castle (3:12)
22. TV On The Radio - "Staring at the Sun" - Young Liars EP (4:01)
23. Secret Machines - "Lightning Blue Eyes" - Ten Silver Drops (5:33)
24. The Beach Boys - "God Only Knows" - Pet Sounds (2:51)
25. Tom Waits - "Downtown Train" - Rain Dogs (3:53)
26. Modest Mouse - "Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset" - This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About (5:50)
27. Fountains of Wayne - "Hey Julie" - Welcome Interstate Managers (2:37)
28. Final Fantasy - "This Is The Dream Of Win And Regine" - Has a Good Home (3:24)
29. The Flaming Lips - "Do You Realize??" - Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (3:32)
30. My Bloody Valentine - "Soon" - Loveless (6:58)
31. David Bowie and Queen - "Under Pressure" - Best of Bowie (3:58)
32. The Jam - "That's Entertainment" - Sound Affects (3:33)
33. The National - "All The Wine" - Alligator (3:15)
34. Pixies - "Monkey Gone To Heaven" - Doolittle (2:56)
35. The Brother Kite - "Get On, Me" - Waiting for the Time to Be Right (4:01)
36. The Beatles - "A Day In The Life" - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (5:33)

Forum name: Axver

Axver writes: For this tournament, I chose to follow a different route than last time, partly due to the ban on repeating songs and partly due to my own desire not to be thematically repetitive and to look at my submission from a different angle. Accordingly, this compilation leans more towards melodic rock, with the metal element of the last submission almost entirely absent and the prog element viewed a new way, seeking to show the genre is not about soulless excess. The compilation is not designed to present a journey or work towards a specific point, but to provide a broad sampling of different moods and themes within a cohesive whole. It can accordingly be enjoyed in full or dealt with in thematic portions appropriate to the listener's mood. There are moments of hope, of politics, of tenderness, of cynicism, of joy, of regret, and a conclusion of sheer beauty in the form of Porcupine Tree's The Rest Will Flow. I feel that this is accordingly an ideal desert island compilation: the moods someone stranded on such an island would feel are diverse and can be addressed by various segments of the tracklisting, and the full effect provides masterfully crafted musical accompaniment to the experience both of the desert island and life in general.

1. Anathema - "Release" - A Fine Day To Exit (5:47)
2. Marillion - "Kayleigh" (7" edit) - Misplaced Childhood (3:33)
3. Pure Reason Revolution - "Nimos And Tambos" - The Dark Third, US edition (3:44)
4. Muse - "Hysteria" - Absolution (3:47)
5. Rush - "A Passage To Bangkok" - 2112 (3:35)
6. Spock's Beard - "Skin" - Day For Night (4:01)
7. Delays - "Wanderlust" - Faded Seaside Glamour (3:58)
8. Mew - "The Zookeeper's Boy" - And The Glass Handed Kites (4:43)
9. U2 - "Treasure (Whatever Happened To Pete The Chop?)" - New Year's Day single (3:24)
10. Crowded House - "Mean To Me" - Crowded House (3:15)
11. The Chills - "Double Summer" - Soft Bomb (3:13)
12. Dave Dobbyn - "Beside You" - Overnight Success (3:43)
13. Dream Theater - "A Mind Beside Itself III: The Silent Man" - Awake (3:47)
14. Blackfield - "Christenings" - Blackfield II (4:37)
15. Neil Finn - "Last One Standing" - Try Whistling This (3:04)
16. The Go-Betweens - "Streets Of Your Town" - Bellavista Terrace: Best Of The Go-Betweens (3:38)
17. Midnight Oil - "Forgotten Years" - 20,000 Watt RSL (4:22)
18. The Police - "Invisible Sun" - Ghost In The Machine (3:44)
19. The Verve - "A New Decade" - A Northern Soul (4:12)
20. Platypus - "Oh God" - Ice Cycles (4:16)
21. Hum - "Green To Me" - Downward Is Heavenward (3:55)
22. The Devin Townsend Band - "Slow Me Down" - Accelerated Evolution (4:35)
23. Joy Division - "Transmission" - Heart And Soul (3:37)
24. The Clean - "Thumbs Off" - Anthology (2:58)
25. Television - "See No Evil" - Marquee Moon (3:49)
26. The Cure - "Fire In Cairo" - Three Imaginary Boys (3:40)
27. Split Enz - "I Got You" - True Colours (3:30)
28. The Who - "Pinball Wizard" - Tommy (3:01)
29. Pinback - "Prog" - Blue Screen Life (4:02)
30. Orphaned Land - "Building The Ark" - Mabool (5:02)
31. Transatlantic - "We All Need Some Light" - SMPT:e (5:44)
32. REM - "Driver 8" - Fables Of The Reconstruction (3:24)
33. Queen - "Long Away" - A Day At The Races (3:33)
34. Straitjacket Fits - "Sparkle That Shines" - Hail (3:57)
35. Ride - "Vapour Trail" - Nowhere (4:18)
36. The Shadows - "Wonderful Land" - The Final Collection (2:06)
37. The Wonder Stuff - "Caught In My Shadow" - Never Loved Elvis (3:48)
38. Wolverine - "Hiding" - Still (4:14)
39. Nick Drake - "From The Morning" - Pink Moon (2:30)
40. Joe Satriani - "Tears In The Rain" - The Extremist (1:18)
41. Pink Floyd - "Summer '68" - Atom Heart Mother (5:29)
42. Porcupine Tree - "The Rest Will Flow" - Lightbulb Sun (3:24)

Total runtime: 160:00

UP NEXT: Semi-final 1 - LemonMacPhisto vs Lancemc

Competition master list.

Competition rules.

Competition format diagram.

Have fun!
 
If anyone needs to download my tracks, the links have expired for all apart from tracks 11-15. If you need to hear any others, tell me which they are and a surprise will appear in your e-mail inbox.

I suppose it goes without saying that I voted for myself. With Screwtape's elimination, my tracklist is the only one left that I strongly like.
 
At the moment, it's 13-12 in my favour. All too close for my liking! I'm glad we're having a good, close contest though.
 
I like both playlists, but Hendrix's is a bit more to my liking.

:up: for making ties.
 
^:giggle:

XHendrix :up: A Day In The Life, Train In Vain, Under Pressure....:applaud: Axver's was really good too though, it was a difficult choice. He had I Got You and Pinball Wizard. :D
 
Screwtape2 said:


With so many close rounds, I wonder how things would have turned out if some people weren't voting simply on what they knew. I hope this changes next time because diversity is good but if people vote on what they know then people are going to be less and less diverse. That would be a tragedy.

This quote is from the previous thread, but I wanted to keep the most recent round ahead of it, so I'm replying to it here.

Quite frankly, I think how you all have this process setup takes way too long, and because of that, most people began to just vote for whatever they knew already. I think serious consideration should be given next time to eliminate the repechage round. Whatever total number of entrants there are, it should be just straight up all the way to the final two and be done with it.
 
phanan said:


This quote is from the previous thread, but I wanted to keep the most recent round ahead of it, so I'm replying to it here.

Quite frankly, I think how you all have this process setup takes way too long, and because of that, most people began to just vote for whatever they knew already. I think serious consideration should be given next time to eliminate the repechage round. Whatever total number of entrants there are, it should be just straight up all the way to the final two and be done with it.

I agree. This has proven to be even more drawn out than the Cricket World Cup. :wink:

The problem we faced at the start was twofold:

1. We had 24 entrants, so we couldn't just go directly from heats to the final. It broke down 24 --> 12 --> 6 --> 3.

2. I and others felt that considering the effort people put into their tracklists, being knocked out in the first round is a bit unfair and that a repechage is in everyone's best interest.

Accordingly, we established the repechage to address those problems, and I feel this tournament has demonstrated its usefulness. Out of the four of us in the prog group (GibsonGirl, Screwtape, Liamcool, myself), I was knocked out in the first qualifying round but, if this round were to close right now, I will have come the closest of all four to making the semis.

Next tournament, what I would like to do is cut down the amount of participants. While I recognise there are a lot of people who would like to play, I feel that the easiest way to speed up the tournament is to cut down on the numbers. We could even then retain the repechage, and it would be a much quicker one too.

I'm also thinking of alternative ways to run the polls, but I'm not yet ready to propose them.
 
I approve of a narrowed down list of participants. It was fun having a lot of people - more people equals more music to be exposed to - yet I think things would go a lot more smoothly with a reduced number.

I know this one isn't even over yet, but I'm already planning my playlist for the next tournament. It will be proggier than my last, just on principle. I reckon that if people are incapable of concentrating on twelve minutes of quality music, their sluggish attention spans wouldn't be able to cope with the bloody island anyway. :wink:
 
Axver said:

Next tournament, what I would like to do is cut down the amount of participants. While I recognise there are a lot of people who would like to play, I feel that the easiest way to speed up the tournament is to cut down on the numbers. We could even then retain the repechage, and it would be a much quicker one too.

I'm also thinking of alternative ways to run the polls, but I'm not yet ready to propose them.

I agree that the number of entries should be brought down. Not sure how we'll bring the number down but it's the best course of action. I'm not sure if it was one of the alternative ways to run the polls but it might be a little more fair if peopled casted the vote by commenting or at least had people comment after they vote. To me it seemed that the comments were not at all reflective of the outcome. You have to wonder what percentage of the votes came from people who had not listened to the playlist? That sort goes back to the whole voting on what you know.
 
There is no real way to make people listen to the playlists before they vote though.........

Unless you force everyone to post a comment on both playlists...then if the number of votes doesn't match up with the number of comments, well the vote will be declared invalid and restarted?

The threat of that alone might make it fairer, but anyway that would just lengthen the competition as well and I imagine the amount of votes cast would drop a good bit, along with a lot of pissed off people if a vote was made invalid.

Anyway I think at least for next time, with a reduced number of entrants, people who have stood in the past two contests should stand aside for new entrants or those who have only participated the once, even though I would still love to take part again.
 
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LJT said:
There is no real way to make people listen to the playlists before they vote though.........

Unless you force everyone to post a comment on both playlists...then if the number of votes doesn't match up with the number of comments, well the vote will be declared invalid and restarted?

The threat of that alone might make it fairer, but anyway that would just lengthen the competition as well and I imagine the amount of votes cast would drop a good bit, along with a lot of pissed off people of a vote was made invalid.

Anyway I think at least for next time, with a reduced number of entrants, people who have stood in the past two contests should stand aside for new entrants or those who have only participated the once, even though I would still love to take part again.

I understand what you're saying about listening to playlists and the comments but the voting based on what you know is a very real problem. If enough people vote like that then only a couple people actually having any shot of winning the competition. I'm only throwing ideas out there at the moment. Not everyone is going to listen to the playlists but we should do something to limit the ammount of those kinds of votes.

As for who should take part, my fear with your idea is that quality of playlists might go down. The people who have done this multiply times are making better playlists each time. I'd hate to see quality drop out of fairness.
 
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But if new people never get a chance to take part then the quality of their playlists will never get a chance to improve:shrug:

You could have the top 6 six of this contest automatically through to the next, if they wish to take up a spot, with the rest up for grabs for whoever, that would allow for quality to be maintained.
 
LJT said:
But if new people never get a chance to take part then the quality of their playlists will never get a chance to improve:shrug:

You could have the top 6 six of this contest automatically through to the next, if they wish to take up a spot, with the rest up for grabs for whoever, that would allow for quality to be maintained.

I was think the same thing with the top 6 or quarterfinalists. It just seems unfair to people like Axver, Liamcool, IMP, LMP and others to not let them participate. IMP was a semi-finalist the first time and might have gone further if not for some bad luck when it came to matchups. I think we should take the top 6 or quarterfinalists and if there are more than 16 people wanting to play, maybe anyone who had entries in this game or the last game could vote on the last few people in.
 
Here's what I think we should do next time around. Begin with twelve contestants. The winner of each of the six heats automatically progress to the quarter-finals, with two spots left to be filled. The six losers progress to a repechage round, which features two polls of three tracklists a-piece. The two winners thus fill the remaining quarter final berths. Then we simply progress quarters --> semis --> final.

Alternatively, here's a potentially more complex system that could prove to be more interesting - and quicker. Again, we start with 12 contestants, this time split into four groups of three. Here's the important factor: they all compete against each other in the same thread. So it's a multiple choice poll, and the one who comes last overall is eliminated while the rest go to the quarter finals. Allow me to demonstrate how it would work, with hypothetical contestants Bono, Edge, and Adam. I've given each votes as well so that I can demonstrate how scoring will work.

Which tracklist do you prefer?

Bono vs Edge: BONO - 10
Bono vs Edge: EDGE - 20
Bono vs Adam: BONO - 13
Bono vs Adam: ADAM - 17
Edge vs Adam: Edge - 16
Edge vs Adam: ADAM - 14

As we see in this matchup, Edge won against both Bono and Adam, while Adam downed Bono. Accordingly, with no wins, Bono is eliminated. But allow me to demonstrate what happens in a close result. Swap the result of Bono vs Edge so that Bono wins 20-10. All three have one win each. So we go to how many total votes they accrued:

Bono: 33
Edge: 26
Adam: 31

In this event, Edge is eliminated due to receiving the least votes overall (this being the equivalent of a soccer goal differential). And in the unlikely event that Edge and Adam had both had an equal amount of votes, say 29, the winner of their matchup - Edge - would go through.

I think such a system could potentially be fairer, as we could get to see how an individual fairs against multiple opponents - one close battle between final-material opponents early on (like this tournament's one between IMP and LMP) won't necessary mean sudden death. I recognise it would require that people vote fairly, but I believe two arguments can be made in favour of this:

1. If the mods can work with us, that would be excellent. I'm not sure how much they can see, but if they can see who voted for whom, then we'll be able to stop people voting for all options just like that.

2. I think we can trust Interference. The original Desert Island Album Game idea was taken by Liam and I from the MikePortnoy.com Forums, and apart from the semis and the final, every round there was multiple choice (not in the format I outlined above, but with two heats in one thread). All appeared to conclude with fair results.

Any thoughts on this?
 
Oh yeah, and I should also mention that I am thinking of another format change for next time around. I feel very strongly that the "you cannot repeat songs you've already used" and "you can only use one song by an artist" rules have worked better than I expected, so I would like to retain them. However, I am thinking the tracklists themselves could change: they could get longer. Yes, longer. Tracklists at the moment are 160 minutes (2 hours 40 minutes), the length of 2 CDs. I propose an extension to 240 minutes (an exact 4 hours), the length of 3 CDs.

I realise some of you may initially shy away from this. Allow me to outline the arguments I see both for and against it.

For:

1. It allows tracklisters to compile a more diverse selection of songs and more space within which to achieve their artistic vision.
2. It means people have a greater chance of including songs recognisable to voters, while at the same time introducing them to even more musical goodness they may have never heard of before.
3. The challenge could potentially dissuade some people from contesting. Why is this a positive rather than a negative? Cutting down 24 interested applicants to 12 is going to be hard! This is one way it could be done.
4. Of course, there is absolutely no requirement that anyone actually HAS to use all four hours. You are allowed to enter a playlist as short as you desire. In the first tournament, a technicality meant you had to have seven tracks (as you had to represent seven bands), but in this one, you could have entered a tracklist featuring just one song and not been disqualified.
Of course, if your name is Axver, you could have entered a three track playlist that reached over 140 minutes: Green Carnation's Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness (60:06), Dream Theater's Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence live (41:30), Porcupine Tree's unedited Moonloop improvisation (40:07). Now I'm almost tempted to do it ...

Against:
1. Tracklists are quite long enough. I believe my tracklist is the longest this tournament, at 42 songs. Do we really need more tracklists in the vicinity of 40-50 songs and beyond?
2. People will be even less likely to listen to tracklists in their entirety. (I actually don't accept this argument, but I won't offer my rebuttal yet - it's getting late!)
3. I'm sure some of you have other reasons to include here, heh.
 
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That seems to drawn out and confusing, Axver. There are parts there that I like so how something along the lines of World Cup soccer. A thread would be multiple choice featuring each player playing twice. The top two advance and if it is close a group might play a third time. That would take us to the Quarters in at most 8 rounds. How would that sound?

Oh and I think the tracklist length shouldn't change for reason #1. However, we could have some incentives for people that have diverse playlists. I don't know what but we should definitely promote it. Maybe a minimum number of different genres, it wouldn't be too difficult for people. :shrug:
 
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Screwtape2 said:
That seems to drawn out and confusing, Axver. There are parts there that I like so how something along the lines of World Cup soccer. A thread would be multiple choice featuring each player playing twice. The top two advance and if it is close a group might play a third time. That would take us to the Quarters in at most 8 rounds. How would that sound?

OK, now I am confused as I feel like you just proposed what I proposed. Tell me what you envisage the poll being.

Which tracklist do you prefer?

...?
 
Adam winner vs. Bono
Adam winner vs. Edge
Adam winner vs. Bono & vs. Edge
Adam loser against Bono & vs. Bono

And so on with with each player in the group.

I can't make polls so I'm not really sure of the options but I guess this would be a multiple vote. Once for each player.
 
Uhm, people that have been in two competitions can't use any of those songs plus the playlists are longer?

I don't like that very much.
 
Axver said:
Here's what I think we should do next time around. Begin with twelve contestants. The winner of each of the six heats automatically progress to the quarter-finals, with two spots left to be filled. The six losers progress to a repechage round, which features two polls of three tracklists a-piece. The two winners thus fill the remaining quarter final berths. Then we simply progress quarters --> semis --> final.

Alternatively, here's a potentially more complex system that could prove to be more interesting - and quicker. Again, we start with 12 contestants, this time split into four groups of three. Here's the important factor: they all compete against each other in the same thread. So it's a multiple choice poll, and the one who comes last overall is eliminated while the rest go to the quarter finals. Allow me to demonstrate how it would work, with hypothetical contestants Bono, Edge, and Adam. I've given each votes as well so that I can demonstrate how scoring will work.

Which tracklist do you prefer?

Bono vs Edge: BONO - 10
Bono vs Edge: EDGE - 20
Bono vs Adam: BONO - 13
Bono vs Adam: ADAM - 17
Edge vs Adam: Edge - 16
Edge vs Adam: ADAM - 14

As we see in this matchup, Edge won against both Bono and Adam, while Adam downed Bono. Accordingly, with no wins, Bono is eliminated. But allow me to demonstrate what happens in a close result. Swap the result of Bono vs Edge so that Bono wins 20-10. All three have one win each. So we go to how many total votes they accrued:

Bono: 33
Edge: 26
Adam: 31

In this event, Edge is eliminated due to receiving the least votes overall (this being the equivalent of a soccer goal differential). And in the unlikely event that Edge and Adam had both had an equal amount of votes, say 29, the winner of their matchup - Edge - would go through.

I think such a system could potentially be fairer, as we could get to see how an individual fairs against multiple opponents - one close battle between final-material opponents early on (like this tournament's one between IMP and LMP) won't necessary mean sudden death. I recognise it would require that people vote fairly, but I believe two arguments can be made in favour of this:

1. If the mods can work with us, that would be excellent. I'm not sure how much they can see, but if they can see who voted for whom, then we'll be able to stop people voting for all options just like that.

2. I think we can trust Interference. The original Desert Island Album Game idea was taken by Liam and I from the MikePortnoy.com Forums, and apart from the semis and the final, every round there was multiple choice (not in the format I outlined above, but with two heats in one thread). All appeared to conclude with fair results.

Any thoughts on this?

I think this sounds good! As long as your not doing the tallying :wink: the swapping bit confused me.
 
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