Talk:Selected Ambient Works Volume II

Selected Ambient Works Volume II is currently a Music good article nominee. Nominated by Beachweak (talk) at 21:46, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

An editor has placed this article on hold to allow improvements to be made to satisfy the good article criteria. Recommendations have been left on the review page, and editors have seven days to address these issues. Improvements made in this period will influence the reviewer's decision whether or not to list the article as a good article.

Selected Ambient Works Volume II was a Music good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
April 4, 2024	Peer review	Not reviewed
April 20, 2024	Good article nominee	Not listed

Current status: Former good article nominee

Albums

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Archives

Archive 1

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Expanded Edition

Should the 2024 expanded edition re-issue have its own section? Right now there's just a bit of info under "Legacy and influence". I feel as though there's enough new about it to warrant an entirely different section dedicated to it (the new tracks, the promo, the (currently upcoming) listening parties, the singles released on streaming, etc). Beachweak (talk) 12:49, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled song names in track listing

I feel like the track listing should be reverted back to when it had the fan-chosen nicknames for the tracks instead of how it is now with every track being listed as "untitled". Unless I'm wrong they seemed to be the WP:COMMONNAME for the song titles (I know the policy is for article names and not track listings but still: if any one of the songs from the Selected Ambient Works II article had its own article it would probably use its fan-popularized name, like what has already happened with Stone in Focus).

I also think readers would find it more useful to have each track have a different name for less confusion, because for example the 20th untitled track on the vinyl release and the CD version are not the same. You couldn't say SAW II's 20th untitled song without various people interpreting it differently. You could also argue that if every song without an official name should be untitled, the song called Blue Calx should be untitled too; it was not given a name on SAW II, it was only given a name on a separate compilation album. Squidb4ll (talk) 23:12, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As pointed out by LunaEclipse in this edit, those are only fan titles. In an encyclopaedia we ought to indicate how the work is named "officially" i.e. by the artist. In this case the tracks do not have word titles, so we should indicate as much. The fan titles are included, as they should be - given how widely they are used - but we should not give the impression these are the original titles of each piece. The inclusion of the fan titles eliminates the potential confusion you are concerned about. Cambial — foliar❧ 23:31, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oh my god, I'm so blind-- I didn't see the fan titles right next to all the songs saying "untitled". I'm actually an idiot. All of my complaints are invalid, you can ignore what I said. Thanks for pointing it out to me Squidb4ll (talk) 01:17, 2 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Track listing

Is there a better way to present the tracklist? Right now the original 1990s vinyl and CD pressings are present in the tracklist, but now the Expanded Edition exists and includes all songs on all formats. Maybe update the track lists to use the Expanded Edition tracklist and note that the original pressings have missing tracks? Or vice versa? Beachweak (talk) 09:08, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just added a footnote about the expanded edition and put the years beside each release. Any improvements let me know Beachweak (talk) 09:38, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Selected Ambient Works Volume II/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Beachweak (talk · contribs) 21:46, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Czar (talk · contribs) 21:51, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Note that another editor previously claimed this review but went inactive before starting—see the page deletion logs.)

This article would need much expansion from the Weidenbaum 331⁄3 book in order to pass the GA breadth criterion, as it covers the topic in great depth and is only cited once in the article currently. I've started a thread about it on the talk page. I didn't realize that this point had previously been raised in the the GA review last April. While some of the outstanding topics from that review appear to have been addressed at least in part (such as some cursory recording information), I suggest revisiting its other outstanding points such as searching Newspapers.com for other sources and some of its other comments on article organization before renominating. Since I expect it to take some time to make these changes, I recommend closing out this review for now but will leave it open for up to the standard week in case you'd like to discuss it first. czar 21:51, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed merge of Stone in Focus into Selected Ambient Works Volume II

The sourcing in this song article pertains more to the album re-release. Everything there is to say here can be adequately covered within the re-release's section of the existing album article. czar 15:04, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Merge. I think the Expanded Edition and Track listing sections already cover the track's release history, and we could merge the rest of the article into Reception and Composition quite easily. Beachweak (talk) 15:12, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, as the song was released as a single and is already notable enough to be a standalone song. If th1 (evnslower) can be a single, this shouldn't even be a question. Additionally, the song came out on original vinyl pressings, so it would be a bit odd to only include it on the re-release section. Why would you have an entire sub-section for a song that already had a life of its own before the re-release? Paradox NiteOwl ^{(Discussion?)} 16:47, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Which sources justify a standalone article? Plenty of singles are merged into their parent album articles when they lack significant coverage themselves. I can't see how we'd build a dedicated article based on the sources currently in the article. Anything noteworthy that is to be said about the track can fit within this article. czar 20:04, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

33⅓

@Beachweak, while we wait for the GA reviewer to return, I was surprised to see that the Weidenbaum 331⁄3 book was barely used within the article. Certainly there is much expansion needed there as part of the GA breadth criterion? czar 20:07, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That was my very first comment in this article's first GA review. That book needs to be utilized substantially more than it currently is. – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 21:03, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I actually rented a digital copy of this book for the purpose of expanding the article as I had seen the previous GA review, but found it wasn't really that helpful. The article already covers a lot of it's content in depth and the most use I could see for it is extra citations for claims already in the article. I wouldn't mind renting it again if people still believe it should be more heavily used, I can probably still find something usable, but that's just my thoughts. Beachweak (talk) 21:38, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the topics that I can see it adding for breadth: the background of "On" preceding SAW II, the idea that SAW II was a prank/joke, the earlier publication of "Blue Calx", the Wisp remixes, context on how Eden named the tracks, the afterlife of those names (e.g., they were used on iTunes), compositions on the Alarm Will Sound album, uses in film and dance, influence on later Aphex Twin releases, expansion from contemporaneous reviews, descriptions of the tracks, James's taciturn reputation, and so on. There's a lot in here for basic topical breadth. czar 22:32, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Haha, way to prove me wrong. Thank you for the guidance of topics to cover. I've re-rented it and will get to work on expansion shortly. Beachweak (talk) 22:34, 10 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've just finished going through the book and adding new content. The book is now cited a LOT (possibly a bit too much, not a bad thing though) and the article features new content across all fronts. Let me know what you think. I also fixed a statement about the composition that failed verification with a new one that's fully cited.

I aim to go through the rest of the past GA review to fix things up either tonight or tomorrow. I would also like to comment on the "cursory" recording information you mentioned in the GA review; there really isn't a lot of information about how this album was recorded. The information present in the article took a full week of searching through articles through both Rock's Backpages, archive.org and other archives of publications. Richard really didn't reveal much about how this album was composed aside from the comments mentioned. I think having it is better than no recording information at all, though.

Again, thank you for your help and suggestions that you've given. I hope we can fix up the article to GA standards. Beachweak (talk) 00:52, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(courtesy pinging @Czar) — 💽 LunaEclipse 💽 🌹 ⚧ ^{(CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST)} 01:05, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No page numbers..? – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 01:56, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Added. I used Template: Reference page for page numbers, hope that's alright. Beachweak (talk) 02:08, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The page numbers don't appear to match the print book. Are they from the digital version/epub? Because those page locations are dynamic depending on how the book is displayed. Here's print page 20 compared to what's cited in § Retrospective views. czar 02:35, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is really not my day.. I'm working from the Amazon Kindle web version of the book which seems to include the contents page as part of the page numbers. Is there a better alternative? Beachweak (talk) 02:40, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The best option is to cite the print pages because those will be the most specific and consistent. The alternative I've most commonly seen for citing digital versions is to give the location (i.e., the chapter) rather than the page. But {{rp|at=ch. 2}} can get clunky with text inline, so I recommend {{sfn|ps=, ch. 2, "Beginning of quote trailing off..."}} as being better for verification. czar 03:02, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I found out Google Books allows for you to search specific quotes and it will return a page number of the print version, so I've went ahead and hopefully updated them to the correct numbers this time. Beachweak (talk) 04:00, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I typically use Template:Sfn in my articles, but not every page has to be the same. Only problem now is that some sources have page numbers in the template while the 33&1/3 source now doesn't. You typically want things to be consistent... – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 18:19, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I know when to admit defeat, and if my current solution isn't acceptable, then I need the help of somebody to properly fix it; this may be beyond my expertise. I attempted to use Template:Sfn but ran into various issues and errors that made it unreliable. Right now, this is the best I can do unless someone jumps in. Beachweak (talk) 01:03, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]