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No, it's not rated by how good the bands are, it's listed by how many fans of a certain band likes another certain band and then it groups them according to tags that people give to the music (which is usually genres but can be other tags like "Weird" or "minimalist fingerpicking drone" or something) and such.
You want to hear something "new" but you won't bother checking out music on last.fm because you're afraid that, since they're listed as a similiar artist, they're going to sound TOO similiar to what you like? Trust me, this won't happen. Look through Sun City Girls's similiar artists.. John Fahey, Jandek, The Tower Recordings, Master Musicians of Bukkake, Boredoms, etc. While there are a few stylistic similarities between some of those musicians, it's still pretty eclectic. They're really not similiar moreso as they're just artists that a person who likes SCG might like.
As someone who definitely doesn't bother listening to the same old same old, I reccomend last.fm 110%. There's such a wealth of knowledge and discovery there, it's ridiculous. If you just want to look at all the highest-rated "avant trombone" albums, there's probably a page for that. There are groups on everything one would ever be interested in. Also, all the users are friendly and on a few pages like the Ry Cooder and AMM pages, I've asked for some help with reccomendations and I've IMMEDIATELY gotten reccomendations from people. Very helpful, friendly, a good atmosphere, filled with intelligent/open minded people (that's more than I can say for a lot of the people who populate this board), and I gurantee within a few weeks you will have discovered 50 not-so-same-old-same-old bands if you bother to look.
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