Albums and Artists that are Mistagged

Great idea from Brufordfreak and a sentiment we ALL share on this site.

In his poll he mentioned starting a poll of albums that are held captive by original categorization

Which albums and artists do you feel are mistagged?

Albums there are literally tons including Porcupine Tree's space rock albums.

Artists there are just as many

Just a few i can think of at the moment

Riverside should be Heavy Prog

Haken should be progressive metal

Magic Pie should be progressive metal

Fantomas is in RIO and they are about as experimental as it gets

Likewise Mr Bungle is as eclectic as it gets but are in RIO

I'm sure we ALL have something to contribute to this list hehe

We are faced with the informatics limits on which the database was built upon. Touching the base could ruin everything. Of the little I know of informatics, the PA DB is built upon an Access software of the early 00's.

I remember M@X explaing that toying around or tinkering the software's principle could crumble the whole thing, though I suspect that experimenting on a copy of the DB out of line could be doable.

The way I understand things is that multi-genre belonging involving hyperlinks of the other genres is impossible on the artiste's page and the overall alphabetical list, but I could see extra space being added on album pages to have the descriptors (much like what RYM does). Likewise, I could see it possible (but WTF do I know?) to add a column in the DB/Genre alphabetical order containing secondary genres, but without the hyperlinks towards those secondary genres

siLLy puPPy wrote: Fantomas is in RIO and they are about as experimental as it gets Likewise Mr Bungle is as eclectic as it gets but are in RIO

I'm fine with Bungle & Fantomas as Avant-prog (avant sort of means experimental), as for Tull in Prog Folk, there was a big discussion (to which I sort of agreed)  and I even started a poll whether Tull should be in a different genre : as I totally expected, the massive/overwhelming majority decided it was prog folk.

However, I simply don't get how such an Avant-Prog (or experimental) master like him does in Crossover Prog Ditto for Bjork in Xover. She defines experimental, IMHO.

Perhaps the genre teams could use this thread to consider possible re-evaluations in the near future? I think all of us on the teams are primarily invested in new band suggestions and have time constraints. Nonetheless, this might be a worthwhile pursuit. Bands evolve, as does our insights into what is or is not prog.

Ideally a better database where multiple subgenres could be applied to bands would be wise, but alas, PA's owner is, for all intents and purposes, absent from the helm. Until that changes, we are stuck with what we have.

 

One further point worth noting is that bands from the classic period such as Yes, Genesis, etc already had an extensive discography by the time they were included into PA's database, and therefore their subgenre was based on a balanced consideration of most if not all of their albums. By contrast, the subgenre of new artists will be based on their first album because that is naturally the only album they have. Because first albums are often different to subsequent albums, basing the subgenre on the first album will likely be somewhat of a distortion. Thus, new artists are treated fundamentally different to old artists in this regard.

 

Great points everyone and then there's always the question of whether we should add more genre tagging. Some will say absolutely not but i think the more the better since as the music world has expanded exponentially  it's useful to become ever more specific in a tagging system.

For example, someone mentioned prog related only refers to rock. Why can't we have a secondary tag called prog related jazz which could included Coltrane, Sun Ra and others that weren't quite fusiony enough for the category but clearly ran parallel to the prog world.

There are many new tags popping up in the prog world as well that could be considered.

Brutal Prog

Pronk (Progressive Punk)

Swancore

Likewise it would be helpful if prog metal would be broken down into its metal genre constituents

Progressive Death Metal

Progressive Black Metal

Progressive Metalcore

Progressive Alternative Metal

Progressive Experimental Metal

Progressive Doom Metal

Progressive Symphonic Metal etc

As far as FANTOMAS, come on Ian! It's METAL! Avant is very much an experimental genre but we have an entire experimental metal section which is for avant-metal bands. In fact Fantomas is a mix of avant-metal, experimental rock, dark ambient, alternative metal and sludge metal. That's METAL !..! Even has drummer dude from Slayer :D

Also another perplexing feature of this site is that RPI is included. Most of these bands are really just symphonic prog (but not always like Area). Well why are many of the Spanish and Argentine symphonic bands not included as they utilized the exact same formula only sung in Spanish rather than Italian. To me that makes no sense.

Ironically many sites consider zeuhl a subgenre of avant-prog but i'm fine with it as a distinct genre here because it is so distinct.

It's not unheard of for an artist to be moved here. When i first started visiting the site i was perplexed by Cornucopia was listed as jazz-fusion and not Krautrock. I submitted the change to both the PSIKE (whatever it was called ten years ago) and JRF teams and voila it was changed unanimously!

^ the generic progressive metal tag would still be used

bands like Death are clearly progressive death metal

bands like Deathspell Omega are clearly progressive black metal

i know this will never happen. this is a fantasy thread!

Tori Amos (Art Pop)

Anathema (Hard Rock)

Be Bop Deluxe (Art Pop)

The Beatles (Pop/Rock) 

Blue Oyster Cult (Hard Rock)

ELO (Pop/Rock)

Jimi Hendrix (Psychedelic Rock)

Radiohead (Alternative Rock)

Rainbow (Hard Rock)

Spirit (Psychedelic Rock)

The Who (Hard Rock)

Wishbone Ash (Hard Rock)

I'd be fine with Fantomas in Experimental Metal, they are a few Avant Metal bands that seem to be in the Avant genre rather than the Experimental Metal genre. It's not a big deal to me, I think they sit fine in either. Avant tends to be one of the dumping grounds for bands that don't fit elsewhere, similar to Eclectic.