Attitude before music. For the majority of music listening, quality is quite irrelevant. Even decent songwriting doesn't matter much. Success is all about attitude. People wanna look at cool and sexy winners, listening and musicianship comes second. And I object.

Sold. Today (19/9/2015) I sold all my old LPs. Got a decent price for it but it's a mixed feeling. On one hand it's a self-inflicted amputation, those dear albums, sweet memories... On the other hand it's a fresh cleanup, it's all nothing but the past. I don't even have a recordplayer anymore since the mid nineties. Today we stream. Tomorrow we'll worry about tomorrow.


Rate like a champ. Follow these steps:
1: categorize: identify the independent aspects of music that you value. Feel free to use the six categories below.
2: listen: put on the release you want to rate. Get a feeling for it. Listen some more. And some more the next day.
3: normalize: figure out what this release is about, which of your categories should weigh in heavily on rating it. Give your categories a percentage, the total must be 100%.
4: rate: rate the release on each of your categories from 0.0 to 5.0 star. Ignore the percentages now.
5: calculate: multiply the rate per category with its percentage/100 and sum them, that's your final rate.
6: personalize: if the categories do not fully reflect your feelings, just add or substract points. It's no science anyway, there's plenty of music I adore just because I was in love or young. Might as well be honest about it.

Here's my categories:
Character. The number one thing to find in music. Who is talking to me and do I like, or at least respect that? Vocals and lyrics bring easy clues, so instrumental music has to work harded. Pitfall: this should be about audable stuff, but who can avoid judging the album by the cover, by clips, newsfacts and sex appeal? I will always try. Musicality is about originality, intelligence and creativity in musical composition: do I like the melodies, rhythms and harmonics. This criterium aspires to be objective but that is just a dream. Efficiency is important, listening is active engagement to me and time is short. If music is to the point with a high density of ideas, I'm happy. Sound can play a role. I like most instruments and genre's, and I can appreciate an expensive production. Still in the end I prefer nice lofi songs and expression over expensive playing it safe. Same with Chops. Skill is certainly an asset, but virtuosos tend to make obnoxious music (low score on Character and/or Musicality).

- - - - - - - - - an example - - - - - - - - -

Fluxury - Lunar Escape Velocity (2001)
Fluxury called their debut release an out of control demo and that shows. Half of these 22 songs is really witty and original, the other half is clutter. The first couple of tracks were recorded on another planet: weird sounds, weird vocals, flat instrumentation. Yet track 2, 'Unreality' is fabulous: a wickedly staccato composition. Well actually track 5 'Volatile' is totally amazing also, bursting with creativity. But this crazy vocals, it's, it's... unsettling. Around the proggy 'Lookup' the album reaches my comfort zone and mostly stays there. A playful creativity with jazzy orchestral harmonics prevails. Lots of smart vocal harmonization. Yes the 2nd half of the album has the sugar. The ballad 'Hope springs eternal' is breathtaking, in spite of the shaky vocals. 'Anonymous insomniac' is very enjoyable to, a symphonic song morphing into a psych-collage. The jumpy jazzy piano-vocals piece 'The sky' is an energizing gem, and the little oratorio 'Tucked away' is just enchanting. This album has a strange lo-fi homestudio sound, it balances instruments, vocals and orchestral patches on a base of soundscapes and swirly or percussive synthetics (no drums). Still somehow the songs are all easy and accessible, with percussive yet understated piano play like an expressive story teller, and deep, smooth and supportive basslines. This sure is a unique group, but I would only recommend this album (that should've been a 30m EP) to the musically unperturbed. Rating:

musicality (30%): 5.0.
character (25%): 4.0.
sound (20%): 1.5.
efficiency (15%): 3.5.
chops (10%): 2.0.

It adds up to: 1.5 + 1 + 0.3 + 0.5 + 0.2 = 3.5. The intuition seems well rooted, I feel no need for a bonus or malus.