OK, the title's confusing as hell, but stay with me, the repro steps should help clear it up...

Say you wanted to use advanced query to track down the earliest release of (for example) Albatross by Fleetwood Mac.

• Enable advanced query search and select Type: Recording. In the Query field enter:
  Albatross AND artist:Fleetwood – then search.
  >> Not surprisingly, that generates a whole page of results, about 90% of them are compilations.

• So refine your query terms to: Albatross AND artist:Fleetwood NOT type:compilation – then search.
  >> Seven results, all Live or Soundtrack.

• OK, instead of removing a release type, just specify a certain one. Query: Albatross AND artist:Fleetwood AND type:album.
  >> "Found 1 result". Unfortunately that one result is a list of about 90 albums, mostly compilations.

The problem is that if there's a big list of release attached to a recording, if you do an advance search for a release property – type, status, tracks, position, tracksrelease, dur, tnum, date, etc. – and the search is true for ANY release associated with the recording, you get the entire list of releases for that Recording, including the ones your search terms specifically exclude. (When using "NOT", it's the same problem in reverse: if the search matches, the entire list is excluded.)

With the old gen system, this kind of thing was easy. Search for Tracks, Query: Albatross AND artist:Fleetwood NOT type:(compilation live) you'd have a list of ten albums and singles to look through.

There doesn't seem to be a workaround for this either. Release searches don't allow for tracknames (which...is really kind of baffling. You can search by the number of tracks on any medium in the release, but not a track title?). There's also no way to search Releases for Recordings (even though you can search Recordings for Releases).