# Talk:MCMXC a.D.

Hi 6, could you please provide your sources about the length of the tracks in Principles of Lust and  Back to the Rivers of Belief? And also, I feel that the structure of these 2 songs should not be omitted, and the time should be placed at the end of the song title, as per WikiProject Albums. Thanks and regards. --Andylkl (talk) 17:46, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

(The above is a copy of the question left on my talk page, answered below.)
Well, I'm afraid I feel the new version to be less useful. I won't fight over it, though, I'll just provide my rationals once and then let you (and/or future other editors) ponder them for themselves:

About the tracks: I checked on Amazon the various existing tracklists for the official versions, choose the one that seemed the more relevant for encyclopedic purposes, then picked the length details on the matching FreeDB CDDB entry [1].
About "the structure of these 2 songs should not be omitted": I don't understand the point, since my reworked tracklist was providing both the structure and substructure of each of them, with the clear "Principles of Lust (part X)" prefix to each part. Since the band saw fit to later slice each song into three parts as CD tracks, I feel more encyclopedic to provide the exact duration of each part and use the later, simpler tracklist (with the footnote about the original tracklist). There has been plenty of versions and tracklists for this albums, IMO there's no need for Wikipedia to exhaustively list all of them, or necessarily stick to the "original one" when the later one has more details. (A factual mention that tons of versions has been made is encyclopedic, though.)
About "the time should be placed at the end of the song title": not my opinion, it's ugly, less useful, less practical, doesn't adapt well to many special cases. Compare in two browser windows the previous version with prefixed durations and the current version with postfixed durations. A column with all fixed-width durations is more clear, makes the tracklist feel less cluttered, allows to check all durations at a glance, and gets out of the way for those albums who need special details after track names such as, from the top of my head: translation for titles or multiple-languages releases. Or, on albums which currently lack durations but would be a mess with postfixed durations: anagram titles, or remixes albums with (tons of mix parentheses) and source infos.
About "as per WikiProject Albums": my impression is that this Project isn't really followed/discussed any more, and that many of its "standards" are just first drafts that turned into old habits, never actually discussed and opposed to better standards, and simply cut-n-pasted by imitation of the style of the first album pages done. It doesn't look like the pros and cons of various tracklist formats have been discussed, nor that there's anybody authoritative left to discuss them and establish a standard...
Nothing personal, just my opinions for a better page, and anyway I'm done.
P.S. : Your wikicode for the tracklist shouldn't use hardcoded numbers, but numbered lists. Sub-items can be automatically handled too:

First item with #
Subitem with #*
Subitem with #*
Second item with #
Subitem with ##
Subitem with ##
Third item with #
Regards, ←#6  talk 17:37, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Concerning the "incorrect abbreviation" statement at the beginning of the article:  Correct me if I'm wrong, but in Latin, isn't there a rule that only the beginning of a complete sentence and proper nouns are capitalized?  Under that rule, "a." (the abbreviation for "anno", meaning "year") would not be capitalized, but "D." would, since it is a proper noun ("Domini", the genetive masculine singular for God).  In English, it is proper to capitalize "A.D.", but since there is so much Latin in the album, and the title uses Roman numerals, I'm thinking that the intent is for the title to be in proper Latin.  If so, "a.D." would probably be correct in this case.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.90.39.16 (talk) 21:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Why is there no mention that the start of the album's background music is actually sampled from the Dead Can Dance song "Mantra - Organics"? DcD may not be a mainstream band, but they did provide music for Baraka which is a fairly well known movie, where the track comes from, so it's not unlikely even if you ignore the fact that they sound exactly the same.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kittie Rose (talk • contribs).

I'm not sure of that fact since I've never read about the song before, but for what I know the beat in "Sadeness" is alike to Soul II Soul's song "Keep On Movin'", released a year earlier than "Sadeness". --Andylkl [ talk! | c ] 08:11, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
"Mantra - Organics" is not a piece of music by Dead Can Dance but by Soemi Satoh and Michael Stearns. The soundtrack of Baraka is a collection of songs from different artists, with Michael Stearns as main contributor anc composer of the title theme. DCD only gave the classic "Host of Seraphim" (wonderful piece of music) and a rare, unreleased version of "Yulunga". What you say seems impossible, as the movie and soundtrack were made in 1990, same year as MCMXC aD. The intro of MCMXC aD sound like many Stearns themes, but also like any waves os synths.Clodomir17 23:08, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
1:22 on "Mantra" and around 35 secs on the Enigma track... it's definitely not sampled but it's the exact same chords... as for the beat that's a generic "New Age" beat though I always thought it was Enigma that made it popular.

Not even close buddy.--2A02:8071:B693:BE00:1847:857A:D4FC:7704 (talk) 15:29, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
Isn't the beat the one that was made popular a little earlier by Soul II Soul? The Seventh Taylor (talk) 21:41, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

I came across a discussion (on a website I don't wanna advertise) where several users claim there is a glitch present in the left channel at 57:10 in the limited edition pressings (European editions) and in the French release of the audio tape. I'm curious to know if it is a well known error and in case it is was it present on pressings from other continents? --212.200.207.130 15:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

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@Lazman321 and Kyle Peake: An IP editor has added a time of 1:00:57 for an "extended edition" here. The article says MCMXC a.D. is 40 minutes and 16 seconds long without making it clear that that time applies to the original version, as it was once labeled, later removed. There is "The Limited Edition", timed at 20:41, in the "Track listing" section, without a listing in the infobox (or text), but no extended edition. How should these differences be reconciled? Dhtwiki (talk) 18:26, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

@Dhtwiki: You should not have different lengths from that of the original version in the infobox, as they belong solely in the track listing section. --K. Peake 19:35, 10 January 2021 (UTC)