Weekly Question 3! How do you rank their albums?

[ThePumisher]

So we all agreed that Further is in average their best record, because it is mostly listed rank 5 or higher. All others are mixup better other worse, but Further is constant.

[kosek]

Dig Your Own Hole
Further
Push The Button
Surrender
We are the night
Come With Us
Born in the Echoes
Exit Planet Dust

[Csar]

I can't make up my mind yet regarding ranks. I need them all in my life, that's all I know. I get back to all of them, all have made their specific impact on me, all are relevant to me, all have their merits and contain songs I wouldn't want to miss by no means.

And then there is Further, hovering above it all

[Christine]

Hi, I need to get in touch with Tom on behalf of his childhood friend - Nick Canney - can you get him to respond ASAP - thanks

[sandelic]

Further
Surrender
We are the night
Come with us
Born in the echoes
Push the button
Dig your own hole
Exit planet dust

There is nothing on Further, as every song and note seem like a well done tapestry of sound, unlike their previous releases
I'm quite amazed that most of you don't rank Further higher on your list

[Enjoyed]

I'm quite amazed that most of you don't rank Further higher on your list

Further doesn't have Galaxy Bounce or The Sunshine Underground on it. That's the main reason.

[Goldmaster]

1. exit planet dust
2. dig your own hole
3. surrender
4. born in the echos
5. mostly singles i have too many

[Explud]

1. Come With Us
2. Further
3. Surrender
4. We Are The Night
5. Born In The Echoes
6. Push The Button
7. Exit Planet Dust
8. Dig Your Own Hole

[WhiteNoise]

I tallied and averaged the ranks:

Code Select Expand


EPD 1 4 5 5 6 3 1 2 8 1 7 2 8 8 8 1 7 = 4.5294
DYH 6 1 2 9 4 1 2 2 7 3 1 1 4 1 2 2 8 = 3.2941
SUR 2 5 6 3 7 6 4 1 3 4 1 3 1 4 2 3 3 = 3.4117
CWU 4 2 1 1 1 2 5 5 5 9 5 5 1 6 4 - 1 = 3.5625
PTB 8 9 7 8 3 9 9 8 4 7 6 6 7 3 6 - 6 = 6.625
WTN 5 6 8 4 2 8 8 7 2 8 4 8 5 5 3 - 4 = 5.4375
FUR 3 3 3 2 5 5 3 6 1 2 3 4 3 2 1 - 2 = 3
HAN 7 7 - 7 - 7 7 - - 5 9 - - - - - - = 7
BIT 9 8 4 6 8 4 6 4 6 6 8 7 6 7 5 4 5 = 6.0588


In order:
1. Further
2. Dig Your Own Hole (+.2941)
3. Surrender (+.4117)
4. Come With Us (+.5625)
5. Exit Planet Dust (+1.5294)
6. We Are The Night (+2.4375)
7. Born In The Echoes (+3.0588)
8. Push The Button (+3.625)
9. Hanna (too few votes)

Most controversial:
Exit Planet Dust, of all albums! The only album to have been ranked at least once in every position from 1-9 (except 9, but it ranked last in multiple lists that excluded Hanna).

Most despised:
Push The Button, which is a shame. I honestly expected Born in the Echoes to take this place. On some days I'd say it's better than Dig Your Own Hole IMO... I might re-rank!

Most liked:
Further, with Dig Your Own Hole in a very close second.

Most consistent:
When remembered, Hanna consistently ranked 7th, except for Ben_j and Skyscraper, whose ranks averaged out to be 7.

Never hated:
Further was never ranked lower than 6th.

Island of Misfit Songs:
Born in the Echoes never ranked higher than a 4!

Tiers:
Based on average rank and distance from each other.

TIER 1: Further, Dig Your Own Hole, Surrender, Come With Us

TIER 2: Exit Planet Dust

TIER 3: We Are The Night, Born In The Echoes, Push The Button

[Bosco]

I'm quite amazed that most of you don't rank Further higher on your list

This is me being critical:

"Further" is the safest album they've released. They worked with no significant guest vocalist (something I actually prefer), many of the tracks have a link or likeness to previous released tracks, and it has an unfair advantage with the visual spectacle it was released with. Plus, it being a concept album, it has a less organic feel to it.

I ranked it 3. 

[kosek]

I remember Ed saying that "calling Hanna a new album is a bit of a stretch"

[WhiteNoise]

I'd call it an album just because of the effort they put into curating it. Most of the songs on are altered, some content only appeared on the album while a lot of music was left off of it, and they reshuffled the order of songs to flow better from track to track. The soundtrack was definitely released to be heard as "an album" standalone from the film.

This is me being critical:

"Further" is the safest album they've released. They worked with no significant guest vocalist (something I actually prefer), many of the tracks have a link or likeness to previous released tracks, and it has an unfair advantage with the visual spectacle it was released with. Plus, it being a concept album, it has a less organic feel to it.

I ranked it 3. 

I regrettably agree with this. There's nothing "offensive" about it and because of that I haven't come back to it as much as I have other albums, where I feel there are still mysteries to solve. I listened to Further for like a year straight after it came out, and, not that I burned it out, but I rarely come back for it. It's too "perfect", too everything I can ask for... nothing beat the first time, nothing at all, but now it's getting boring?

It is still seriously one of their greatest albums, easily #1 if ranked on quality Chemical synth sounds, but a little like The Force Awakens, it doesn't show me much of what I didn't realize I loved, or would come to love, just what I already knew I loved.

Still like Further more than Force Awakens though.

[Stefan]

And here's a visualisation of the averaged ranks and the standard deviation.

What's interesting to see is that there's no clear favourite. Even though Further might have the best averaged rank (it's also very consistent), the error bars overlap quite a bit.
This might be an effect of the small sample size, but I think this shows how diverse their work is.

[Csar]

But you know that you can't really use a mean value with ordinale scales But it's interesting to see that CWU gets such a good ranking after all its bashing from fans when it came out. I love that album.

I'm still not really decided on my definite rankings but I guess for the moment it's like that:

1. Further /CWU
2. Surrender
3. Exit Planet Dust (can't really rank that one as its their debut and fresh as hell)
4. Push the Button
5. We Are the Night /BITE
6. Dig Your Own Hole

My ranking is basically made on one reasoning: Can I play this record from start to finish or would I skip a track or two? Thus, unfortunately, I had to put DYOH at the bottom of the list since I rarely listen to IDM or DSTR. This is rather strange because it's a heck of an album. On WATN I would skip Salmon and on BITE Just Bang.

But to be honest, I had never thought about my favorite album of theirs before. It's so damn difficult to figure that out now that you asked. I usually go to tracks I want to listen to because I'm in a certain mood or something. Argh.

[Stefan]

But you know that you can't really use a mean value with ordinale scales

Oh, that makes sense. Which means that my chart doesn't make sense.

[WhiteNoise]

Actually it helps a bit, it visualizes how far BITE/WATN/PTB are from the rest of the pack and how close the top 4 are.

[Stefan]

No, because as far as I understood it, the ranking only tells about the order, but not about the spacing between the ranks.
In order for the mean to be meaningful, one would have to assume equal distance between each rank.

[Csar]

Here's my little attempt at album rankings

[DaftChemicalPunk]

1. Dig Your Own Hole
2. Surrender
3. Exit Planet dust
4. Further
5. Born in the Echoes
6. Come With Us
7. Push the Button
8. We are the Night

Ps. Even though I feel DYOH has a pretty mediocre middle section, I feel like the tracks other tracks are just so epic that they tip the balance so much! Tracks like Setting Sun and The Private Psychedelic Reel still blow everything else out of the water and give me chills to this day! So inventive and damn cool.